In my creative writing class we sometimes do what is called a rush-write. John Bennion our professor gives us a theme, and we just get going without thinking much about it. This is what came out of that. It works for a blog post because it's a personal essay. It's actually mostly personal narrative, but hey it's on its first draft.
The best meal I ever had.
All I know is that it probably has something to do with pizza. I live and breathe for pizza. The desire for it constantly flows through my veins, a sanguinary passion for it. The cheese, the tomato sauce, the bank! crust, the PEPPERONIS. So much goodness baked in an oven.
I was born in Naples, Italy to fully American parents but I must have acquired the taste for pizza during those first six months of my infantile existence. There’s no other explanation.
Growing up in the United States I went for just about any kind of pizza and I’d eat it in any of its many variations. Bagel bites, French bread pizza, homemade pizza. Then there were all the different kinds of frozen pizza. Tony’s, Tombstone, Red Baron, Freschetta, Digiorno. Red Baron somehow made its way to the top of my list, the cheese just had the right salty flavor and the crust was crispy but didn’t interfere with the goodness of the sauce and pepperonis.
But I eventually left the comfort of store-bought frozen pizzas when I got my mission call to a little eastern European country called Bulgaria. Or so I thought. The Missionary Training Center in Provo fed us pizza every other Friday for dinner, but this was pretty unsatisfactory because there was a gosh dang quota on how many pieces we could eat. This went on for two whole months before I jumped on the plane that took me to New York, then to Vienna, and finally to Sofia, Bulgaria.
My first night in Bulgaria me and the other new missionaries were fed some traditional Bulgarian dishes for dinner. I tried to be enthusiastic about my huge bowl of straight-up tomatoes and cucumbers. I tried. I tried to smother them with sirene, the tangy feta cheese that everyone and their dog eats in Bulgaria, but something just wasn’t going for me.
Not like I had pizza on the brain at that very moment, but it would have been welcome, you know?
The next day I was assigned a trainer, a Texan named Elder Ivy and we got on a bouncy bus that took us five hours to the south and east to a town called Sliven nestled in the embrace of the Balkan mountain range.
The next day Elder Ivy took me out to eat at a little café on the main street. I had no idea what the heck I was doing or what I was going to eat. The menu was a scrambled list of Cyrillic jargon. I wrestled with it until the scrawny waitress sidled up and said something unintelligible to Ivy. I suppose that he ordered something—I got that much out of context clues—but I didn’t understand. Then the waitress looked at me and I panicked. “Moje li sushtoto!” I stammered. “Please the same.” Before long I got just what Ivy got. French fries covered in sirene, and a piece of chicken skewered on a stick and thrown on the grill. Surprisingly good, even with the strangely sweet European ketchup and the salty yogurt drink that Ivy tricked me into ordering. But my heart sank a little within me as I contemplated this meal or something like it being my daily fare for the next two years.
I had no idea what actual, real goodness lay in wait for me just a few nights later in that very town of Sliven, Bulgaria. Apparently a few weeks earlier, Ivy and his previous companion had stumbled upon a pizzeria called Zlatna Belka. I found out months later that that means “golden pine marten.” Well. I’ll just keep calling it Zlatna Belka.
But anyway. I can understand why missionaries would have probably had a hard time finding the place, because it was situated right in between a lingerie store and some other store that was sketchy to a certain degree. But if you just ignore those and walk in, the pizzeria is a safe haven. Inside we sat down at a huge table and a modestly dressed waitress came up and took our order which was: one 800 gram pepperoni, yes, pepperoni pizza. This pizza only cost us about 8 lev, which was comparable at the time to around 6 American dollars. That left 400 grams of pizza to each of us. My excitement was building the whole time. Ivy told me in that pretty much nowhere in Bulgaria could you find pepperoni pizza like this. He was wrong; I found many more pizzerias with some dank pepperoni. But he was correct in the sense that nowhere in Bulgaria, possibly nowhere in the world, could you find pepperoni pizza as AMAZING or as SATISFYING or as LUSCIOUS as at Zlatna Belka. The size of this pizza, as well as the sheer beauty of its physical appearance, filled me with Joy. The smell was intoxicating. The pepperonis bursting with flavor. The whole thing basted with olive oil. This is not a lie. I saw them slather it on there. I ate and was filled.
The amount of pizza we got for our money gave this meal an extra dimension of magic. There’s nothing better than getting an amazing deal on superlatively amazing pizza.
I returned many times to Zlatna Belka. But never was the pizza quite so ridonculously amazing as that first time. I’ll never forget it.
The pizza did one more thing for me, though. It was uniquely good—it didn’t taste just like some favorite brand of pizza from the United States and make me nostalgic for it. What it did was help me turn my back on the memories of the United States, and turn towards life in Bulgaria. It gave me something to love right at the get-go. People get homesick when their previous situation in life was far better than their present one; but let me tell you, my present situation, right there at Zlatna Belka, was in one distinct way far better than any situation I had ever experienced. Let’s hear it for the 800 gram Dyavolska Pizza.
The best meal I ever had.
All I know is that it probably has something to do with pizza. I live and breathe for pizza. The desire for it constantly flows through my veins, a sanguinary passion for it. The cheese, the tomato sauce, the bank! crust, the PEPPERONIS. So much goodness baked in an oven.
I was born in Naples, Italy to fully American parents but I must have acquired the taste for pizza during those first six months of my infantile existence. There’s no other explanation.
Growing up in the United States I went for just about any kind of pizza and I’d eat it in any of its many variations. Bagel bites, French bread pizza, homemade pizza. Then there were all the different kinds of frozen pizza. Tony’s, Tombstone, Red Baron, Freschetta, Digiorno. Red Baron somehow made its way to the top of my list, the cheese just had the right salty flavor and the crust was crispy but didn’t interfere with the goodness of the sauce and pepperonis.
But I eventually left the comfort of store-bought frozen pizzas when I got my mission call to a little eastern European country called Bulgaria. Or so I thought. The Missionary Training Center in Provo fed us pizza every other Friday for dinner, but this was pretty unsatisfactory because there was a gosh dang quota on how many pieces we could eat. This went on for two whole months before I jumped on the plane that took me to New York, then to Vienna, and finally to Sofia, Bulgaria.
My first night in Bulgaria me and the other new missionaries were fed some traditional Bulgarian dishes for dinner. I tried to be enthusiastic about my huge bowl of straight-up tomatoes and cucumbers. I tried. I tried to smother them with sirene, the tangy feta cheese that everyone and their dog eats in Bulgaria, but something just wasn’t going for me.
Not like I had pizza on the brain at that very moment, but it would have been welcome, you know?
The next day I was assigned a trainer, a Texan named Elder Ivy and we got on a bouncy bus that took us five hours to the south and east to a town called Sliven nestled in the embrace of the Balkan mountain range.
The next day Elder Ivy took me out to eat at a little café on the main street. I had no idea what the heck I was doing or what I was going to eat. The menu was a scrambled list of Cyrillic jargon. I wrestled with it until the scrawny waitress sidled up and said something unintelligible to Ivy. I suppose that he ordered something—I got that much out of context clues—but I didn’t understand. Then the waitress looked at me and I panicked. “Moje li sushtoto!” I stammered. “Please the same.” Before long I got just what Ivy got. French fries covered in sirene, and a piece of chicken skewered on a stick and thrown on the grill. Surprisingly good, even with the strangely sweet European ketchup and the salty yogurt drink that Ivy tricked me into ordering. But my heart sank a little within me as I contemplated this meal or something like it being my daily fare for the next two years.
I had no idea what actual, real goodness lay in wait for me just a few nights later in that very town of Sliven, Bulgaria. Apparently a few weeks earlier, Ivy and his previous companion had stumbled upon a pizzeria called Zlatna Belka. I found out months later that that means “golden pine marten.” Well. I’ll just keep calling it Zlatna Belka.
But anyway. I can understand why missionaries would have probably had a hard time finding the place, because it was situated right in between a lingerie store and some other store that was sketchy to a certain degree. But if you just ignore those and walk in, the pizzeria is a safe haven. Inside we sat down at a huge table and a modestly dressed waitress came up and took our order which was: one 800 gram pepperoni, yes, pepperoni pizza. This pizza only cost us about 8 lev, which was comparable at the time to around 6 American dollars. That left 400 grams of pizza to each of us. My excitement was building the whole time. Ivy told me in that pretty much nowhere in Bulgaria could you find pepperoni pizza like this. He was wrong; I found many more pizzerias with some dank pepperoni. But he was correct in the sense that nowhere in Bulgaria, possibly nowhere in the world, could you find pepperoni pizza as AMAZING or as SATISFYING or as LUSCIOUS as at Zlatna Belka. The size of this pizza, as well as the sheer beauty of its physical appearance, filled me with Joy. The smell was intoxicating. The pepperonis bursting with flavor. The whole thing basted with olive oil. This is not a lie. I saw them slather it on there. I ate and was filled.
The amount of pizza we got for our money gave this meal an extra dimension of magic. There’s nothing better than getting an amazing deal on superlatively amazing pizza.
I returned many times to Zlatna Belka. But never was the pizza quite so ridonculously amazing as that first time. I’ll never forget it.
The pizza did one more thing for me, though. It was uniquely good—it didn’t taste just like some favorite brand of pizza from the United States and make me nostalgic for it. What it did was help me turn my back on the memories of the United States, and turn towards life in Bulgaria. It gave me something to love right at the get-go. People get homesick when their previous situation in life was far better than their present one; but let me tell you, my present situation, right there at Zlatna Belka, was in one distinct way far better than any situation I had ever experienced. Let’s hear it for the 800 gram Dyavolska Pizza.
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