Food Coma

Yesterday I had a most epic breakfast. The location was Simpatica in Portland, Oregon. The occasion was Whitney's 29th Birthday.
Simpatica is the kind of place that always has a line for brunch, which is served only on Sundays from 9 to 2. Their food is beautiful, organic, and very very good. When we showed up for our reservation there were already 10 people in line, waiting for the doors to open. There was more than a little guilty pleasure involved in waltzing by all of them to sit down at a table for eight and order copious numbers of grapefruit mimosas and bloody marys.
When I made the reservation the girl suggested eating family style, so we let the restaurant feed us. We only had one request: fried chicken & waffles. I know, what a way to start a morning. And if the morning had started like that it would have been grand. But before the fried chicken and waffles drenched in dried fruit syrup came biscuits and gravy.
I have never, ever understood biscuits and gravy. I never order them, I never want them, and I have little patience for people who list it as a favorite.
Now I understand biscuits and gravy, I do! And when I think of them I will no longer imagine hard, dry biscuits topped with gray gravy. I will picture fluffy, flaky biscuits. I will picture beautiful biscuits topped with gravy that is simply the best gravy I have ever tasted with chunks of bulk sausage, spices and salt, and a creamy, I-could-drown-in-this-consistency. This gravy was so good I took chunks of potato and sopped up more and more. This gravy was so good I took my fork and slid it along the plate in hopes of catching just one more drip.
I love moments that teach you what a particular food is all about -- how it can be not just good, but great, and maybe even a little about how it has been lead astray, bastardized, and turned into a sad, soggy, gray version of what it could be.
The breakfast could have stopped there. It didn't, but it could have. And even though I was dazed and confused for most of the rest of the day I continued to think again about the biscuits and gravy. It is hard to believe, but this just might be something I want again, and again.