I took an extended sojourn in Europe last summer as a sort of recharging period between quitting my job and finishing a long-in-waiting university degree. One of my stops was in Budapest, a beautiful city (cities, really) straddling the banks of the blue Danube. I was couchsurfing with a lovely Hungarian woman, Gabi, who bent over backward to show me her hometown. She ferried me around the city in her zippy European hatchback, showing me out-of-the-way destinations I never would have known existed and serving as general-purpose translator for an American with scarcely a phrasebook-level grasp of the only hermetic language in Europe. Gabi had been to the States before, stopping in New York and San Diego at various points for business and pleasure, and her impression of our country was most evident on my last morning sharing her flat, when she offered to cook me a "real American breakfast." She mentioned the idea the night before and I quickly approved, as she'd already prepared me some Hungarian dishes that were unbelievably good. I awoke that morning to the heavy summer breeze wafting through her open windows, the whole place already redolent of porksmoke and coffee--real American-style coffee, meant to be consumed in large mugs and in no way resembling the freeze-dried instant varieties I found elsewhere in central Europe. I walked downstairs bedheaded and smiling, offered a Good Morning in my broken Magyar, and was immediately taken aback by the sheer volume of the meal that awaited me.There were cereal flakes poured into a bowl only slightly larger than the massive coffee mugs, an open carafe of fresh milk situated nearby. Some Hungarian sausage I had enjoyed on previous mornings was spread out on a platter in all its thin-sliced, paprika-laced glory, alongside a fist-sized chunk of a sweaty local cheese that was pungent and delicious. A glass of fresh orange juice--a delicacy at any time of year in the States, and even more so that far from the groves--sat next to a selection of teas behind another large mug, which was itself abutting the tray of pastries and toast ornamented with pats of real creamery butter. And Gabi stood smiling at me from the stove before she turned her attentions back to the 12-inch skillet nearly overflowing with beautiful, fluffy scrambled eggs punctuated throughout by thick chunks of smoky Hungarian bacon.
After my initial reaction of "God! that looks better than sex," I realized that this entire spread--easily 10,000 calories and collectively weighing in somewhere just under a bull rhino or Fat Elvis after a Vegas buffet--was intended for me and me alone. Gabi had already taken her toast and tea. So I was immediately faced with a couple of realizations regarding my potential responses to the luxuriant smorgasbord before me: either I attempt to eat it all and reinforce her apparent conception of Americans as oblivious gluttons idling in the Land Of Plenty, or I pick and choose my battles on the breakfast front and risk coming off as your typically ungrateful Ugly American abroad. I wound up eating just past my fill (and loving every bite) over the course of an hour or so while we talked about the issues of the day, me and my Goddess of the Morning Repast. I complimented everything she had prepared with an enthusiasm that probably bordered on obsequity, and she accepted my thanks with a gracious, downcast smile. There was an obscene amount of food left over, much of which would go to waste, and as I did the dishes (the least I could do) I offered apologies for my lack of appetite. In her splendiferous, idiosyncratic English, jeweled in Hollywoodisms and gloriously untranslatable French, Spanish, and Magyar idiom, she explained that my worries were unfounded but endearing. It seems she never really expected me to finish everything, but it would have been rude on her part to underestimate my capacity for putting away what she regarded as a potentially regular-sized American portion.
She had an interesting point, and we talked about it for a while as we cleared the air of any cross-cultural misunderstandings. She reminisced about being shocked by the size of the portions at the restaurants she had visited during her time in the States, and I explained that my people also have a correlating fondness for the doggie bag (an amusing attempt at translations ensued) that cuts across every echelon of our dining experience, from the paper sack to the decorative foil swan. Yeah, we Americans eat more in a sitting than most Western cultures do in two meals (or three), and we tend to view these large portions as our entitlement for spending the money. The All-You-Can-Eat buffet is as American as the apple pie waiting on the dessert cart, and it's no accident that obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are among our top killers.
Which is not to say that I don't partake in the above rituals of Americana. I love a good meal as much as the next guy, and a big breakfast is one of my many occasional indulgences. On several road trips Westward I've lamented the passing of the last Waffle House as I hit the Texas-New Mexico border; I've eaten a whole trout with home fries and baked apples before 10 AM in Jackson, Wyoming; I've killed a tall stack of pancakes with four pork sides at a diner in Pocatello, Idaho--and after all these meals I'd get back on the road beaming, sipping a go-cup of coffee and anxiously awaiting the next big-sky adventure around the bend. I love waking up late on a Saturday morning and fixing bacon or sausage with a well-appointed scromelette, a lazy-man's-eggs requiring no flipping skills that I learned on a rafting trip down the Colorado. And during my long tenure in New Orleans, I found that there was no cure for a toenail-curling hangover in 90-percent humidity like a Bloody Mary at Igor's followed by a greasy breakfast on the patio at Slim Goodie's. Every evil deed conducted on a Saturday night miraculously evaporates with the languid perspiration of a muggy Sunday morning. That right there's absolution, baby, and it tastes great with hash browns and a little hot sauce.And while some would view such predilections as exercises in overkill, I see them as the icing on my American Pop-Tart. There are plenty of mornings I race out the door with nary a nibble in the belly, so the times that I can have a leisurely breakfast, read the paper, maybe do the crossword--these are the days for which I slog through the rest of the busy week. They're a reward and a motivation, the rabbit for my greyhounds, the carrot for my mule. But that morning in Budapest I felt suddenly, acutely conscious of how the rest of the world must view such tendencies, and I wanted to atone more than I wanted to strap on the feedbag. There was a lingering, palpable guilt that overtook me, but I'm now sure that part of it must have been simple homesickness. I think Gabi understood, and I take solace in the fact that such a culture-clash moment ended in mutual understanding. That feeling has only made me appreciate more intensely the little things we too often take for granted in America, and I do so every time I sit down at the Casa de Waffle, during whichever hour of the 24 I decide to take my breakfast. If only I could find more places in my ZIP that offer a five-egg platter and Bloodies on a Sunday forenoon, a little good news in the local paper would be all I'd need to think--if only for a minute--that everything was right with the world.
