The Hampton breakfast room was packed - they lower
the rates at business district hotels on weekends, and
it seems they may have lowered them a bit much -, and
we had to wait for a deuce to open up, which it did
pretty soon, because the food, though abundant and
mostly wholesome, did not encourage lingering. I got
sausage, the usual links and tots (shrivelled, hard,
somewhat nasty), and tried to make up the spaces with
a hard-boiled egg, which was totally tasteless and with
a weird texture I'd never encountered before, somewhat
like what I'd think cold vomited-up pudding would be
like; Lilli said that she never saw me struggle so hard
to eat anything nor have such a look of mixed puzzlement
and disgust on my face. I grabbed Lilli's discarded 
watery oatmeal and chugged it down to wash the stuff 
out of my mouth. It was lucky we had made plans to
meet our friends at the fairly new DeKalb market hall
in Brooklyn, a 15-minute subway ride away.

We got there at the appointed time to find only our
longtime associate from San Francisco Kathy there, the 
rest being delayed by something or another; so we hit the 
ground running and started foraging for sustenance. We 
wandered the food hall, which was less amazing than the 
media give it credit for being, scoped out likely candidates, 
and set ourselves up right in front of Katz's the better to
be noticed when the others arrived. I went forth in search of 
grub for the table.

The first place that had struck our fancy was called the 
Paella Shack, but it was selling all sorts of other things, 
and I picked up some empanadas - beef criollo, because
everybody likes beef, and so-described pork belly, because I 
like pork belly. Both kinds were pretty good though costly, 
and not what I'd have expected at all. The beef was reasonably 
seasoned picadillo meat (I didn't tell Lilli that it had olives 
in it, because she hates olives, and there weren't that many); 
the pork belly was merely ordinary ground pork in a sweetish 
sauce - not nearly fatty enough (I admit it takes a certain 
sort of palate to appreciate ground pork belly, which this was
clearly not - more like shoulder, and lean shoulder at that) 
and rather sweet, almost as if it were Peking noodle sauce, 
Spanish hot chocolate was very good, chocolaty, fairly creamy, 
a little spicy with cinnamon and chile, the star of the meal.

Fletcher's, an offshoot of a renowned New Jersey 
barbecuery, was nearby, and I tried to negotiate for a
redeemingly fatty order - a moist brisket sandwich and
some rib tips. The glum counter man showed me a piece
of sort of lean brisket and told me that this is how
it comes, and his supervisor, or at least someone a
bit more articulate, said that the rib tips wouldn't
be coming out for another fifteen minutes, claiming
the (rather overpriced) ribs were the same. I pointed 
out that I was providing tastes for a bunch of people,
and even ones who knew each other as well as we do might 
be put off by gnawing on a half a used rib. She sort
of understood, I think. So Lilli wandered by during these
delicate negotiations and urgently requested a brisket
sandwich, so I ordered one for her and was pleased to see
the counterman apparently trying to find a little fat for
her sandwich. But disaster of disasters, he gave that
sandwich to someone else, and we got a lean lean one,
though smoky enough. I thought it was subpar and didn't
go back for the rib tips, instead wandering back through
for a substitute and maybe a drink for myself.

During these peregrinations I heard a voice as I went
past - Hi, Michael, bye, Michael. I turned around and
there was Charles the lawyer from North Carolina perched at 
the counter at Fulton Seafood. I joined him and ordered some 
oysters and he toddled down to the beer stand nearby and got 
me a Boulder Shake chocolate porter, which had nice dark 
chocolate flavor cut with a bit of very convincing coffee; 
it was moderately hopped, pretty malty, and 6% alcohol.

The oysters were all but one pretty good though tiny for
the $2.75 each,
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