I've almost recovered from yesterday's Thanksgiving dinner. I said almost. Good Lord. This was an experience I do not want to repeat. Ever.

Having nothing to do with myself, no family in New York or friends that were running any sort of dinner, I was pleasantly surprised when a musician friend and his wife that I know invited me to have dinner with them (and another friend) at a Kosher Deli nearby that I had never been to. They said it was a nice place with good food. I should never have trusted their judgment. First off, I have just about never eaten in a Kosher restaurant where the food (except for sandwiches) did not taste like it had been braised in old dishwater. Secondly, the couple are vegetarians, so their opinions about the place should have immediately been suspect.

Anyway, I joined them at the deli and I ordered the Thanksgiving Special. The service was horrible, we had to keep asking for everything ten times and the place was crammed with so many loud, obnoxious people that it reminded me of when I was young and was forced into attending those huge dinners at relatives' houses where everybody screams at each other across the dinner table.

A word here: I am Jewish, so believe me when I say that when great hordes of Jews meet for dinner, they don't converse over a meal - they yell at the top of their lungs with voices that often times sound like fingernails scraping across a blackboard. This was the background noise all through the meal.

The food itself ranged from tolerable to the ghastly. Chicken soup with matzoh ball (singular) was bland, the turkey was acceptable, they were all out of roasted potatoes, so I ended up having an (overcooked) assorted vegetable dish (how the hell do you burn peas??). The stuffing was mediocre and mostly lacking in any sort of distinctive flavor. The gravy was okay...barely. Unfortunately, before I had finished dinner I found myself racing for the men's room. And, from the look of the rest room, so had many other poor souls before me.

My two friends, being vegetarians, opted for an appetizer of veggie chopped liver (never knew there was such a thing) and a vegetarian goulash served over noodles. I have to admit, it looked rather good, and by the end of the meal I was having profound regrets that I did not order what they had.

I'm not going to say, "Next time, I'll know better," because I guarantee you that there will not be a next time. If I'm still around next year and feel the overwhelming urge to have a Thanksgiving turkey dinner, I'll buy a turkey breast from a local butcher and make the damn thing myself. I'm a good cook and at least I know I can trust my own cooking, as I have in the past.

I will now cross Jay & Lloyd's Kosher Deli in Brooklyn off my list for all eternity. As I write this, twenty-four hours after the crime, my stomach is growling its assent.

Jay