Billy and Max hate the food in Indiana. Everything is bland. The only seasoning anyone uses regularly is — salt — Pepper is mostly decorative.
Half the dishes are covered covered in mayonnaise.
“It’s not even the good mayonnaise!”
Billy is ready to drive 500 miles for a bottle of hot sauce. Any hot sauce. Desperate times.
All Max wants is introduce garlic to her mom’s friends.
“Oh, wow. This garlic is so spicy!”
They’re going out of their god damn minds.
There is absolutely no ethnic food. No Mexican. No Chinese. No Thai. No Moroccan. No Mediterranean.
At this point, they’ll settle for a crispy crust pizza with red pepper flakes. Or pesto instead of red sauce.
No red pepper flakes in Hawkins.
“We might have some paprika, hold on!”
“Is pesto… like presto chango?”
“They must mean preggo, the pasta sauce, right?”
They sob.
His coworkers at the pool think he’s making shit up when he tells them about Turkish coffee with spices like cardamom and ginger. That he’s into weird nerdy crap or is just trying to pull one over on them.
Max misses the spicy hummus from the Lebanese place her and Billy used to walk by on their way home from school. He always flirted with the manager and that’s how they got it and walked home stuffing their faces in triumph.
They. Miss. Seafood.
They haven’t had crab, halibut, or snapper in a year.
No crab legs on the pier drowning in Cajun seasoning.
No poached halibut with lemon and fennel. Hell, Max would take dill at this point!
“Fried Halibut tacos with salsa verde?”
“I hate you, Billy stop.”
No snapper Barbados. Or piccata. Or veracruzana.
Kearny Mesa.
They both almost cry.
They’d kill for some dim sum. Or chicken and pork soup dumplings.
Or the how boba tea always hit the spot on a hot day when they were running around outside, just anywhere to be out of the house.
The food in Indiana sucks. Both of them struggle to eat much of anything.