I don’t think people recognize what impact restaurants can have on kids’ thinking about food and culture.  When I was a kid, my mother and I always went to a small Afghani restaurant in my hometown.  The owner shaped my earliest perception of people from the Middle East and I was never afraid to try new food because of the unusual foods served at that restaurant. Ethnic restaurants are not everything. These places are not always authentic, and a single person should never be representative of an entire country, let alone an entire region. But I still think they stand for something to kids. Whatever this restaurant in particular did for me later in life, I will always remember eating Afghani food in my childhood:

The restaurant doesn’t look like much from the outside. It’s tucked between a dance shop, some evergreen trees, a strip mall parking lot, and a gas station. The grey textured outside holds little appeal with its unassuming “Afghani Kabob” sign in white block letters tacked onto the stucco. Across the street, the trees are lush and green; their lighter, less waxy undersides shimmer as the wind ripples through them. Golfers with their cleated shoes and aggressive winter-hibernated swings tear up the young grass in the golf course.

As we walk through the door, freezing air-conditioning hits us.

A dark-skinned man wearing a finely woven shirt rushes over. We are regulars so Abdullah asks how I am doing in my classes—fine in everything except for math—and shows us pictures of his little girl, who is doing equally well in her classes. He has kind eyes and finely manicured nails. Abdullah gave up a land he loved for a sanctuary for his family here. He brought a piece of his homeland, its food, and made us love a place we’ll never visit.

Abdullah doesn’t give us menus anymore. We come here weekly. I order a spicy, creamy noodle soup with chicken. He tssks at my mother when she orders a salad. She laughs sheepishly, but always sticks with her standards.

The restaurant is a white box with textured stucco walls. The wall furthest from the entrance is draped with a colorful tapestry with stitched bejeweled horses on it. Brightly colored dyed elephants hang on strings from the tops of the windows, spilling into the waxy leaves which sit in the ledges underneath. The tables are covered with white linen and glass slabs, easier to be mopped up with a rag. The restaurant is empty apart from us. The owner’s daughter sometimes sits in the back of the restaurant, doing her exemplary homework, but she’s not here now.

We sit at a table near the front window. A plastic carnation in a vase sits on one end of the table and underneath the slab of glass are pictures from Afghanistan—a man with a long black and gray beard and turban standing next to a camel, an ornately decorated blue mosque, the desert’s brown rolling dunes.

Abdullah brings us our food. Afghani food is influenced by the spices of India, the meat from Persia, and the noodles from Mongolia.  We’ve both ordered chicken kabobs, perhaps the least adventurous choice on the menu, but also the best. The dish comes with marinated and grilled chicken, a yogurt sauce, and rice with raisins and carrots. We always order an extra to keep in the refrigerator for the next day to extend the glow of having a restaurant owner know your order.

My mother cuts her chicken into tiny pieces. I am more aggressive with my meal, pouring on the sauce and eating as quickly as possible, dribbling onto the front of my jumper as I inhale.

“Slow down!” my mother admonishes me, a wry look in her eyes. “It’ll still be there five minutes from now.”

I don’t listen to her, and continue to eat.

“You’ve spilled on your jumper. Dip your napkin in your water, I don’t want to have to wash it,” she says, still barely having touched her food.

I do as I’m told. I mop up the spots on the blouse before Abdullah can see I’ve spilled his food.

Soon change will come. But now we have this. Eating in my favorite restaurant, food for now and more for tomorrow, I know it will last forever.