The Scotch Egg and Jeff

My friend Jeff was the Assistant Manager at An Open Book and from what I can remember, he was solely responsible for the "kids" we hired to work part time and also the periodicals section. When he started working there, we had a sizable amount of magazines on two 4' racks that had 6 tiers. A few months into his gig, we had 6 of those racks with magazines from around the world. Jeff actually took customer requests, found new distributors in the process and became a periodical pro in no time.

If you don't know much about the magazine business, it would be interesting for you to know that the average profit on a magazine without subtracting any overhead expenses is about 17%. So on a $3.95 magazine, you're talking about 67 cents. If you subtract the square footage it took up, the lighting over it, the staff to stock them, the staff & postage to return the unsold issues, and accounting, you are left with approximately negative one dollar. But we loved the magazine section because it brought in tons of street traffic since we had them visible from the windows. We also loved it because we never had to buy a magazine. We just waited until the old ones came down and we only had to send the distributor the old covers, so we were left with stacks of cover less magazines. This was fun if you took a stack home because you would never know which magazine you were reading until you got a few pages in.

Jeff and I became fast friends and we are very much friends now, albeit we live in opposite corners of the country. He is actually like a brother to me. Looking back at the time we spent together, I realize now that we spent enormous amounts of money on nothing. We went for happy hours frequently after work that did not end until the wee hours of the morning. We went for crazy dinners and lunches at nearby restaurants and purchased expensive clothes that you could only wear once to the club only leaving us to buy more the following week.

Our favorite place to go was Mac's Cafe on High Street. Mac's was visible from my apartment and you didn't even have to cross the street to get there. Typically we only liked eating there if we could get one of the few booths in the back smoking section and the waitresses generally knew that if we walked in, we would wait for the booth if we had to. We ate there so often and I remember us trying to resist it's calling. Sometimes, I would even go to Mac's directly from working out at the gym. So much for those burned calories...

We always placed an appetizer and drink order immediately. Usually the appetizer was potato skins or nachos. We would say things like, "let's just get the nachos and we'll split those," but we both knew once we got there, we had to get the crazy Mac Burger. We never got out of Mac's for less than fifty bucks and that is on the low side.

The Mac Burger was an original- it was an ordinary cheeseburger until they piled coleslaw on top and made it very messy to eat. It was delicious! More important was the portion of fries that came with your order- picture an entire 5lb bag of frozen fries. On a plate. It was not uncommon to think the waitress put your order in wrong because you got a plate of fries instead. After you ate three servings of fries, you would uncover the burger and were lucky if you could finish half. Sometimes we would stop and smoke a cigarette a few times before continuing on with our plates.

On the appetizer menu at Mac's was the Scotch Egg. The description read: "A hard-boiled egg, packed in sausage, deep-fried, and served with a sour cream sauce." Sounds like a heart-attack waiting to happen, although with the nachos and french fries, I'm not sure that was our biggest concern. We always laughed when we saw the Scotch Egg on the menu and threatened each other that we would order it. We never saw it come out of the kitchen and after eating there for a couple of years, we finally asked the staff if anyone ever ordered the egg. They said, "No, not really, but the owner keeps it on there because it's his favorite."

We never ordered the Scotch Egg. Until...I got up to use the restroom on one of our last trips to Mac's and I came back to a giant blob of deep-fried sausage on my side of the booth. Jeff had ordered me the Scotch Egg. I think I fell under the table laughing. We played around with it for a bit, guessing that it weighed a few pounds before I dug in and ate it. I have to say, it was quite delicious and I remember eating the entire thing because Jeff wouldn't touch it.

The best thing about eating anywhere with Jeff is that he loves to do that whole make-you-laugh thing when you have food in your mouth. We had many moments of food across the table, soda in your nose and there were a few pissed-off customers around us. But the lunches and dinners at Mac's with Jeff were among my favorites. And I'm so glad I tried the Scotch Egg.