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I'll be breaking this one up into two chapters since it was getting a little long. The "local breakfast chain" option in the last poll won by a mile, so you're getting that first! Next up will be Veronica eating somewhere fancy and getting a taste of the finer things in life.

There are also quite a few new folks around here, so I'm going to plug my Prompt Pool form again. If there's a story you're interested in seeing me write, you can drop the prompt there!

***

Veronica spent the week before she officially started her job compiling a mile-long list of all the places she wanted to review for the paper. Her city had a good reputation as far as food went, but she’d never had much chance to indulge in any of it. There were so many choices she had no idea how she’d choose where to go first. To make matters worse, two days before her start date, she officially ran out of food, and had nothing in the bank. She kept chugging water, trying to trick herself into feeling full, but then she just felt bloated and hungry.

The first day, she mostly slept through it, figuring she’d conserve her energy. The second day, the grumbling in her stomach was impossible to ignore, no matter how much water she choked down. Every time she moved, she could hear the sloshing in her stomach, which only served to remind her that there wasn’t a crumb of food in her gut. She fantasized about what she wanted to eat most while she rubbed at her water-bloated tummy, hoping her onboarding went smoothly the next day so she could get something to eat as soon as possible.

What she found herself thinking about most was pancakes. Veronica had always loved breakfast food. She was particular about her pancakes, preferring them dense and fried in oil so the outside was perfectly crispy. Almost no restaurant made them that way; every chain she’d ever been to served up pancakes that people called “fluffy” which Veronica thought tasted about as good as wet tissue paper. She felt similarly about bacon and sausage, too. Both breakfast meats always felt like a gamble to order. Sometimes you got something decent, but other times you’d get floppy bacon or sausage with a hideous texture.

Hungry as she was, even the worst kind of diner breakfast sounded fabulous right then. A big plate of french toast, maybe, if she didn’t want to risk a bad stack of pancakes, with a thick ham steak on the side. She’d wash them down with two tall glasses of orange juice, of course…

In the midst of her fantasy breakfast, she decided the first place she wanted to dine at on the newspaper’s dime would have to serve breakfast. She went through her list, narrowing it down slowly to while away the hours until bedtime. She wanted to try somewhere local, and she certainly wasn’t in the mood for anything fancy. The fancy brunch places and creperies and high-end bakeries could wait.

Just before she called it a night, she found the perfect place: a local chain with just three locations around the city called The Breakfast Platter.

***

Her prayers had been half-answered the next morning. The onboarding process was going smoothly enough, but it was inching along at a snail’s pace. She’d been sitting with the HR guy in his office for close to two hours, signing papers and listening to him sigh as he navigated the antiquated people management systems the newspaper was still using. It was her third morning in a row without anything to eat, and she’d avoided drinking too much water so she didn’t look bloated or have to pee at what would inevitably be the most inconvenient time. The emptiness of her stomach was agonizing, made worse by two days of accidental stretching from her liquid “diet.” She felt lightheaded, even sitting down, and about an hour in her stomach growled so loudly she figured she’d die of embarrassment before the starvation got her.

The HR dude, Jeevan, had looked up with surprise at the noise. “I skipped breakfast this morning to make sure I didn’t run late,” she lied. “New bus routes–you know how it goes.”

He’d nodded, understanding completely. “Well, this is going to take a while to finish. Let me walk you to the break room. We can at least get you some coffee or tea, and I’ll bet someone brought something in to eat.” She followed him as they wound their way through the office. The newspaper took up a whole two floors in one of the bigger buildings downtown, and it felt like a maze to her. She’d never worked at an office job before, and never somewhere so big.

The break room on their floor was small, with just one table off to the side with a handful of chairs. “Most people eat at their desks,” he told her while she nodded. He gestured to the big coffee machine and hot water dispenser on the counter that ran along one side of the room. He showed her where the ground coffee was, and a random assortment of tea bags in a big glass jar. “Usually there’s a shared creamer in the fridge, but some people like to bring their own.”

Veronica tried to absorb as much of this as she could, but what she was really focused on was a big bakery box sitting on the counter. Jeevan flipped the top open. “Oh, nice! They splurged for the fancy bagels.” Veronica stepped a little closer, stomach growling once again. Jeevan grabbed himself a paper plate and sliced a whole wheat bagel in half, leaving the other half in the box. Veronica felt a little embarrassed as she grabbed a whole blueberry bagel and a single-serve container of cream cheese and put it on her own plate. She started making awkward conversation as she sliced it open and smeared cream cheese on both sides with a little plastic knife, asking Jeevan how long he’d worked for the paper, hoping he didn’t notice how her hands trembled.

They walked back to his office. Her blueberry bagel smelled so intoxicating she nearly shoved it into her mouth while they were still walking. She didn’t make it much longer than that, wolfing it down as soon as she took her seat in front of his desk. Again, he looked surprised, and her face flamed up at his expression. “Sorry. I have a, uh, athlete’s appetite. I eat a little too fast sometimes when I’m hungry.”

“Oh, that’s right, I remember Andrea mentioned you used to play soccer.” That ended up being enough of a subject change to bypass her hunger-induced awkwardness. She’d never had bad manners around food, but she’d also never had to go so long without eating. Even after the requisite fifteen minutes for her stomach to communicate that she’d eaten to her brain, she felt as hungry as ever. She debated pretending she needed to use the bathroom just so she could dart off to the breakroom and hork down another bagel or two.

Blessedly, there wasn’t time for that. After another twenty minutes, she was properly in the system. He gave her a temporary company card and gave her the badge she would need to get in and out of the building every day. She stopped by her boss’ desk once they finished, saying hello and making sure Andrea knew she was all settled in.

“That’s great! Do you know where you’re going for your first review?” she asked.

“Actually, I do.”

***

An hour later, she was finally getting seated at The Breakfast Platter. She’d managed to snag one more bagel on her way out to eat on the bus ride over, but she still felt like she could eat a horse. Andrea had reminded her that she didn’t have to try the whole menu or even more than one dish if she didn’t want to. “You’ll learn how to judge a place by a single dish,” her boss assured her.

Fuck that, Veronica thought. She wasn’t any kind of glutton, but given that she only had one other guaranteed meal this week and she wouldn’t be getting paid for two weeks, she was ready to eat two of everything they had.

She read through the menu, immediately searching for the biggest meals available. She settled on one called the Two’fer: two pancakes, two waffles, two pieces of french toast, with two slices of bacon, two sausage patties, and two eggs on the side. She told herself that she should stop there, but the waitress took just long enough to come over and take her order to give her time to decide she also wanted an apple Dutch baby and the everything omelet.

As she sipped a big glass of orange juice and waited for her food, she felt caught between shame and guilt over ordering so much food (there was no way she could finish it all!) and the logic of her yawningly empty stomach. It would be at least another two or three days before she could eat again. She needed enough calories to see her through until then, she reasoned. She felt like she was swimming in her work dress. It was at least a size too big. She wasn’t dangerously thin quite yet, but she was closer to that now than she would’ve liked. Getting as much food into her system as she could right now and having leftovers she could bring home was the rational thing to do when you were flat broke.

The Dutch baby came out first, still sat right in the cast iron it had been baked in. Veronica took a moment to take it in. She had to remember she needed to write about all this later. The pancake was huge, with a pile of baked apples caramelized in sugar and butter sitting on top, everything dusted with what seemed like a half cup of powdered sugar. It smelled like heaven: bready and sugary and creamy. She used her knife and fork to cut herself a piece. She had to stifle a little groan of pleasure as she chewed. It was lightly crispy on the outside, with the eggy, creamy texture of a thick crepe inside. That would’ve been delicious on its own, but the cinnamon sweetness and texture of the caramelized apples made her wish for a moment she could drown in it. By the time her Two’fer and the omelet were brought out just a few minutes later, she was halfway done with her Dutch baby, inhaling it so fast the waitress was a little worried she might choke.

When her fork scraped the bottom of the pan, she felt a little disappointed, almost wishing she’d ordered a second. There was plenty more for her to eat, though, and if any of it was even half as good as the first dish, she’d be very pleased.

She cut into the omelet first. It was still hot, a puff of steam floating out as she lifted the first bite to her mouth. There were at least three cheeses in it that she could see, and it was packed with orange and yellow bell peppers, sausage, chopped bacon, and ground beef. This, too, was delicious. It was just the right amount of greasy, the fat from the meat and cheese spreading across her tongue. The omelet itself was a little thick, a pleasantly substantial conveyance for all the other ingredients.

Halfway through it, she finally started to feel full and took a break to switch to her Two-fer platter. She tried the pancakes first, spreading a pat of butter on the top pancake and pouring syrup all over it. She cut into it and took a bite, expecting to be a little disappointed. Instead, she got a mouthful of the kind of dense, perfect pancake she favored. It had soaked up the butter and syrup quickly, salty and sweet exploding into her mouth as she chewed.

The rest of the platter was just as good: crisp waffles, maybe slightly overdone (but that was how she preferred them); french toast so fluffy she couldn’t figure out how they managed it; bacon and sausage and eggs that acted as perfect doses of savory and salty in between bites of decadent sweetness.

It was hard not to lick the platter once she was done. She was actually full by that point. She looked at the half omelet she’d left behind earlier. The best thing would be to take it home. Save it so she would have something to eat the next day. She thought this as she pulled the plate right in front of her, already getting her fork ready. She could flag down the waitress and ask for a box any time. But she was already digging in, ending her syrup-soaked meal with something savory.

She’d tipped over into “too full” by the time the waitress brought her the check. She tried to enjoy it while she could. In just a few hours, she knew, she would be back to square one, dreaming about this meal and regretting not eating even more.