Welcome to Salty Keys
I ate some damn sexy pizza.
This is the beginning, but really it’s the middle.
I’ve been neglecting this for years. Decades, really. I eat out. A lot. No, like, a lot a lot. Olympic-level restaurant-hopping. If there were medals for dining out... You get the idea. Most of this happens in Southern California because that’s where I live. I also globetrot. I eat and drink my way through cities.
Why this, why now?
My writing muscles? Flabby. I’ve spent the last few months circling the idea of what to write… journaling, drooling over The Atlantic, scrolling through essays written by people who probably have standing desks and real jobs. Cool ideas everywhere. Me? Well, I do have a standing desk, though I hardly ever stand at it. Still circling.
Inspiration kept slapping me around, but every idea was daunting. Write about my deep life experiences? Oh god, no. Too naked. Write about the state of writing with AI? Please… everyone’s already doing that, and I’m kinda over hearing about it. Horror script about the world we live in? Nope. I cannot even.
Then it happened.
Yesterday, actually. There it was. Coal-fired, oily, salty, cheesy, smelling so damn divine next to my blueberry lemonade seltzer, looking up at me with those sexy basil leaves. Good lord, is this pizza trying to seduce me? (I eat pizza quite often.) Man, I should write about this.
Bingo.
I eat out. I take photos. People want to know if the place is worth their time. I know I do anyway. What is the best thing to do with your people? Like, the most fun thing we all love to do? That’s right. Food is always the main event. And we love to obsess over where to eat. We get so excited by those Google and Yelp reviews. Let’s see the pics! What’s it like inside? How’s the parking situation? Do they have beer on tap? Oooh yes, let’s go there. I’m hemorrhaging cash on appetizers… might as well tell you about what I’m having.
So here we go. After years of waging war with my scale and using up insane amounts of storage space on my brick of an iPhone with foodporn, I’m finally going to write about it. Let’s see where this goes.