Love at First Bite

By Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

“My mom says she knows you, but I told her you aren’t that Michelle Blanchard.” Yes, he knew three Michelle Blanchards. And thus began this story about fate or destiny or karma or, at the very least, about how you should never turn down a cup of coffee with a friend. 

With a college diploma in one hand and a law school rejection in the other, I began working in a law firm. After months of answering phones, I was promoted to paralegal and moved to the supply closet in the kitchen. My desk was next to the fridge. There I typed briefs, wills, and correspondence, amidst a constant stream of people getting coffee and microwaving leftovers. 

One day, when my boss was leaving for the courthouse, he commented that he was too pressed for time to check the title on a piece of property for a real estate closing. I mentioned that I had learned to do that in college during a summer job, so he took me along to test me.

After that, I spent several days a week at the courthouse checking titles and filing legal documents. Eventually, I moved on to working for an oil and gas company, making more money doing the exact same thing, but the main benefit was that my office was no longer in a kitchen. 

In my new job, I was assigned to the same Louisiana courthouse, checking titles for mineral rights. The courthouse was abuzz with activity, with people all vying for the same property records. I quickly learned that I could get a day’s work done in just a few hours if I stayed behind when others went to lunch. Two hours later, when they returned, I would go and have a late lunch at the #1 spot in town, a family-owned restaurant close by. I would get there just in time to still be able to order the lunch special.

I was usually greeted by the owner’s wife. After telling me the specials, she would take my order, and then invariably bring me something completely different, telling me, “The pot roast looked dry, so I brought you this instead.” Whatever it was, I ate it without complaint. It was all good.

This restaurant was owned by Italian Americans, but the real star of the menu was the old-school comfort food lunch special: a meat with a starch and two sides, cornbread, and dessert, all for a shockingly low price. My favorite was the breaded fried pork chop with rice and gravy, eggplant casserole, and salad, topped with a homemade, garlicky vinaigrette. The fried chicken was GBD, as the chefs say, golden brown and delicious. The desserts were made in industrial-sized “hotel pans” and scooped into little plastic cups: bread pudding, chocolate pudding, or my all-time favorite, banana pudding. Everything was delicious.

As I finished eating, my friend would always yell out, “I’m making fresh coffee.” She’d come over with two cups and sit with me while we chatted, catching up on courthouse gossip. Occasionally, she would excuse herself from the table and return with one of her adult sons working next door in the bar or in the adjoining grocery store, smiling, “Come meet my friend!” I could tell they were not the least bit interested in me, but they were courteous and compliant with their mother’s wishes.

Fast forward a few years, once again with a local law firm, and once again filing papers at the courthouse, having lunch at my friend’s restaurant. 

I was also involved with a community theatre group, and our summer show was the musical Annie. At the auditions, I ran into a guy whom, a few years earlier, I had had a huge crush on. I even joined the church choir to meet him, where I unsuccessfully flirted during rehearsals, but alas, shortly after I joined, he announced he was leaving for graduate school in Virginia. Oh, well, I thought. 

So, I was surprised to see him at rehearsals for Annie. One day, I saw him pecking away on a portable typewriter. I offered to type his grad school paper for him on my office computer, but he passed. Oh, well, again.

During one rehearsal, however, he asked if the typing offer was still good. I said yes, and for the next two nights after rehearsals, I typed while he stood over my shoulder, translating his chicken-scratch handwriting. Unfortunately, over the course of those two nights, I learned a lot about the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and not very much about him. 

When the project was complete, he asked me to dinner to repay me. I graciously accepted, and several nights later, when he came to pick me up, he told me his mother had proclaimed she knew me. Right there at the door of my apartment, I discovered that his mother was indeed my friend from the restaurant, the same woman who had brought over several of her sons to meet me—just not the youngest one—the one I had had the crush on all along.

Call it what you will, but I knew at that moment he was the one, Mr. Right. I knew that my many lunches in that family restaurant, my eating what was brought to me even when it wasn’t what I ordered, my sharing a cup of coffee and local gossip when I needed to rush back to work, all of that was for a reason, all part of a master plan, designed just for me. 

Weeks later, after being almost inseparable since that first date, he invited me to Sunday dinner at his family’s home, which, in Italian lore, is the big test. As we walked through the kitchen door, there she was, with her arms open wide, a huge smile on her face, “There’s my friend!”

Behind her was my future family: his dad, his siblings, nieces, nephews, first cousins, his godfather, his grandmothers, and several others. There was food on every surface in the kitchen: lasagna, Italian sausage, spaghetti and meatballs, baked ham, fried chicken, Italian bread, ambrosia, and, of course, salad with the family’s dressing. I had never seen anything like it before, not even at Thanksgiving, and I’m from a family of Cajuns!

Two years later we were married, but not before our rehearsal dinner which was, you guessed it, in the family restaurant where it all began, with me and my good friend and a cup of coffee.