Jay often wonders. He wonders a great deal, and pretty much weekly he wonders why restaurants insist on being closed when he wants to eat. Jay's no stranger to the art of cooking. He knows how to assemble a sandwich, chop a proper salad and apply salad dressing, preferably in copious amounts. He knows how to marinate, how to broil, bake, and stir-fry. He especially knows not to, most especially in the summertime when it's blazes hot outside and heating up the stove makes it even hotter inside, as well as putting a strain on the airconditioning that's readily reflected in the electric bill. So aside from being too lazy to cook - the truth outs - Jay likes going out to eat for other reasons. Coolth conservation in the summertime, and a handy reason to escape the confines of home otherwise. He also likes walk-in-sit-down restaurants and mostly doesn't relate to drive-through food.

Not to say Jay doesn't like fast food. Indeed, that's his most frequent choice because it's simple, uncluttered, and predictably mediocre-at-worst. Jay likes food and other things - life, really - uncomplicated. He doesn't need hype to tell if food is good, and hype doesn't make the dishes taste any better anyway. That "garden fresh salad" as promoted by the picture-perfect theme-restaurant menus is usually dunked in nasty chemicals to keep it from spoiling. Not interested. One thing Jay has learned in years of restaurants: it never looks like the picture.

Mostly, Jay doesn't care for fancy food. Or things that look like they might bite, or food that spent too much time near the pepper pot, or disgusting looking creatures passed off as delicacies. You know the ones. From years of vegetarianism and near-so, Jay's not a fan of steaks, but he can be tempted now and then. He generally tries to hold the calorie count down, at least out of scientific notation, and lately has to skip everything that even vaguely resembles dessert, by far his favorite stuff. Lately, Jay's become far more predictable than he likes to admit, but he's mostly a night person. He's frequently hungry when most restaurants aren't open. Ever been to a "late night" place late at night? They're always packed to the rafters. So why, Jay wonders, are all the other places closed? Surely they'd like to serve up some food and rake in some dough from the late night rush.

Jay fondly remembers a time when there were many fewer corporate restaurants in Columbia. Better days for sure, and better food and more choices to boot. The Capitol Café, which was open all night, served up an extensive menu of food from a multiple-page menu stitched into green plastic. So now we have an endless array of characterless, close-at-ten-o'clock-sharp, corporate exemplaries with grills and fryers and a limited menu of stuff some ad agency pushes very hard. Open till ten, or maybe you can queue up for an hour at the drive-through window while the minimal staff chews gum. The late-night choices continue to dwindle.