Downtown Toronto. It was raining out, I had no rental car, and I was hungry. The Hotel resto had high prices and no promise. I had noticed the Pita way when I arrived. At its worst, a place called "Pita Way" is going to have Gyros and/or Souvlaki. Even crappy Gyros/Souvlaki can be not too bad, so it became my dining choice for the evening.
The place is a shithole. In most cases, that would be a minus, but for a place called "Pita Way", it's a mark in the "up" column. There was one guy behind the counter doing everything. A steam table had a bunch of good looking stuff on it. There were a few fellas in front of me, who each ordered something different.
The counter guy took a white foam large clamshell and put some of the ordered meat in it, then proceeded to ask the orderee if he wanted this and that. By the end of it, he had put a little of just about everything on the steam table into the box, completely covering the meat. On top of that came a few squirts of stuff from a few squeeze bottles, and a shake of herbs. I think he may even have thrown the guy's change on top of the huge mass of food that was groaning the clamshell.
Wow.
I ordered the souvlaki, and then was waltzed through all the selections, and when it was done, I had a clamshell filled to the brim with rice, meat, hummus, tabbouleh, potatoes, veggies, and Allah knows what else. There was a hot sauce, and something that was like an aioli. It was all mushed together, and it was glorious! And cheap! I sat in a corner and wolfed it down, while an Arabic language station played on a tube teevee above my head. I had never had anything like it.
I want to think this was an exotic foreign experience in a place I had to show my Passport to travel to, but I'm sure there's a parallel shithole in the Windy city that does the same thing. We tend to seek out shitholes when we're out of town in the name of "local charm" especially when we're in another country.
But home-grown shitholes are...shitholes.
What spins the cognitive dissonance is: there are foreigners who patronize the places we would never go in, and they take those memories home as treasured.
Go Figure.