SPEED READING: Dinner Bell Vol. 3 / Various
Dinner Bell Vol. 3
Various
Dinner Bell
Review by
Lauren Parker
Welcome to Speed Reading, our fast, occasionally flippant, review column where we attempt to spread the love of a recent new release in a very short amount of time. We’ll take the time to find some incredible books, you spend your time reading some incredible books.
So, what’s Dinner Bell?
Dinner Bell is a food magazine and multi-media project that pushes food writing back into the hands of people with a more working-class focus on food.
And, who’s the author?
There’s many contributors to each issue for both art and writing, but the editors are Emeran Irby, Howard Parsons, and Emma Honcharski.
What’s a single reason to read Dinner Bell Vol. 3?
Because you have strong opinions about Waffle House versus Denny’s, and you need poems and essays talking about the food court and the sizzle of the neon sign of the worst burger place in town.
What are a couple more reasons to read Dinner Bell Vol. 3?
Dinner Bell’s curation commits to highlighting work that isn’t all oysters and champagne, but the inelegant and flammable art of survival.
If you’re a fan of these books, you should give Dinner Bell a chance:
The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly (with recipes) / Kate Lebo
Blood Bones & Butter / Gabrielle Hamilton
Midwest Pie: Recipes That Shaped a Region / edited by Meredith Pangrace
A small taste of Dinner Bell Vol. 3:
Spill your Orange Julius all over my formica tables. Baby please. Imagine dragging
These steel chairs across my peach pink tiles so their screeches echo past
The Century Theater, that showy tramp down the hall. You could lose it all
To me on the claw machine, your fist tight on the joystick scratching at
A studded teddy.
“Siren Song of the Southland Mall Food Court, 2021” by Noor Khashe Brody
A little more from Lauren Parker:
I realize that these reviews are intended to be short, but you’re not my dad.
So here we go.
The first time I felt like I really belonged anywhere was after the last performance of the high school play. Opening night had a party and I felt like I experienced it through glass, like the laughter was coming from another room. But the last show? The last show we changed out of our costumes, left on our stage makeup, and went to Rockne’s, a fast-casual local chain named after Knute Rockne. To this day I have no idea who Knute Rockne is (I think it’s something something football???).
We only had money for bottomless Diet Cokes and shared french fries, and we piled into three booths, six people each, laughing and complimenting and causing a fuss. I looked around at our exaggerated eyebrows and bleeding lip lines, feeling the creases of my clothes ease as I moved back into myself, and I felt like we had really done something. Made something. And that we mattered to each other.
I don’t remember how the fries were, but I remember the feeling of having another person press against me on a vinyl seated booth, talking animatedly about art we had made.
Dinner Bell Vol. 3 made me feel that.
