Alamantus

What's your favorite meal for any occasion?

BREAKFAST
- Half Boiled Eggs With Roti Canai, Orange Slices and Curry

LUNCH/DINNER
- Pork/Beef Congee with Kimchi and Chinese Onion Omelette

ALL TIME FAVOURITE COMFORT FOOD
- Lo Bak Gao/Pork Belly Rice Dumpling with Sriracha

@Bork Lazer

I haven't had any of these, but they sound awesome! I want to train my American brain to have things like curry for breakfast

What's your favorite meal for any occasion?

Massaman Curry

@Kassarock

Ugh massaman curry is sooo good!

What's your favorite meal for any occasion?

It doesn't matter if it's mundane or if you think it's boring, there might be someone who hasn't even heard of it! I love hearing about what people like to eat and why, so I'd just love to provide a place for everyone to share. If you have more than one or if you have different favorites for different occasions, feel free to mention as many as you care to! If you'd like to go even further, what makes it your favorite?

My favorite meal is Japanese beef curry with rice!

The why, if you care

As a kid, there was this restaurant close to my house called Curry House (I found out much later that it was a chain) where they only served the sweet, gravy-like curry in various forms, and I loved that stuff. I'd go there with my dad after karate classes maybe once a month (classes were weekly and we had small rotation of different restaurants). At some point different kinds of curry (i.e. Indian, Thai, etc.) just became more prevalent where I ended up living, and I got to the point where I thought I had imagined the delicious stuff.

Then I was able to go to Tokyo on vacation a few years back, and we found this hole in the wall restaurant that was just a counter with maybe 10 seats surrounding a kitchen area with a big vat of thick, brown curry in the back and a fryer and cutting board in the front. There were a handful of businessmen wondering why this American had just walked in, but I had to have the curry. I was trying to learn Japanese at the time, but all I knew was how to read the kana aside from some extremely basic words and survival phrases, so lucky for me the first item on the menu was "katsu kare", that is, curry with a crispy pork cutlet over rice, put another way, exactly what I wanted. I sounded out the words aloud and by the time my brain had parsed what it was reading, the chef gave that kind of "Wow, look at the American reading Japanese!" kind of surprised and happy confirmation for my order. The food came out quickly and was served perfectly, and that experience is one of my favorite memories ever. Now it feels like all I ever want to eat is curry, forever trying to chase that high.

[GUTS+] You Awake in a Dark Room

Forcing her feet into motion, she led the way towards the maze entrance, then towards the hallway the wind was coming from. They were getting out of here, period.

@Typical

Walking down the hall, Pebs and Duncan feel the cold breeze grow colder and stronger as the howling gets louder and louder. The hall turns to the left and continues a short way before ending in a metal ladder going straight up. Powdery white snow is starting to gather at the foot of the ladder, and looking up to the ceiling where the ladder leads, Pebs and Duncan are both only able to see blinding whiteness beyond the very circular hole in the ceiling.

After waiting a moment for their eyes to adjust to the light, the only thing they are able to see through the hole is the top of the ladder, pale gray clouds, and... It's hard to tell from this angle, but it looks like... a rock cliff face? As the pair try to figure out what they're looking at, a mountain goat walks to the edge of the hole, looks down, looks forward, and bleats before walking off again.

^{@Typical, @Vertigo}

[GUTS+] You Awake in a Dark Room

Duncan sighed. "I guess we ain't fitting through that gap anytime soon, so..." he stuck what remained of the cigarette between his teeth and fished out his beloved toy truck. "This should dho ith," he mumbled from behind closed teeth. With a light push, he got the car into the room - then took up the controller. Thank god he'd went for that smoke. His hands were shaking as he controlled the truck as things were - with withdrawal, this would've been impossible.

@Vertigo

After a while maneuvering the toy truck in the starting area of the obstacle course, Duncan gets his bearings and takes several swift turns around the low walls, only bumping the walls a couple of times on the way to the ramp. Upon arriving at the ramp, he moves the truck backward to build momentum and... Zoom! It launches up the ramp at an angle, smashing into the side corner of the button! This appears to do the job, because the button itself lights up after being pressed!

A couple of moments pass in silence before the wall to the right of Duncan and Pebs begins to hum and buzz. The hum grows louder and louder until... with a kind of swirl outward from the center, the wall disappears. On the other side of the now-nonexistent wall, the duo can see something that doesn't seem possible judging by the turns they made on their way through the maze: the spot where the paths originally branched off into the maze, except they're viewing it from the hallway to the left of the door they originally entered it through!

Looking through the opening, they can see where they originally entered from the hallway with the radio and the plant to their right, the central hall they walked down when they started the maze to their left, and the last hallway up ahead—a cold breeze and the sound of howling wind comes from that direction that was definitely not there when they first entered the maze.

^{@Typical, @Vertigo}

[GUTS+] You Awake in a Dark Room

Swallowing her unease, she traced the bolded path on paper towards the middle hallway, pointing at it. “This way should be right. It’ll turn later, but that’s what’s drawn,” she said. Then, taking a breath, she exhaled, looking to Duncan. “Let’s go,” she said, leading the way down the hall.

@Typical

Carefully walking down the hall... nothing happens. The flat, blank walls are somehow very good at absorbing sound rather than echoing it, and their footsteps are strangely muffled.

When they approach the first turn indicated on the map, they see a similar hallway, and continuing down that, nothing continues to happen. Their fear naturally lightens with the lack of noise and activity, but their unease remains, perhaps deepening. This maze solution seemed to not be leading them anywhere dangerous at least.

Following the map, they make the turns as directed, pass two doors, and finally reach the end point of the map: a large, wire-reinforced window set in a dead-end wall and a small gap at the bottom of the wall that is far too small for Duncan or Pebs to fit through. Looking through the window, they see something that could only be described as "unexpected": a flat room with very tiny, maybe 4-inch-tall walls that zigzag and appear to create something of an obstacle course? At the end of the course is a ramp that is aimed at the wall, and on the wall is the word "PUSH" painted in block letters with dripping white paint with arrows pointing at a big, green button below it on the wall.

^{@Typical@Vertigo}

[GUTS+] You Awake in a Dark Room

He pushed the door as open as it would go, hoping the light that poured through would help illuminate the way a little. At least until they found another switch. Duncan squinted his eyes and walked forth, only stopping when he realized the corridor split into three. He tried to look around in each direction to see if he could spot the familiar shape of a light switch - or some other source of light.

@Vertigo

Looking around, Duncan quickly finds another conveniently illuminated light switch on the wall right next to the door! Turning it on, the bland, white hallways are illuminated. There are no decorations aside from the occasional dirty smudge where someone must have touched the wall as they walked through, the floor is still smooth and relatively clean cement, and it simply splits into three directions, just like the map that Pebs found seems to predict.

The Map had shown the line moving up the center hallway first before turning left, then right, then left again after skipping a couple of branching paths...

^{@Typical, @Vertigo}

[GUTS+] You Awake in a Dark Room

“Right, yeah, key,” she said, turning back to the door with said key in hand. It took a second of fumbling for her to match the key with the keyhole, and when she did, she inhaled, pushing it in.

@Typical

As Pebs jiggles the key in the lock, it sticks for just a moment before turning with a slight click! The door practically swings open by itself, as if it was anticipating the key and hoping to be unlocked. Pushing the door open a little bit more reveals yet another dark room, but the light pouring through reveals two corners several feet beyond. If Pebs squints in the darkness, she could swear it looks like three hallways—one forward and two left and right.

^{@Typical@Vertigo}

[GUTS+] You Awake in a Dark Room

Pausing, she stared at the paper, brows furrowed. “It’s, um, a maze? A solved one.” She frowned. “Are we in a maze?”

It seemed unlikely, but that was the first thing she thought of. She had no way of confirming this, though, but she peered at the paper anyway, trying to connect dots between the two rooms she’d seen and the image on the paper. Did the red line turn the right way if she faced the right way? Did the walls the doors were on match the turns the red line took?

@Typical

No matter how she turns the paper, Pebs can't seem to make the rooms they've been in make sense with the layout of the map. Hallways seem to fan out from one point in three direction and branch off each of the paths as they go. No linked rooms or hallways are depicted as far as she can tell.

^{@Typical, @Vertigo}

[GUTS+] You Awake in a Dark Room

“Keys are always nice, and this paper,” [Pebs] said, opening the folds, “hopefully it’s as helpful as the last.”

@Typical

Opening the folded paper reveals a very messily-drawn maze of sorts with a red line drawn down what must be the correct path! The maze isn't very long or complicated, so it probably wouldn't have been much trouble to solve in the first place, but hey, maybe it'll save some time.

[Duncan] turned on the radio and tried to steer the car forwards at the same time, hoping he had one more hand to cross fingers with.

@Vertigo

Turning the boom box on produces nothing but gentle static coming from both speakers. Looking closer at it, Duncan can see the little spokes inside the tape deck spinning but there doesn't appear to be any cassette to spin!

At the same time, in response to the remote control's trigger being pulled, the now-powered RC Truck zips off the table, smacks into the ground, spins, rights itself, and continues going until it smacks into the door at the opposite end of the hall.

^{@Typical@Vertigo}