Conch & Kibbie at Aziza's

"You've been given the gift of desperation."

Lunch today was a last minute invitation from a friend I used to see often, but who has far less free time these days because he's now coupled.

In fact, for the past year and a half, we saw so much of each other that his therapist finally told him that our friendship was holding back progress in his personal life (and here I thought we were just two friends hanging out). Oh, the guilt!

It seemed that my easy availability as a friend and companion delayed his motivation to jump back into the shark-infested waters of the dating pool; our friendship was enough to keep him from being lonely.

In spite of my insidious influence, though, he managed to find a great person, but we see far less of each other now.

So I was happy for the impromptu lunch invitation, especially when he suggested Aziza's, one of my personal favorites. I arrived and took a front table with a sunny view of Main Street's foot traffic.

The server recognized me, saying, "You've got lots of sisters, don't you?" Funny the stuff people remember about you.

I do, I told her and she said she'd met a girl at a party with my mannerisms and my coloring and she was sure she must be one of my sisters. Except that this girl lives in Richmond, unlike my sisters. And here I thought I was unique; yet another personal assumption shot to hell.

My friend sat down and we started choosing our meal components. When I saw conch salad on the menu, I was sold, ordering the black lentil salad to go with it. My friend copied my conch and got kibbie, too.

The conch salad tasted like something we should have been eating at a sunny beachside shack. A generous serving of conch was mixed with fennel, capers, celery greens, red onion, olive oil, lemon juice and red pepper flakes. The sunshine coming through the front window only made the experience that much better.

My black lentil salad was perfection, the lentils cooked to just the right degree of toothsomeness. Friend's kibbie, spiced with cumin and made with London broil rather than the traditional lamb, was making its way from his plate to mine. My fork might have had something to do with that.

We were pleased to learn from our server that, with notice, they will do kibbie without baking it, so we plan to come back soon and experience kibbie that's never seen an oven.

And because we're weak and we never go to Aziza's without getting a chocolate ganache-topped cream puff, we shared one while friend sipped espresso.

It was during our enjoyment of the puff that we got to talking about how I have no single friends left. Okay, I have three: one in North Dakota, one in Scotland and one in Milwaukee. A lot of good they do me.

Which means that even for a person such as me who likes to go out alone, I still have loads of time that could be enhanced with the sparkling company of someone other than the couple dates I've been gravitating toward.

This might seem patently obvious, except that I have spent the past 21 months, according to my friend, "closed off." Acknowledging that it was maybe time to change that (maybe), my friend got positively ebullient that I was even considering opening myself up.

That's when he told me I'd been given the gift of desperation (and, for the record, I laughed hysterically when he said this). So far as I could tell, it did not come gift-wrapped.

Hey, I'm just glad it finally arrived. Not a moment too soon, either.