One of Those Days

It was a good day to go to Style's restaurant of the year.

A friend and I had made a date to walk and eat, which guaranteed us three hours of conversation.

The weather wasn't nearly as warm as yesterday but the sky was noteworthy or, as a friend posted, "There are days when I wake up to the most beautiful sky imaginable. Today's one of those days."

So we walked under that very blue sky, past men who asked if we were walking "for our figures," past a light blue house leaning precariously westward and ended up on playground swings headed for the sky.

A good walk, in other words.

When we set off for lunch, it was with no clear plan until it occurred to me that we hadn't lunched at Aziza's in far too long, despite it once being our go-to lunch rendezvous spot.

Surely the dining masses weren't going to be flooding it this quickly after the top award was announced yesterday. We hoped.

On arrival we were asked to take a two-top, which turned out to be a wise move given how quickly the remaining tables filled up.

We were so busy with our girl talk that it was a while before we even ordered from the restaurant of the year.

I hadn't been in since they'd added grilled sandwiches to the lunch menu so I was leaning that way while my friend couldn't resist the Lebanese case.

Over chicken and rice soup, tuna with white beans and arugula (her) and a grilled turkey and cheddar sandwich with a side salad (me), we dissected the local food scene, discussed some juicy restaurant anecdotes and talked about our futures.

After seeing a steady stream of cream puffs go by en route to other tables, we concluded that we had to have one of our own.

Because she's no flour fan, the way we work it is she eats the buttery cream out of the center and I hog the chocolate ganache-covered pastry.

We're a match made in heaven.

I don't know which of us needed it more, her with her relentless schedule or me with my recent non-stop deadlines, but at one point she looked at me, smiled and said, "Thank you so much for this. I feel like a new person."

Hopefully still the kind who will get on the swings with me on days with a bright, blue sky.