Only in mid-November, and in the United States already sold Christmas jewelry, the street lighting appeared. I’m also looking forward to ending this damned year so I won’t wait until December and tell you about the Christmas miracle right now.

My son was 14-15 years old. He lived with his mother in New York and came to Chicago for my winter vacation. In order not to get bored, he captured classmate and best friend of Mitchell. Mitch’s parents gladly let him go and even sent me some money to compensate for the expenses.

On Christmas and two days later, I picked up a hotel in a picturesque town three hundred kilometers from Chicago. I thought we would go skiing, admire the beauties, play snow, but I prevented the frost. According to our standards, it is small - 25 degrees, but for Americans everything that is below zero in Fahrenheit is classified as a natural disaster. So we moved on the street for short breaks, and rested mostly in the hotel pool and in the room. We taught Mitch to play a fool and had a great time. But that’s all a preface, and the story I want to tell happened while we were driving to this hotel.

In the morning, we drove around Chicago – the same short distances from the car to the landmark. The last point looked at the festive illumination in the zoo and struck in the way. It was not too late, 5 or 6, but it was already dark. I’ve probably lived in the United States for too long because I didn’t feed my kids in front of the road and didn’t take any food with me. I expected to eat along the way in one of the restaurants that were full along the track.

I don’t seem to live in the United States long enough. I didn’t take into account that it was Christmas Eve, a pre-Christmas evening, and the workers of all the street restaurants had long been sitting at home at the fireplaces and watching a movie about Greench. Everything was closed, even the McDonald’s and the 7/11 on tanks. We drove from one dark dungeon to another, and our hopes of eating normally melted with every mile.

You don’t know what two hungry fifteen-year-olds are. This is much worse than fifteen hungry two-year-olds. No, they weren’t crying or complaining, but from every movement, gesture and look it was evident how deeply they suffered. We tried to listen to the music, but the words of all the songs reminded me of food, even it was perceived as eating. They tried to play words, but all the words were invented on the same theme and pronounced with the same desire: oh, pizza! Oh the orange! Oh you nachous!

It was the last beach on the entrance to the town where the hotel was located. At normal times, the Burger King, Taco Bell, Panda Express and a dozen other establishments for every taste and wallet were lit with lights. Now it was dark and empty. I had already accepted the idea that I would have to go hungry to the hotel and feed the children there with the godless snickers from the machine (whether the machine still takes credit cards, or for these troglodytes no little will be enough), as I suddenly noticed the light at the far end of the swamp.

We have arrived. The sign did not burn, but the windows of the restaurant were lit, and a lot of cars stood in the parking lot. Inside us we met people-filled tables, loud music and crowds of people dancing and just snoring around. I was struck by the diversity of races and shades. There were white, black, Arabs, Mexicans, Chinese, Hindus – in a word, all the ingredients of the American melting boiler except the Indians, and some feathers flashed in the depths of the hall.

There was no cashier or hostess at the entrance. I caught a girl’s elbow and asked if the restaurant was working.
“No sir,” she replied. We have an event.
But I myself already noticed a huge poster “Happy holidays, dear employees of the restaurant business of the City-on-Otshibe! Happy Christmas, Hanuki and Quanza! We went to a company of local waiters and chefs.
“Maybe you’ll sell us at least something,” I begged. My kids are hungry.
The girl looked behind my back. Behind each of my shoulders was a six-foot-high child. They looked at her with hungry eyes, licked and cuddled her tooth.

The girl’s heart could not stand. She pulled out of the crowd an elderly Chinese in golden glasses — apparently the chief in this stunt — and whispered to him and said:
Okay okay. We had a cooking competition here, maybe something remains. You can eat whatever you find, you don’t need money.
And she took us through the fun hall into the empty kitchen room. She brought us a glass of water and left alone with long-awaited food.

About “something left” she was such a joke. There were probably a hundred... no, it seemed to me, but no less than thirty pots, pots and pots with American, Italian, Mexican, Greek, Chinese, Indian and god be wise what other dishes. All the national cuisines of the City of Odshibe presented the best they could boast of. Some puddings were devastated by 3/4, others half, others barely touched, but even the most empty would be enough to feed us three from the bubble.

I put a few pieces of the first one on the plate – it was an orange chicken, a Chinese chicken in an orange sauce, I tried it... and I realized that all the orange chicken I ate in my previous life were just pieces of a matte, roasted in machine oil. I tried other foods, what to say? I am not a fool to eat deliciously, I have eaten in good restaurants, even in Michelin, but I went to the gastronomic paradise for the first time. Any Michelin chef is nothing compared to a chef who wants to piss out before other chefs. The masterpieces were everything. I took a spoonful of each dish, then 2-3 tablespoons of the most liked, then, barely breathing, I didn't stand and stuck in for an additional portion of musaki and some sort of plow. The boys tended mostly to the usual hamburgers and pastas, but these hamburgers and pastas had little to do with those served in the American pub typically. I have tried.

After half an hour, we sat on our chairs, filled as never before in our lives, blowing up and blowing off. There was still a dessert, a hundred kinds of varyingly decorated Christmas cakes and cakes, but there was no strength for them. An old girl came, quietly poured these cakes into a large paper bag and led us out. As I walked through the hall, I took the microphone from the host and announced:
Thank you all, this was the best Christmas dinner in our lives!
I was applauded.

I don’t know if it was that evening or not, but Mitch fell in love with Chicago and is now studying here at the university. A programmer, not a cook.