Transported to another world by way of a short bus ride, I’m taken by the burnt orange velvet booth spanning the length of the Eastern European cafe with jazz guitar in the air and faint hints of a freshly steeped mint tisane.

Sitting at the counter next to the most handsome man, we have front row seats to the owner prepping her patron’s late lunch or early dinner. With her red bangs cut short, cotton apron, A-line dress and glasses resting on the ball of her nose, she looks authentically the part of a 1950’s Hungarian housewife in the best way possible. Her nasally “yip” cheers as the guitarist fades the first song of the second set. She attends to soup stewing gingerly over an open flame which is then poured into a pink petaled porcelain bowl, every bean carefully scooted into the china’s wide-brim. She spoons a bit of infused oil over the top, rubs toast fresh off the grill with a clove of garlic and cuts it on the bias, rips fresh herbs from a mason jar and sprinkles them on top. The whole experience is intoxicatingly delicate, purposeful and attune.

Grandma would like it here.

Cheese drips over rare slices of pastrami and rye. Challah slices bathe in an egg mixture to become French Toast the next morning. Hot water fills coffee cups, is swirled, then thrown out to keep the cups warm to the touch. A salad is being mixed. Hand-torn radicchio and lettuces gently rubbed up the side of a metal bowl and tossed back down. Dressed in a drizzle of hazelnut oil and a squeeze of a vinaigrette bottle. Pomegranate seeds settle to the bottom, sharp shreds of cheese adorn the top. The salad rests as she reaches for a halved persimmon in a fruit bowl in front of our coffees. She curls her fingers as the thin slices of the vibrant orange fruit fall to the cutting board to be diced and tousled with the moistened leaves.

Grandma would giggle and clap to the jazz guitar here. She’d rest her spoon on the edge of her carved rosy glass plate and nod assuredly to her company.

The musician sings of complicated simple times, of war-times, of lovers. The thimble-sized salt and paper shakers are collected on a single sterling silver tray. The server sits on the amber-colored booth to eat the salad that moments ago was carrying the beat. A waitress changes out of her sweater revealing a polka-dot dress and can be seen around the kitchen corner with a mug of soup. Eastern Europe is closing for the night. It will re-open with soaked French Toast, warm coffee cups and miniature salt and pepper shakers redistributed across the marble and iron tables tomorrow morning.

Grandma would come here on a Sunday morning to have the French Toast. She’d think of grandpa and his love and talent for baking. She’d think of her ten kids and how strong they all are and how they they’ve grown into and raised fine adults. She would have her hair in curls and would fill the cozily narrow space with infectious laughter.

Some of the tiniest details in life fill me with the most joy because they remind of people I love and they way they love. Looking around the cafe, everyone seems enraptured with some form of memory or memory being made. It’s a reminder for me to slow down and enjoy the moment – a theme I’ve come back to a lot this year. Funny how just when I begin to loose sight of it, the message revisits me, this time sitting on a curved wooden bar stool, elbow resting on a marble counter top, fingers laced through a petite handle.

The guitar fades, lights dim. Twilight calls for a change of locale but not before admiring the space in between the light and the dark.

Grandma would love it here.

*This post was inspired by 20th Century Cafe in Hayes Valley, San Francisco. Go now.