F***, Chuck, Marry: Volume Eight
(The Mediterranean Edition)
By now you know the rules of this little game: if a restaurant makes it into the series, I love it. Even the ones I chuck, maybe especially the ones I chuck. This isn’t about stars, rankings, or whether the pita was toasted two seconds too long. It’s about feelings. About the messy ways dining in LA overlaps with dating in LA: thrilling flings, bad setups, and the occasional partner who makes you believe in forever.
Mediterranean food in this city is its own emotional map, smoky, herb-heavy, a little chaotic, and almost always tangled up with memory and projection. Which makes it the perfect terrain for Volume Eight.
F***: Kismet
Kismet is that friend-with-benefits in your group chat, always there, always down, always capable of turning a dull Tuesday into something worth gossiping about. The crispy jeweled rice, the labneh-slicked carrots, the natural wine list curated like a Spotify playlist called Softboi With Opinions, it’s the edible equivalent of sneaking out of a house party together while everyone else pretends not to notice.
It’s fun. It’s reliable. It’s even comforting in its own way. But when Kismet texts, “Can I take you out?” you somehow forget to respond. A week goes by, then a month. It feels weird to circle back, but not weird enough to stop you from sliding in when it’s convenient. You like them, you do, but you know what this is. It doesn’t need to be more, it doesn’t need to change.
Kismet is the fling inside the friend group: safe, thrilling, and exactly where it belongs. So yes, I f*** Kismet. Happily, repeatedly, and on my terms. Some things don’t need a next chapter, they’re perfect exactly where they are. And hey, that’s precisely what Kismet is looking for too, which makes it perfect.
Chuck: Carmel
Carmel is the person everyone in your life is desperate to set you up with. On paper, it makes sense: attractive, stylish, knows how to order a martini without hesitation. And sure, you share a lot of surface-level stuff. But just because you’re both the only gay Jews in a Tulsa, Oklahoma doesn’t mean sparks will fly.
Yes, you’ll have things in common, you both own a Chemex, you’ve both cried in a Barry’s bathroom, but that doesn’t mean you want to spend your weekends together. And if one more person brings them up knowing damn well my type leans more Mexican restaurant than Melrose rooftop, I might actually scream.
The room glows, the plates arrive with symmetry, and the lighting designer deserves a raise. The food is solid, sometimes even excellent. But the energy wobbles: one night it’s charming and intimate, the next it’s trying to be a nightclub. And eventually, you realize you’re more in love with the idea of Carmel than with Carmel itself.
Carmel isn’t a bad date. It’s objectively good. But it’s the kind of good that feels like ordering a kale salad at brunch, respectable, virtuous, but never what you actually came for. Which is why I’m chucking Carmel. With gratitude, with respect, but also with the clear-eyed truth that sometimes “good on paper” just means you’ll recycle the menu into small talk for someone else.
Marry: Mizlala
Mizlala is proof that marriage can have fireworks, not the sky-splitting kind, but the kind you light on a weeknight just to see them glow. The shawarma sparks with spice, the dips have unexpected depth, and then there’s the pita: soft, steady, and somehow the kind of bread you didn’t realize you deserved. No fanfare, no hefty price tag, just quiet brilliance you couldn’t have imagined until it landed in front of you.
That’s the love Mizlala offers, the kind that finds you when you weren’t looking, the kind that knocks you off your feet not with spectacle, but with the simple fact that it exists at all. The room doesn’t posture. The lighting doesn’t demand attention. You don’t need to curate anything here. And still, it feels right.
It’s the kind of relationship built on small, everyday promises: I’ll share the hummus even when I don’t want to. I’ll be there on the weeknights when everything else feels overwhelming. I’ll keep showing up, steady and certain, even when the world tilts sideways. That’s not boring, that’s the kind of love that lasts.
Mizlala doesn’t dazzle me into forever; it earns it, plate by plate. And one day you look up, realize you can’t imagine life without it, and wonder how you ever thought you had to settle for less.
Reader, I marry them. Because forever isn’t about posturing, it’s about finding the thing you didn’t know you needed, and realizing it’s been there for you all along.
So there you have it:
Kismet, the group-chat fling I’ll happily keep revisiting on my own terms; Carmel, the well-meaning setup that looked great on paper but never quite clicked; and Mizlala, the steady love I didn’t know I was waiting for until it knocked me off my feet.
If nothing else, this round proves that food, like love, doesn’t have to follow the script we expect. Some things are meant to stay flings, some are better left as “good on paper,” and some quietly rewrite your standards until you can’t imagine settling again.
Until next time: kiss your flings, thank your setups, and marry the pita that shows up for you, chewy, steady, and better than you thought you deserved.
