In the world of food, it is absolutely better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. But when the loved one goes away, boy does that suck.
There are many ways to lose a loved one: company stops making that flavor or that brand, restaurant burns down, chain restaurant goes bankrupt, grandma dies before getting that recipe than no one else knows how to make.
In today's case, the chain restaurant went out of business: Bill Knapp's. The chain ruled in a few states, most notably Michigan, with family-style cooking. Its signature chocolate cake was part of the birthday ritual at Bill Knapp's.
If you came in on your birthday, you got a percentage off your check tied into your new age along with this chocolate cake. A person turning 40 got 40% off the meal plus the cake.
Chocolate cake with chocolate icing. Rich. Decadent.
The story could have ended when the restaurant did. So many of those tastes completely disappeared when the chain went out of business. The au gratin potatoes, fried chicken, fried clams, the steakburger with the buttered bun, my first cinnamon ice cream.
But the chocolate cake lived on. Meijer's carried the cake for awhile. The cake was like what we all remembered, though when you would get them in the restaurant, the cake had just been pulled from the walk-in cooler.
I had not seen them even at Meijer's lately, not that I live anywhere near the cake. But for the holidays, I always look for them just in case out of habit.
This Thanksgiving was more sad since a local Italian restaurant had gone out of business (its sister location, about 20 miles southwest, with limited hours still existed). But in shopping a local grocery store, I found the cake still existed.
I started dumbfounded at the cakes in the refrigerated case. Sugar had been my friend, but not lately. Yet the cake was calling to me. “Remember me. I still taste good.”
So you know that we got the cake and brought it back. And it was good, quite good, though never quite as good as I remembered many years ago.
Full disclosure: I worked at Bill Knapp's while in high school and I worked at that Italian restaurant, too. But I remember the smell of those cakes in the walk-in cooler. When you are surrounded by multiple trays of cakes, I haven't found that smell in the current product.
But even as I have had exposure to the cakes, most of my memory stems from bygone times: eating a steakburger in the back after a particularly long shift, being tired and sore and sinking my teeth into the burger and fries.
Having the chocolate cake over Thanksgiving 2010 was more than just having dessert; this was a slice that took me back to a food bevy of which the cake is the only survivor.
The current version is never as good as you remembered it. But having a slice of the past – a visible sign that sparks memories – is a nice treat, especially around the holidays.
In the words of Crowded House, “can I have another piece of chocolate cake.”
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