J'apprécie boire un café chez ce vendeur de café à Mons Hainaut Belgique Belgium

Mai 2025

it feels like a furnace outside so lunch at moon cafe might seem counterintuitive yet i have been waiting, no, aching for a chance to annihilate my guts ever since i recovered from a stomach bug. i call up hasanfulhu, the perpetually broke lawyer, and we stroll down majeedee magu towards our destination. hasanfulhu saunters, perhaps even ambles, the point is the man moves with an easy gait like he's seen it all before. and here at moon cafe, a familiar stink envelops us. i rush towards the buffet and pile on the rice, lonu mirus, onion, rihaakuru dhiya - i have a little trick where i skim the milky layer off the rihaakuru dhiya, if you try it at home and like it, please credit me. i sit and start eating frantically as saththaaru might say, but you can't begrudge a starving man for laying waste to his lunch at speed. hasanfulhu seems to be saying something however. 'hmm?' 'i said your nose is dripping,' he replies. goddamn. plus, there're no serviettes on the table. i understand it's not sala thai but can't a guy expect some basic level of service? so a waiter finally brings them and i blow my nose to the delight of hasanfulhu who enjoys bodily sounds, the weird little man. 'anyway,' i begin. 'i've not drunk any coffee this week.' 'cool,' he says. 'yeah, i've been doing this breathing routine after i wake up.' i show him how, inhaling and exhaling in two second bursts. 'i jerk off after i wake up,' he says. 'and then i go back to sleep.' such scintillating wit. i finish off my rice and man, it's really cleaned out my sinuses. but all the flavours you expect are here - the silky, sweet and savoury taste of rihaakuru dhiya, the zing of the onion, the zap of the lonu mirus, oh, so many zaps. yep, it's something i return to again and again, with no boredom, just with the expectation that it remains as good as it was. the little piece of cardboard they hand me reads 120MVR, a good deal, and i pay the plump, moustached seytu who completes the transaction while reciting the quran without pause. so, off we go to movenpick to round off our meal with ice creams.

it's 4pm on a friday and man, i am absolutely mad with hunger. i woke up a couple of hours back, like any good dhivehi man, and lay in bed trying to figure out what i wanted to eat and where. because you see, my mother now lives all the way in phase two and i can't just pop in on a friday afternoon to get free grub. anyhow, it was already 3pm when i was done eliminating cuisines and individual dishes from my list. it was now clear that i wanted dhivehi keun. so i did as someone might – i settled for a maldivian rice bowl from rodchenko. it's the perfect sub for those who've missed the lunch buffet at moon cafe and still crave something dhivehi. to my dismay, i found out rodchenko did not open for an hour. so, i watched some russian propaganda clips on tiktok. putin. such an eloquent man. so knowledgeable, especially on his great adversary. i doubt biden knows or cares as much about russia. and now, at 4pm i call rodchenko and place my order. it will take forty minutes, they tell me. fine, i say. maybe i can watch putin speak for another half hour. the more i listen to putin, the more i am drawn to him. his charisma is apparent even on the phone's small screen. i listen to him criticise the west with great composure. of course, i don't agree with him on most points but he sounds incredibly persuasive. he sounds like someone you could get behind. finally, the time has come to head out to rodchenko so off i go. it is drizzling and so goddamned humid it almost seems like the air is giving me a big wet hug. rodchenko is quiet. dead quiet. i race upstairs and the place is empty but for me and a server who hurries to the kitchen. i take a seat in the booth, my back against a plump cushion. the dish is soon in front of me. it's an old favourite of mine, the maldivian bowl.