I THOUGHT ABOUT it, but I don't have an opinion. All I have is thoughts. The difference between being a thing and having a thing be in you, as in the notable case of eggs and waffles, is on the one hand purely semantical, and on the other hand a make-or-break matter of precise and proper ingrediation. It's not life and death. It's bigger than both. It's math. It's measurements. You don't have to follow a recipe, but you do have to be careful, especially where eggs are involved. Give or take some olive oil and lemon juice, you're liable to wind up with mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise is not eggs.

OK, enough, Cheap Eats Guy. We get the picture.

No, you don't, because the picture keeps changing. It's my fucking picture, and I don't even get it. I keep doing things differently, and saying, "I'm doing things differently," and meaning it. And then the meaning of different changes, and the next thing you know you're all confused again. Right now, for example, I'm writing to you from a glass of Rebel Yell mixed with grapefruit soda.

That ain't coffee.

I don't write at night.

(How many other things can you find that are wrong with this picture?)

Baseball season, and I don't even care.

The laser lady, my facial torturer, said, "I hope you get to go home after this and pamper yourself."

What does that mean? I wondered. Wear diapers? I started to laugh, it hurt so bad. The upper lip was especially hilarious. I almost gave in and gave up. OK, OK, I'll be a man, I almost said, bouncing up off the table with each jolt of hair-removal lightning. You win, world.

But I made my appointment for session two in six weeks. And, dazed, I went out to my pickup truck and headed home, crying all the way from Santa Rosa to Occidental. Even though it didn't hurt anymore. If I didn't have the chickens to think about, I would have gone on to the city instead, not only to cry for that much longer, but because I was thinking about comfort food, and I know where to go now.

Serendipity. One night I'm sitting around with a couple of fried-food fan friends, bemoaning the astronomical gastronomical void in the universe left by the absence of Gravy's. Then the next day I'm bopping around Third Street with Earl Butter, looking for a place called, to-the-pointedly, Quarter Pound Hamburger. Find it. Closed. So we keep driving till we see a sign other side of the street says, "Fish. Chicken. Bakery."

I practically passed out from excitement.

Isn't it great when things are what they are, and are named accordingly – a spade a spade and so on. What's that other famous discovery, by that petty one-upper, about a rose being a rose being a rose? Every time I hear that, I want to say, Well, but what about chrysanthemums? What about me? Mr. Rogers? Quarter Pound Hamburger? Fish? Chicken? Bakery?

Actually, the actual name of the place, for all you Gertrude Steins out there, is Your Neighborhood Restaurant. Corner of Third and Shafter. A bright, bare, roomy room with just four round tables and a wall-facing counter looking into a mural of the pyramids. Other than which, there's not a lot to look at. Almost empty display cases with individually packaged pies, cakes, cookies. Above that, on the wall, three shelves with a dozen or so copies of three different videos – one title per shelf. Plus a rack of books. They're peddling inspirationalism of some flavor or another, but I got all the inspiration I needed out of the kitchen.

Fried-to-order fried chicken wings, whiting fishes, and french fries ($11.99 for the combo plate), plus extra sides of mac and cheese and beans and rice. The fried was as good as Gravy's. The sides were not, but they were good. The fishes, in particular, were something special. Spectacular.

Besides for po'boys and I forget, either jambalaya or gumbo, which they didn't have any more of, there's also, oddly, a section of pasta entrées on the menu. Like chicken fettuccine and primavera. Fried chicken fettuccine, I'm thinking. Hoping. Praying.

I do know that the barbecue chicken wings are fried, and that the slice of cake Earl Butter got to go for later was, in his words, "good and sweet and thick enough to sleep on." And I'm tired enough to sleep on a piece of cake, so ... good night. Your Neighborhood Restaurant. 5149 Third St. (at Shafter), S.F. (415) 822-4359. Mon.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Takeout available. No alcohol. Credit cards not accepted. Wheelchair accessible.

Email Dan Leone

Dan Leone is the author of Eat This, San Francisco (Sasquatch Books), a collection of Cheap Eats restaurant reviews, and The Meaning of Lunch (Mammoth Books).