A bell chimes in the distance as a hot tray made its way upon a shelf amongst a myriad of other platters. All the food had a corresponding number,letter and color sitting next to it waiting to be served and eaten.

“Are you sure this place is up to regulation?” I whined.

Trevor snarled back “You always hate on my suggestions whenever we’re in port”.

He began to hiss his teeth as he smiled menacingly across the table.

“Besides this is the only place in the sector that’ll even serve the both of us ,and you know what ….”. Before Trevor could trail off into another tangent our waitress tossed both our meals on the table with haste. She quickly went to tend to the many seated guests around us.

“Finally”We both exclaimed.

“So how exactly do I eat this?”.

I turned my face for an answer but Trevor had already began to sink his reptilian incisors into the perplexing meal in front of him. We both ordered the same thing on Trevor’s good word but staring at it brought with it many doubts.

The menu classified it as a sandwich according to the very little phlemonian I knew. On the other hand it presented itself as a pile of scaly meat with an almost aqua dye to it. Upon closer inspection the entire dish was cold , it had char marks on the top and distinctly smelled of plums.

Our food came with a pair of chopsticks which I used to poke and prod it around. The meat appeared gelatinous in consistency and every touch caused a purple liquid to leak out of the bottom of the pile.

“You better eat it before it burns” Trevor warned.

At this point he had eaten over half of his meal revealing two pieces of what I can only assume was bread protruding from inside of it. The extremely burnt toast completely contrasted the meat glittering in multiple shades of purple. I couldn’t fathom how hot it was as I could see the steam rising off of it.

He began shoveling the slippery meat on the flakey and frail bread pressing down as much of it as he could fit on top. Disbelief struck my face as I immediately picked up my utensils to sort through the muck. Seven soggy and squelching loaves were found underneath cold and jiggly mound of flesh.

I picked up a piece of bread and a single chopstick in preparation to eat.So many questions raced through my mind as I began to finally imitate my friend in the consumption of our meals.

“Is this dinosaur food?” I proposed genuinely confused.

Trevor stopped engulfing his food to sigh and suggest that I should try it and find out. I continued to stare at my food for a while before eventually scooping myself a charred cut of the mire I had ordered. Holding chopsticks with one hand and putting it in my mouth was an acrobatic feat I was not confident in doing at all.

I picked pieces of crust out of my facial hair as I wasn’t prepared for how crunchy my first bite would end up being. It was sweet at first but the meat resembled an overcooked beef .chewing it made the flavor more spicy and it gradually heated up in my mouth with each bite.

A delighted smile tricked across my face as Trevor snickered( or his best attempt at one since alligators have vocal folds and not vocal chords).as I slurped most of the remaining food I could barely eat what was left in front of me.

“So what is actually in this dish?” I finally asked.

“Are you sure you can handle it?” Trevor advised.

I nodded vehemently as he tried to reenact the mannerisms of the animal I was consuming. At first he meowed and I creased my face in horror at our platters ,but then he also gestured toward wings and horns. I ultimately had no idea what he was referring to but I would definitely order this again. Trevor’s mother might even have a family recipe she could share with me.