Lunch at the Stolovaya

For lunch I found a stolovaya in unbroken operation since the era it was built to feed: tray rails, steam tables, a menu board with movable letters, women in white caps who portion by eye and have never once been wrong. Borshch, a cutlet with buckwheat, kompot the color of stained glass.

It cost approximately nothing and contained approximately everything. Around me, office workers and pensioners ate with the focus the food deserves. Nobody photographs their meal here except, on this one occasion, a novelist documenting infrastructure.

Because that is what it is: the canteen as public works, still working. The union built many machines that failed. The lunch machine was not one of them.