The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/spicy/)
This is my last article. I’ve been writing for the Dining Department for four years now, and, to be perfectly honest, I am not ready to say goodbye. But, that’s mostly because I have annoyingly discovered that I have multiple thoughts left to tell all of you about! So, I guess instead of multiple separate posts, you’ll have to deal with the abridged versions. Boba is not that good.
When I first went to Rulloff’s, located on 411 College Ave back in February, I thought I would be saying goodbye to the bar and restaurant since its building is set for demolition at the beginning of this summer to make room for an apartment complex. Unfortunately, we would instead be saying goodbye to Rulloff’s, like many other restaurants, as a result of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Plastered on its doors now are signs that read, “Due to the coronavirus crisis Rulloff’s is closed until further notice.”
When I dined there, I asked if Rulloff’s would open another location, and the waitress told me they honestly don’t know. However, the answer being “yes” is less likely given the new and upsetting reality all restaurants now face. Whether it was trips to Insomnia Cookies to take a study break, post-prelim boba runs, Chatty Cathy dates with my roommate, frequent and spontaneous stress-prompting trips to Mango Mango or celebrations at Koko — Collegetown restaurants have always been there for me during my time at Cornell.
One of my earliest memories is of being five or six and having my father, a spicy food fanatic, make me eat one of the dried chilis that comes in kung pao chicken. That was the day I learned that the best antidote to a mouth on fire is not water or even milk, but mouthfuls of plain, steamed white rice. It was also the beginning of my own descent into what my mother felt was madness. From then on, my dad and I were like a cult, only instead of a god we worshipped capsaicin. We went to fancy hot sauce stores on vacation.