Drabble-length-fiction editor extraordinaire, Eric Fomley, put out a call for drabbles with a time travel theme. Having found a home for two drabbles in Drabbledark, a previous anthology edited by Fomley, I figured I’d throw my hat in the ring.

My story, “Food as Faith” imagines a person using a time machine for an unorthodox purpose, to catch a restaurant that closed before he had a chance to eat there.

Here it is, and if you like it maybe check it out, there are 97 drabbles like it:

Food as Faith

They should not have given me access to the time machine.

In 2017, a member of an isolated religious order opened a pop up restaurant in New York City. It lasted for one night, and one night only. To a person, everyone described it as transcendent, life-changing, divine. I missed it.

While everyone argued over how to use it — prevent a war? Kill a dictator? Visit lost wonders of the world? Seek out the origins of world religions? — I made my move.

With a watering mouth and growling stomach, I skipped backward in time on my own personal gastronomic pilgrimage.