The #BlogHerWritingLab prompt today is: What dish transports you to a different place and time in your life?

A new restaurant in a small town is life-changing. When I was growing up, my small town was dominated by the local Pizza Hut in a way that hasn't been realized there before or since. All the cool kids in high school worked at Pizza Hut, and after football games we'd all head over to cram seven people into each side of the booths and try to make it out of the restaurant afterward with red plastic glasses smuggled under our sweaters for no good reason except our frontal lobes weren't fully formed.

Then, one day, a new pizza place opened on the square: Breadeaux Pizza. Whereas the Pizza Hut preferred pan crust contained a cup of oil, the Breadeaux crust was kind of tossed around with varying degrees of mastery by its high school employees, one of whom was my friend Jack. I remember going to visit Jack while he tossed around pizza dough and answered the red phone that hung by the door to the back. There was no seating in Breadeaux, so one could hang around relatively easily. It's kind of sad that in a small town hanging around your friends while they are getting paid and you are not is a popular pastime, but it did happen reciprocally when I worked the concession stand at the swimming pool, so I didn't mind too much.

The Breadeaux crust was based on the concept of French bread, so it was chewier and sort of sweet, which had a good balance with sausage. That pizza place went out of business years ago and I haven't had Breadeaux since high school, but I can still remember the taste pretty easily. It's the taste of high school Homecoming float building sessions with chicken wire, napkins and spray paint in someone's Morton building or barn; the taste of slumber parties and family get-togethers on Sunday nights.

Oh, and the Breadeaux employees had to wear French chef hats. That was also pretty rad.