Somewhere around my first month here on Al Asad, I heard mention that five DFACs (Dining FACilities) exist here on this post.

DFAC #1 is the small mess hall near the gym—the only place I have gone for breakfast here, and has pretty good food. It is known to the medics as the “rat” DFAC because when they first arrived here, their doctor at the time, MAJ Davis, had to inspect the place and found evidence of a rat infestation. Don’t know exactly what happened after that.

DFAC #3 is the massive hall where we eat most often. The food is just okay, but the selection is large, with a short-order bar, and a large salad bar. We go there whenever we have a big crowd, because everyone will be able to find something that they like. The middle of DFAC #3 is a large ice cream stand, with bona fide Baskin Robbins ice cream. There, an Indian man will give you a massive scoop of ice cream (even if you ask for a tiny one) and there is a self-serve area where you can add candies, whipped cream, chocolate syrup, caramel, and other items to your frozen treat.

DFAC #4 and #5 are almost identical, and are very small, designed to be convenient to the soldiers/marines who live in some of the nether reaches of the FOB, and they don’t offer a lot of selection. They do, however, have the last remaining true-blue Gatorade bottles, though.

The only reason I know about all of these is because I decided a couple of months back to buck the usual trend of eating only at the one or two most convenient DFACs throughout deployment. I wanted to get to them all. Kind of like checking out all of the restaurants in town. This is a bit harder than it seems, as there is no readily-available published map to this place (for OPSEC reasons), and some of the groups who use the outlying mess halls rarely come into contact with us city-dwellers. But over time, I discovered the location of all of them except for DFAC #2.

The lone remaining DFAC is in the center of a large Marine encampment called “Ripper,” and just getting in there requires multiple ID checks. Because of this, and also because of our transportation issues (bye bye bus), I never made it to the Ripper DFAC until last night. I had heard through the grapevine (one of my physician friends) that DFAC #2 was rumored to have Indian food (made by actual Indian people, not some KBR shmo from Oklahoma City) on Tuesday nights. This sounded incredible to me: anything different is very appealing at this point. It took some persuading, but I got 1LT Coleman and CPT Baker to head out there with me last night after my lecture. We made our way into the encampment, and after checking our weapons and waving IDs multiple times, we walked into a building which, from the outside, looked rather unimpressive.

Once we got in, however, I noted that there was an Appleby’s style square bar, with barstools and television hung from the ceiling, and a sign saying “wings and things” hanging from the rafters. There was also the reputed Indian bar (chicken marsala, some kind of really tasty rice, vegetable curry, and a spicy shrimp dish. Delish! There was also a taco bar (with actual, real corn taco shells), a Rueben sandwich grill (kraut + beef + buttered, grilled wheat bread truly = crazy delicious), and the main line with a bunch of other stuff. The layout of the mess hall was decidedly less “governmental” with some nice decor, a bunch of plasma screens, and the aforementioned bar in the middle. And they had bananas! Green bananas, but hey, they’re bananas. I’m not complaining.

So, all in all a good day for me. We went back again today and (ho, hum!) they were serving lobster claws and ribeye. The sad thing is that I really wanted another reuben, but that will have to wait.

Until tomorrow night.