Breakfast in Baconeg

I actually visited Baconeg (a Baconeg; I think it's a fairly common name) a few years after I read "Breakfast in Baconeg." The smell is better in the underground marketplace; it sort of becomes a second atmosphere. You don't notice it at all after a while. The underground marketplace is full of people trying to sell tuber fish and clockwork pipe crawlers and whatnot, though, so I don't know if it's actually an improvement.

I never was able to find the cafe where "Breakfast in Baconeg" takes place. I searched through the plumbing district for two days. There were pipework shops and moss grottoes and tank crab vendors by the hundreds, but no Cafe Kurgleglump. The only cafe I found was a tiny, dripping little hole in a gap between two pipes. The sign outside it read ")S:))~," and it served steamed sump squid. Nothing else. Three different varieties of steamed sump squid, but nothing else. If you were feeling adventurous, you could have steamed sump squid with pepper on top. The squid steamer occupied half the cafe. I sat at the little three-legged table that occupied the other half and watched while the cook took the squid from the ceiling (the only place there was room to store anything), steamed it, arranged it neatly on a saucer, and served it to me.

I was feeling adventurous after spelunking through the pipe district for three hours, so I had the squid with pepper. It was the best sump squid, steamed or otherwise, that I've ever eaten. I told the cook so, and she smiled from eyestalk to eyestalk and said "squee mur burgle twergilly." Or something to that effect.

As cozy as the )S:))~ Cafe was, though, it wasn't the Cafe Kurgleglump. For one thing, it wasn't nearly large enough, and the Cafe Kurgleglump served a lot more than steamed sump squid - that is, if the book is at all accurate. I never did find the Cafe Kurgleglump. I didn't search through every alley and back drain, but it probably doesn't matter. If it ever existed, I think it's quite Remembered by now.