Lone Women by Victor LaValle — Read

The Grill Cafe's owner, George Shibata, arrived in California and followed work east, mostly toiling on the railroads but quickly figuring out how deadly the labor could be. He hit Havre, Butte, trying his hand at cooking instead, and ended up in Big Sandy, a town dominated by a single restaurant, the Bear Paw Cafe. Their food often went undercooked; their coffee always tasted burnt; the plates regularly showed faint traces of the last meals served on them. George Shibata decided he could do better-or, at least, as badly-and thus the Grill Cafe came to be. And he'd been correct. He did outshine his competition. Barely. Nearly everyone in town-except maybe the couple who owned the Bear Paw Cafe-agreed Shibata's Grill Cafe served marginally better food. But the plates and glasses were cleaner. To be fair, the man had been trained as an engineer, not a chef. Shibata just couldn't find such work in America. Or, such work wasn't allowed for someone like him.

And yet the Grill Cafe and the Bear Paw Cafe had operated at a standstill. Neither decisively won over the customers in town. If one of them had been able to serve higher-quality cooking, that might've done it, but there's no sense in demanding something that will never come. So imagine Mr. Shibata's surprise when his business soared simply because he'd saved those two boys. People came in to pepper him with questions, congratulate him on the good deed, and they stayed to eat their meals.