Pick any night and my default food choice is pizza. I want to know why? Sure, pizza is great. All that cheese, sausage and tangy tomato sauce, that chewy crust. Yeah, it’s divine. I find my pizza palette insatiable these days.

And, as much as I love Chinese food and Mexican food and well, just about all food, I wander back to pizza like that ex-girlfriend who is always around, always up for you coming over to visit no matter how much time has passed and no matter where either of you are emotionally or relationally. I want pizza now and I’m still drinking my morning coffee.

Making matters worse is that I’ll eat any old pizza. It doesn’t have to be from Alfredo’s or Davenport’s (my favorites here in Birmingham), when the craving hits, I’ll sneak into a low rent chain and emerge pissed off that I just spent 15 bucks on what tasted like grocery store private label pizza, complete with cardboard crust and plastic cheese.

Am I the only one who suffers from this?

I did it again. I ate at the Golden Dragon Restaurant. When will I learn? The food at Golden Dragon sucks. It will never get better. It was never good in the first place.

So why do I crawl back there every time I get the urge for Chinese?

There are literally dozens of similar Chinese restaurants all over the city. For example, the “Happy Buddha,” complete with large smiling Buddha mascot on the sign, is less than three blocks away. And I have to say that the Happy Buddha looks awfully satisfied up there on that sign, kind of like an Asian “Big Boy.” But no, I keep saying, “Golden Dragon will get it together. The chef had an off night.”

What is wrong with me?

It’s not like it was good for years and then it went down and I can’t shake my allegiance for emotional reasons connected to memories spent with parents or past loves. I’ve been there seven times and every time the food has sucked. Even the fortune cookies were inedible. How the hell does that happen?

So here’s what I’m going to do: place a self-imposed moratorium on all Chinese restaurants for at least two weeks. This will give me a chance to break my habit, sort out my feelings and then, with a clean palette, I can finally give the Happy Buddha the chance they deserve.