Table Dancing
Recently, I returned home from a five-day mini-tour of the East Coast. Having traveled to Florida to see a few Major League Baseball spring training games, I was forced to eat all my meals away from the friendly confines of my own kitchen or favorite local haunts and watering holes. Perhaps you’ve run into this problem too: where to eat when you don’t know the street?
This doesn’t have to mean eating Arby’s or Chick-fil-A every meal, although I’d rather eat at either of those establishments than McDonald’s, Burger King or Hardee’s any day of the week. When faced with such a dilemma, I rely on a few fallback strategies that have served me well in the past. Perhaps they’ll work for you, too.
First, you’ll want to figure out the native foods for the area you’re going to. When you’re in St. Augustine, FL, for instance, go with the seafood, especially oysters and sea scallops and sheepshead and other deep-sea goodies. I lucked upon a little place called Barnacle Bills, which sounds a little chain-y but served some of the plumpest fried oysters I’ve ever eaten. (Coincidentally, I later found out that the restaurant’s owner and founder, Chris Way, is also the inventor of one of my favorite hot sauces, Dat’l Do It, made from St. Augustine’s own native datil pepper — wonderfully fiery, but full-flavored to boot.)
If you’re in North Mississippi, try a slug burger (ground beef mixed with corn meal, first eaten during the Depression but still more popular in some areas than the full-beef model).
If you’re in South Carolina … keep driving until you reach Georgia. (Just kidding.)
Also, this adage is true: If you see police cars in front of a joint, it’s probably going to be good, cheap or both. (At the worst, it means you might get to see a little real-life Cops action.) However, the same doesn’t necessarily go for other groups — like, say, motorcyclists. Every third restaurant I saw in the FLA had a sign out front saying, “Welcome Bikers.” Now, I like bikers plenty. A few of my friends ride Harleys. And I have nothing against Bike Week. But I’m more apt to follow a biker’s advice on a good bar.
This next one’s kind of obvious, but can be awkward unless you have a quality “in”: Ask a local. Preferably one who looks well-fed. If you want a good tour guide, check with someone who looks like they’ve traversed the terrain.
Lastly, make it a habit to eat at places that replace its C’s with K’s. Krispy Kreme is but one obvious example here. Kenny’s Krab Kabin, anyone?
The best way to find these wonderful little holes in the wall (the best ones can become among your most treasured roadtrip memories) is, of course, to do some research ahead of time.
Holly Moore’s www.hollyeats.com is a wonderful resource for cheap cuisine made fresh, even if the nutritional content (think: lots o’ grease) is negligible. Moore, a proponent of “chowing down, not dining,” is a trencherman of the first order, something of a minor TV star (see PBS’ Sandwiches That You Will Like) and a nice guy besides. He credits Calvin Trillin’s landmark American Fried — a book that posits a great restaurant need not boast silver service and French-inspired cuisine to warrant a stop — as the impetus behind Moore’s own labor of love (and lard).
Yalies and real-life married couple Jane and Michael Stern have made a career out of traveling the country in search of quality roadside/hole-in-the-wall/hidden-treasure eateries. No doubt, not bad work if you can get it, even as one suspects an Ivy League education doesn’t help a whole hell of a lot when breaking down the differences between vinegar, tomato and mustard-based North Carolina barbecue sauces.
That said, the two have made a lucrative career of chowin’ down, including two great books of the kind: Eat Your Way Across The U.S.A. and Roadfood. The latter has since been made into an equally recommendable Web site, www.roadfood.com. It’s searchable by state or restaurant style, features the couple’s inimitable two-are-one writing style (“we settled down with a wonderful plate of steaming-hot tamales”), features feedback forums, and even offers printable maps and logbooks. It’s as easily navigable as can be and a model of what an interactive Web site can be. Hell, maybe there’s something to that Yale education after all.
Looking for some hyper-localized recommendations from people already living in the town you’re going to be visiting? Log on to www.egullet.com, fill out a free registration, visit one of their local forums (broken down by region) and query away. Thanks to the site, I’ve eaten at least a dozen wonderful meals I never would have happened upon otherwise. Be sure to post some of your own, however, for karma’s sake.
Use any and all of the above as you see fit. However, when in doubt, remember to go with your gut. As helpful as books and Web sites are, nothing beats going into a place you’d never heard of and leaving with a stuffed belly and wallet.
Timothy C. Davis is an associate editor of Gravy, the official newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance. His food writing has appeared in Saveur, Christian Science Monitor, Travel + Life and Gastronomica, among others. Write him at timothycdavis1@gmail.com
This article appears in Mar 22-28, 2006.
