kay will travel

I guess I had heard that the USA did things bigger and better but imagined that it was stereotypical media hype. If I am going to talk about food and beverages, ‘bigger’ certainly features in my glossary – ‘better’ not so much…  I am, however, only relating my limited experience of 13 days and I have only been in the ‘deep south’.

Let’s begin with breakfast.

Breakfast was included with our stay at each of the hotels we visited in Georgia, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama and the choices were always quite similar – there was granola (a healthy granular cereal), but there was always a variety of highly manufactured and sugary cereals as well.

Scrambled eggs were most often the variety of eggs on offer – these did not have much taste at all and in some places came in unnatural ovals! Bacon, glistening with fat and in suspiciously uniform pieces and turkey sausage (which contained tough granules of something which could not be identified), also sat in bain-maries in pools of oil.

There was quite an array of bread (although no such thing as wholegrain), and cake-type products: bagels, English muffins, biscuits (as in scone type), although there were sometimes also cookies (extremely large and dotted with choc chips), muffins, corncakes, patty cakes dusted in icing sugar, croissants (often the chocolate variety). Apart from these sweet asides there was always a waffle maker. The process of making your own, consisted of dispensing a cup full of mixture from a machine, pouring it into a waffle iron, closing the lid and flipping the whole iron which was on a pivot. This would initiate the timer so that your waffle would be perfectly cooked. I succumbed to the temptation to try this but I will have you know that I only filled a quarter of the waffle maker. (To this quarter, I added the expected butter and syrup.)

Fruit juice was available as was coffee in serve-yourself thermos bottles. Will and I have become accustomed to American coffee which is strong and quite bitter but I must say, I am quite disappointed that there has not been more variety and so few lattes available!

Bigger – Of course this breakfast is far bigger than most home breakfasts and one would expect that given that it is hotels offering a breakfast fit for all guests. However, I have got to say that I was a little shocked at just how much fatty, sweet and highly manufactured foods there were presented. At one stop there was even a soda dispensing machine, from which children and many adults served themselves generous cups of Coca Cola, Sprite or Fanta to accompany their morning meal.

Menus

Menus here offer appetizers or starters and entrees but no mains. This was a little confusing at first but experienced traveling companions explained: appetizers are as big if not bigger than an entree I would expect to have at home; entrees are main meal size – (often quite a deal larger than one would expect in a restaurant at home). Bigger – This is not much of a plus, although ordering appetizers for meals is cheaper.

The first authentic cafe experience was in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Will and I sat in a booth amid other lunch-goers who were predominantly large men (and I do not mean tall) many of whom were clad in bib and brace overalls, checked shirts and trucker caps. (I felt as if I had fallen into a retro American sitcom). The waitress was only just understandable as she asked us in a broad southern accent what we would like to drink. I decided on lemonade. Will asked for coffee. She bustled away and arrived back rather quickly with a very generous, tall glass with ice and what tasted like lemon cordial – not a bubble in sight or on the palate. She brought a mug and filled it from a pot of coffee. It was black and strong. We then ordered food – Will, a catfish burger and me, a cheesy melt. Will rather liked his burger but the small taste I had of the catfish seemed slimy and I could not say enjoyable. (Expectation could have had a lot to do with this!) As Will finished his burger and slaw and got 3/4 of the way through the mug of coffee, commenting that he was not aware that his coffee would come in such a large format and that he hoped that getting 3/4 of the way through it would be acceptable practice. Having barely finished that sentence, the waitress arrived at our table and promptly filled Will’s mug with coffee, to the brim. The look on his face was one of shock which quickly changed to stifled hilarity! This was our first experience of ‘refills’.

Refills of soda based drinks and coffee without extra cost are commonplace. So is sweet tea, which we tried and is a cold drink but paradoxically, it does not taste sweet. It just tastes like cold tea.

Perhaps because we are in the southern states, there is rarely anything on a menu that is not barbequed or fried. It is quite difficult to find something on a menu that has any vegetables or salad with it and if “seasonal vegetables” are ordered, in my experience, they seemed to be doused in a sauce. I had no idea what vegetables I was eating as they were cubed, all pink and tasted of sweet syrup. Green vegetables were obviously not in season.

Sandwiches are always on the menu – I took this to mean 2 slices of bread with filling. I was wrong again! Sandwiches are burger buns with filling – most often a stack of meat and perhaps a slice of tomato or a generous two. They always come with fries (what we might term chips) or chips (which are homemade potato crisps).

On the last day of the tour, I tried fried green tomatoes with shrimp sauce. The shrimp sauce was rich and tangy. The breaded and fried tomato slices were not tasty or very special.

Food adventures and glossary

Will and I have tried:

• grits – breakfast grits are like cerevite for those who remember that product but ‘cheesy grits’ are a smooth, cheesy, very thick sauce
• alligator legs – these were quite tough and did not taste of anything but the (surprise, surprise) sweet, chilli sauce
• a muffaletta – sausage, salami and ham, cheese and an olive sauce
• a po’ boy – this term is a contracted “poor boy” – originating from people giving the poor a sandwich of day old bread and whatever filling they had. Our bread was not old, thank heavens but again the focus was on a filling of lots of meat and little else
• beignets – these are donuts which are not circular but triangular. They are said to be one of the must dos in New Orleans and one must go to Café du Monde to eat them. We did as we were instructed and while we didn’t dislike them, they were just donuts after all.
• biscuits – these are basically what we would call scones. They look like them and tasted similar. These are eaten with white gravy. This gravy looked particularly unattractive to me so I did not partake – Will said that it was salty and peppery.
• cornbread – this was served with many meals and looked like a small patty cake. The texture was grainy and the taste quite sweet.
• gumbo – This is like a hearty soup. This was one of the highlights of this food adventure for Will. There are many types of gumbo and as you travel further south they are often tomato-based.
• jambalaya – this was given a big wrap by our tour guide and she took us to the best place in New Orleans to eat it. I must say that we were disappointed, not that it wasn’t an enjoyable mixture of meat, vegetables and rice but that it was not unlike paella and not exceptional at all.
• collard greens – I don’t know whether these vary from state to state but our experience of them was not particularly positive – like silverbeet but not as nice – yes, seriously that nice!
• crawfish and shrimp – Crawfish is a size of shellfish that could be described as between a King prawn and a lobster. Shrimp are simply prawns – New Orleans tended to serve shrimp in most forms and in most menu items.

Alcohol

Keeping in mind that I have been in Nashville, Memphis, Clarksdale, and Natchez frequenting bars which offer the local music passion, such as Country and Western, Rock and Soul and Blues it was probably not surprising that a request for a glass of Sauvignon Blanc was met with raised eyebrows, a quizzical look or ‘We only have beer’. What I have discovered though is that if a glass of wine is poured, it is filled to the brim – there are none of those pesky lines to interfere with bar tending skills. This also goes for the pouring of spirits – there are often no measures – there is the cup, here is the vodka, pour until you think you have enough in there and then put a splash of soda in the top! Bigger – this is a plus but I admit only because Will and I do not have to consider driving at any point in this particular trip. As we headed into New Orleans with at least some French influence, wine was much more a common menu item but still had no glass limitations. Yesssss!

 “Anyway, like I was sayin’, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. There’s shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That, that’s about it.” -Bubba