How We Chow
Posted on February 28, 2009
Filed Under Food | 2 Comments
Posted by Daria
Those of you who know us personally know that food is never far from our thoughts. We eat most of our meals in the RV but like to eat out, too, especially when there’s “roadfood” available.
We have been devoted fans and buyers of Jane and Michael Stern’s Roadfood books for 20 years; in fact, we keep the older editions of the books and cross-reference them with the new ones. And we’re regular lurkers at Roodfood.com. The Sterns’ philosophy, that one should “eat local” (as one of the S.S. Destination’s bumper stickers says), i.e., partake of the food of the region, meshes with our desire to drink local beer.
So it’s really frustrating to visit a much-anticipated restaurant and leave feeling disappointed. Yes, the barbecue at such-and-such is tasty, but is it worth trying to park the RV for?
Roadfood.com is really useful because it includes not only the Sterns’ reviews but comments from more recent visitors. Sometimes the reviews help, sometimes not. For example, we just visited a place in Brunswick, Georgia, called the Ga., or Georgia, Pig. The Sterns love it, but recent reviews have been mixed. Another BBQ place in Brunswick got good reviews, but it was closed, so we decided to roll the dice and try the Ga. Pig. It was really good. Sierra’s sausage was really smoky, Stan’s chopped beef was tasty, my chopped pork was very good. I really liked the sauce. The beans were too sweet, but a dollop of hot sauce fixed that. So, if we had believed the recent comments, we would have missed out.
On the other side of the coin was a visit to Abe’s in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Stan and I had been there about 16 years ago, and it was pretty good. The Sterns still love it, but we didn’t think it was all that special.
Likewise with the Arcade Restaurant in Memphis. I was smitten by Roadfood’s gushing about the plethora of Southern-style vegetables. We got there at 1:15 p.m. and were told that the lunch specials were all sold out! Stan and I ordered breakfast, which was perfectly fine but nothing compared to the one (pictured at the top) we had the next day at the Blue & White in Tunica, also a Roadfood recommendation. Sierra had a wood-fired pizza at the Arcade, which wasn’t bad, but it was a little disturbing to see wood-fired pizza, not to mention items featuring goat cheese and brie, on the menu. We like those things, just not at a Roadfood stop.
Our most recent Roadfood stop was at Bertha’s Kitchen in Charleston, S.C. My fried fish and Sierra’s fried chicken were really good, but the sides were only OK. And Stan made a mistake he won’t soon forget, ordering pig’s feet. Let’s just say they looked better than they tasted. And they didn’t look all that great.
We check other food review websites, too. Chowhound is regularly reliable, and Trip Advisor sometimes has worthwhile posts, but both of them deal more frequently with upscale dining than we RVers can regularly afford. All in all, I’d have to say that figuring out where to eat is largely a crap shoot, no matter whose reviews you go by.
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Hey Stan! What color shoes do pigs wear in SC? Just thinking of you…..
Ron – shoes, any shoes, would surely be better than pig’s feet.