We’ve been out of the blogosphere for a while, possibly because we haven’t quite had what it takes to put together the final couple of blogs about our trip, particularly this one. This is the one where we rank the food that we so enjoyed on our trip and that we have been working hard to remove from our frames ever since. Happy to say that’s going well, by the way.
The food of the Midwestern United States and the Upper South is hearty stuff. Meaty. Fried. Smothered. Slow-smoked and pulled. Stewed in porky pot liquor.
Enough to send you to the hospital, though I hasten to add, not on this trip. This time all that happened was a meltdown after breakfast (a buffet of bacon, sausage, eggs, grits, sausage gravy, two kinds of stewed fruit, pumpkin muffins, and biscuits) our first morning at the Shaker Village, causing me to cancel the next morning’s reservation. Stunned silence in the reception area when I said, “We’ve reached our limit of sausage and bacon.” Followed by a long drawl: “I don’t think I’ve eveh heard that before! Reached your limit of sausage and bacon?!” “We’re Canadian,” I said (my fallback response whenever anything unusual happened on the trip). The sad thing was, this was actually the FIRST meal of sausage and bacon we had eaten; we had been having rather abstemious breakfasts.
Read on to discover why we were at the end of our rope. And why we are such fans of grilled chicken and fish and gorgeous green salads these days. Here are our ratings for the most frequently-consumed foodstuffs:
Fried Chicken
1. Kenyon’s (a very popular family restaurant in Lacon, IL, famous for its fried chicken and catfish – makes a pretty good margarita, too)
2. Kottage Kafe (a very popular family restaurant in Jacksonville, IL)
3. Loveless Café (a famous road food joint, verging on tourist trap, in Nashville, TN)
Country Ham
1. Huddle House, a chain in Kentucky (very generous slice of thinly cut, crisply cooked, salty ham)
2. Cracker Barrel, a chain everywhere! (ham was good but the accompanying macaroni and cheese, which is considered a vegetable, was delicious)
Pulled Pork
1. Jack’s BBQ (Nashville, TN) (very smoky, served dry so you control the sauce)
2. Loveless Café (very generous portion, but too much sauce)
Smothered Pork
1. Inn at Shaker Village (Pleasant Hill, KY) (very juicy and porky, made extra-special with apple cider)
2. Kottage Kafe (your mama’s pork chop with mushroom gravy)
Biscuits
1. Huddle House (talk about tender and flaky!)
2. Cracker Barrel (pretty darned good)
3. Loveless Café (big upset here – Loveless is famous for their biscuits)
Corn Bread
1. Cracker Barrel (high ratio of white corn meal makes these muffins delicious, and they were nice and moist, almost tamale-like)
2. Inn at Shaker Village (Yellow corn dodgers, tasty but not nirvana. But their dinner rolls, and the pumpkin muffins at breakfast (which must have had a lot of sorghum, or molasses, in them) were heavenly.)
Mashed Potatoes
1. Kottage Kafe (the best mashed potatoes Kelly has ever had – probably equal parts potato and butter)
2. Cracker Barrel
3. Kenyon’s
Green Beans (cooked almost to greyness with bacon and onions)
1. Kottage Kafe
2. Cracker Barrel
3. Kenyon’s
Greens (all well-cooked and involving pork products)
1. Cracker Barrel (turnip greens)
2. Inn at Shaker Village (cabbage)
3. Loveless Café (collards, oddly sweet – they must have used cider vinegar)
Pie
1. Grandma Rudi’s cherry pie (a little diner in Jacksonville, IL)
2. Kottage Kafe’s blackberry pie (stodgy crust, though)
3. Inn at Shaker Village – oatmeal pie (like pecan pie but with toasted oatmeal instead of pecans)
4. Matt’s Diner’s cherry pie (Raymond, IL) – a disappointment, since the previous owners made Plato’s cherry pie
5. Inn at Shaker Village – Shaker lemon pie (Slices of lemon suspended in a lemon curd. Much anticipated but kind of disappointing, actually – the filling lacked tang, and both their pies had thick, tough crusts)
So there you have it. We are not sure where our tummies will lead us next, but we're sure it will taste good. And be very, very bad for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment