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Proteins are the building blocks of life. They catalyze biochemical reactions and facilitate the body's overall functioning. A lemon? Not so much.
So what was a lemon wedge doing next to my sirloin steak at the Olde Towne Steak & Seafood in Fredericksburg?
A cooked steak needs lemon like a fish needs a bicycle. Equally, why was the dead cow served sizzling on a hot plate?
“We’ve always done it that way,” the waitress revealed.
An excuse I haven’t heard since Fiddler On The Roof.
I should’ve bailed at the first sight of portion-controlled butter pads.
Nothing says Abandon All Hope Ye Who Eat Here like those little silver or gold packets. Especially if they’re harder than trigonometry.
Being protein deficient; I decided to tough it out.
As did the steak. The dieting gurus who used to recommend chewing your food a dozen times before swallowing would have been well pleased.
Regular readers will know I’ve avoided eating at chain restaurants during my Ridiculously Random Motorcycle Tour. I’m here to report that the result has been only slightly less than nauseating.
Breakfast of Champions
With the ignoble exception of Hampton Inn’s fowl omelettes, rubbery mystery meat sausages and barely formed pastries, breakfast in American offers super tramp food.
If you’re low on money and don’t want to load-up on sugar, fat, salt and starch, two eggs over medium, bacon and dry wheat toast is easy on the wallet.
OK, bacon IS fat and restaurant bread IS sugar, but compared to what?
Compared to the open-faced egg sandwich dished-up by The Ordinary B&B in Sperryville, VA.
Gently seasoned fried eggs on a bed of arugula and prosciutto over a crisp bruschetta. What's not to love?
A total - and totally welcome - outlier.
Lunch is For Losers
You might think salads are the two-wheeled wanderer's answer to a healthy lunch. Maybe. But then you’d have to eat it.
You. Not me. To paraphrase Henny Youngman, take today’s chef salad at Cathedral Cafe in Fayetteville, VA. Please!
In case it’s not obvious, I was served a pile of rock hard chicken atop a miserly amount of minuscule avocado cubes, four overripe cherry tomato halves, some sliced burger onion, indiscriminate hunks of palate-crushing blue cheese and lettuce chopped small enough to resist both spearing and fork balancing.
Microscopic examination revealed Romaine. Contemplating the average restaurant salad, I find myself muttering the same words I chanted when I endured the first half of Titanic. Iceberg! Iceberg! Iceberg!
Is iceberg lettuce a vegetable? I tastes like some kind of plastic industry by-product. Unless you smother it with thick, hugely calorific dressing. Then it tastes like the dressing,
In my endless quest for mid-day palatable protein, burgers are my back-up.
Yesterday's example at The Southside Junction Tap House was voted “Best Burger in the New River and Greenbriar Area." How great is that?
The ground-up bovine bits were excellent. Ruined by an ice-cold bun adorned with ancient grill marks.
As is the way of such things, the waitress offered a choice of sides: fries, sweet potato fries or a salad. Inspired by my dining experience at The Cathedral, I opted for nun of the above.
The Porthole Restaurant and Pub in Portland Maine trumpets its BDE (Big Deck Energy). While the glue-thick clam chowder was a sumptuous farrago of clams and potatoes, its butter and cream quotient screamed BCD (Big Cholesterol Death).
As for the scallops drowning in butter.... one fell off my fork and bounced on the bar top. In keeping with my Jewish tradition, I adopted a Texas twang, pretended I was a seafood newbie and sent them back.
As unhealthy as the “homemade” food has been in down and mid-market non-chain restaurants, I have received my...
Just Deserts
Americans love desert so much that's the way they start their day: cake masquerading as muffins, french toast or waffles drizzled in chemicals masquerading as maple syrup, caffeine sweetened with different chemicals, etc.
Hands up. I have a weakness for sugar sold as health food. Granola bars. Anything granola, really.
I was powerless to resist the Power Oats at The Roasted Granola in Arlington, MA. A mellifluous medley of steel cut oatmeal, overnight oats, chia pudding, pecan granola, yogurt and mixed fruit. No more calorific than a snickers bar.
Snack Attack
Coconut is my kryptonite. The not-too-sweet and deliciously moist coconut donut at Pure Eats in Lexington, VA was to die for. Literally.
Then again… Espresso brownies at Lewisburg’s Wild Bean? Bean there, done that, adjusted a belt loop.
Did you know that The Home of the Brave is home to hundreds of small, summer-only ice cream stands peddling homemade ice cream?
It's one thing to know it, it's another not to stop at one after a hot summer's morning motorcycling.
Desert Deserts!
I forgot exactly where I ate it, and I'm trying to forget the prime rib preceding it, but I will never forget the lemon pie at the Gateway to the Smokies. And my unrealized vow to stay svelte.
Waisted Again
If you don’t care about your looks, energy, chronic disease and/or disability in The Land of the Free’s restaurants, your taste buds will be delighted.
If you’re an itinerant traveler who wants to eat clean, you’re pretty much clean out of luck. Not so for architecture fans.
Not So Gorgeous
As of this writing, I've found myself in two tiny burgs in a row: Lewisburg (in the middle of nowhere) and Fayetteville (down the road from the New River Gorge bridge).
Both greet visitors with signs proclaiming themselves "the coolest small town in America."
Towns that have no more idea of "cool" than any of the three ex-cult members I dated in Austin. As witnessed by a notable lack of architectural interest. Otherwise...
I've see a great many cool buildings over the last two months. A soul-pleasing plethora of pre-modern architectural eye candy.
Artfully finished stores and office blocks embodying long lost commercial confidence. Symmetrical civic structures projecting power and permanence – in towns whose fortunes have faded into the mists of time.
Asymmetrical Victorian houses dressed to impress with lyrical embellishments, built before the horror of world war robbed their proud owners of their splendid isolation.
We're blessed to live in a country where countless forgotten fires didn't completely destroy our architectural heritage.
That said, there are plenty of abominations afoot. And above.
To wit: the priapic protrusion atop Gorham, New Hampshire's City Hall. Part of the original design, believe it or not.
Or Vanderbilt University's multiplicity of brutalist buildings adhering to the Hitler's Bunker School of Architecture.
All of which has taught me…
If every non-chain restaurant served excellent healthy fresh food, if every American city and town preserved its architectural past and banned buildings defined by construction cost – we wouldn't value today's exceptions.
As Joseph B. Wirthlin said...
The more often we see the things around us - even the beautiful and wonderful things - the more they become invisible to us. That is why we often take for granted the beauty of this world: the flowers, the trees, the birds, the clouds - even those we love. Because we see things so often, we see them less and less.
A good reason to leave home from time to time. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Even if I'm not sticking to my diet.
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Glad you made it to Lewisburg and it appears you rode Rt 60 west to Fayetteville, glad you are not going for lack of nourishment….