Okay, sitting down to write this, the first thing I'm realizing is that I don't have any pictures of the place and, if you'd seen it, you'd understand why. It looks like pretty much dozens of other roadside... let's say "general" stores... scattered around the US. Shack-like buildings selling junk food, alcohol, souvenirs, and trinkets, uniquely situated at a distance where travelers need to stretch legs, get snacks, and go to the bathroom. Of course, they're filled with all sorts of things to attract the eyes of children, somewhat forcing you to spend money on junk that mostly goes into the trash once the vacation (or whatever) is over. If the junk even makes it home at all.
Not that I'm saying that The Peg House is that kind of store. I'm also not not saying that.
Of course, The Peg House is slightly different because it's actually a somewhat historic building in that it was put together with wooden pegs rather than nails, hence the name. Not that that makes it historic. My impression is that the building has been there a while, which may or may not be true; it's just my impression.
But you thought this was a food review, right?
Which is the point. If you were driving past this place without knowing what it really is, you would never be enticed to stop if you didn't have a little kid in the back seat threatening to water your seat covers. It looks like a general store, even once you walk inside. I mean, all of the kid traps, including special $5 and $10 grab bags placed right on the floor just inside the door, are right up at the front where you walk in. All of which is why my wife and I didn't stop there last year when we were driving up to Eureka; there's nothing special about it from the outside. Or the inside, for that matter.
But, this time, we already knew we were stopping there for burgers and that they are supposed to be some of the best burgers on the west coast. Even so, we were confused when we walked in. So confused that we walked back out and looked around outside to make sure we were at the right place. Going in a little farther, there was a menu over the counter, but it still wasn't clear where to order the food, since there was nowhere to cook anything in the store we were in. Yes, I asked, and we placed our orders. We were close enough to the right place for it to count.
Honestly, I was a little bit skeptical of everything at that point.
After placing our orders, burgers and cole slaw, because they don't have a deep fryer for fries. Yeah, that's what I said: They don't offer fries with their burgers because they don't have a way to cook them. Do you wonder why I was skeptical? And I'm not really a fan of cole slaw because, mostly, unless you make it yourself, cole slaw sucks.
Anyway, after placing our orders, we poked around in the store for a while, which was, actually, a moderate amount of fun. Kind of like treasure hunting because they had so much odd stuff in there. Not that the stuff in-and-of-itself was odd, but it was all rather -- and I hate this word -- random, so you couldn't tell what you were going to come across. But I digress from the food, which came without too much of a wait.
If you've been paying attention, you may have surmised that there's no interior seating. They do have a large patio area around the side-back set up with picnic tables. Of course, it was raining. They also have a small covered area with a couple of tables, so we were able to get out of what was then, fortunately, just a drizzle and sit down to eat our food.
Which brings us to the crux of this whole thing. As I've mentioned previously, we're always scouting burger joints (and I've done at least two burger review posts already), and Sunset magazine says The Peg House has the best burgers on the west coast. [Of course, Sunset magazine has never had burgers at my house but, then again, I also don't sell those burgers to the general public. Or any public.] That's a tall statement to live up to.
Now, I'm not going to say that these were the best burgers ever, or even the best burgers on the west coast, but they were very good. They're definitely in the category of burgers worth making a special stop for. I'm all in on the "never don't stop" catch phrase they have. But let me get to the real reason you should never don't stop: the cole slaw.
Remember how I said I'm not really much for cole slaw? Maybe that's because my idea of cole slaw was formed at a young age by what was then Kentucky Fried Chicken. Nasty stuff, still to this day. Or the day that was the last time I ate there, which was years ago. It's unusual to come across any cole slaw that I feel is worth eating. By worth eating, I mean it's fine. Fine enough to eat but still not great. However...
However, this was by far the best cole slaw I've ever had, which might not be saying a lot based on what I just said about cole slaw, so let me restate it: The cole slaw was awesome. Better than the burgers. I did already say that the burgers are good enough to warrant a special stop, right? Well, they are. And the cole slaw is even better. I was blown away. I mean, I just took a bite of it out of what amounts to politeness, and it was like a flavor explosion in my mouth. Man, now I want some of that cole slaw!
Fortunately, my kids are not into that kind of stuff. You basically have to force my son to try anything vegetable based that isn't a potato, and my daughter... Well, she's waffley. She did, at least, taste hers. Long story short, my wife and I scored extra cole slaw! So worth it! Seriously, if you're ever travelling up 101 and going through Leggett, stop for the burgers, but make sure you get the slaw!
Full disclosure: We did not stop on our way back south but not because we all didn't want to. It's just that we were somewhat recently stuffed on grilled cheese, but that's a review for another time.
Showing posts with label hamburgers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hamburgers. Show all posts
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Saturday, January 12, 2019
The Burger Review (a food review post)
As I mentioned last weekend, my daughter has a thing for hamburgers. For her next older brother up, it's pizza but, for her, it's hamburgers. And let me just say, it's a lot easier to find decent burgers in the wild than it is to find decent pizza. Not that there's a lot of decent burgers, but there is much more upward variation. And because it's my daughter who plays softball, we've tried a lot of burger joints, most of which are unrememberable. Just to clarify, we basically never stop at chain joints for burgers. The last chain joint we went to was Burger King (for reasons I can't remember), and that was... that was... hmm... more than three years ago. Maybe more than four years ago. It reminded me why we don't go to there.
Having said that, let me further clarify by saying that I don't consider Five Guys a chain joint. Probably, it is, but in my head it's not. Still, it's been almost a year since we went to Five Guys, and that was because my wife was out of town and the kids wanted to go there. Anyway...
So Five Guys...
We like Five Guys. I mean, if you want a burger on the cheaper side that is still pretty good, Five Guys is the place to go. One thing about burgers is that no good burger is not messy, and Five Guys has nailed the messy part of burger making. You'll have "sandwich hands" for days after eating at Five Guys. Plus, their fries are good. Really good, actually, in comparison to other burger places. Unfortunately, you're getting fries or you're getting their other kind of fries and, for an onion ring guy, that's a downside no matter how good the fries actually are.
In-and-Out...
Don't believe the hype. Okay, well, actually, if your experience with burgers doesn't extend beyond the big three (McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's), you can probably believe the hype. From that standpoint, I can understand why non-Californians get so worked up over In-and-Out (even John Scalzi!). When I first moved here 20 years ago -- 20 years ago! -- and my experience with burgers mostly didn't extend past the burger chains, I thought In-and-Out was great. I was blown away by it the first time I had it, in fact. But that was 20 years ago, and they haven't changed any. They have the worst fries of any burger place I've ever been, and their menu, also, is pretty limited. So, sure, they're probably better (maybe) than BK or McDonald's, but they don't stand up to Five Guys. Oh, and I'd probably go to In-and-Out over ever going to Habit again, so there's that, too, I guess.
Barney's...
Barney's is probably the best burger I've had that was made outside of my own kitchen (other than that one I had in D.C. when I was 15, but I have no way to legitimately grade that against any other burger ever, because that one has achieved Legendary status in my brain (I have a post where I talk about that somewhere, but I'm not going to pull the link up right now (too busy)))). Barney's is a place we stopped on the way back from a softball tournament many years ago, and my daughter immediately fell in love with them. According to her, they are the pinnacle of burger making. I suppose mine come close, or maybe she's just being nice. Who knows? Unfortunately, we don't have one close enough to us to make it a place we can just decide to go to on short notice. Going to Barney's is an event or, actually, gets rolled into some other event.
Superburger...
As far as burger places go, burger places we can just decide to go to if we decide we want burgers (because making burgers at home is a multi-day process, so we have to plan to make burgers at home ahead of time, days ahead of time), Superburger is the best place around. Period. I actually think their burgers are comparable to Barney's, but you'll never get my daughter to agree with that. However, they don't have good fries. They do have onion rings which are pretty tolerable, and they also make yam fries. They don't have anything close to the menu offerings that Barney's has, though, so Barney's has the edge, overall, as a place to go eat. Superburger does make some awesome shakes and, if shakes were a thing I partook of, that would definitely be my choice of places to go. Look, these shakes are better than any shake I've ever had from any ice cream place, which is kind of like if the best burger you could get came from KFC or Taco Bell.
Superburger does have one pretty huge drawback at this point: the cost. [And I'm looking at their menu online, right now, and I'm pretty sure those prices are not accurate to the last time we went there.] When we first started going there, I would say their prices were pretty reasonable, but, now, taking the whole family to Superburger is much more expensive than a family night out at the movies. In other words, I think we went to Superburger, like, twice in all of 2018. Not that we get food out all that often, anyway, but Superburger is not a part of the normal conversation of places to go if we are going to get food out. It just costs too much. It's become a "special occasion" place, which is unfortunate.
There are some other burger places in the area that we've tried that aren't worth mentioning, so I'll go ahead and mention them as places to never ever go, the first of which I'm seeing has actually gone out of business:
Bibi's Burger Bar: Very expensive but with fast food level food. I'm not surprised they had to close their doors.
Phyllis' Giant Burgers: Frozen burger patties at their finest. Seriously, these are the kind of burgers you can make at home by buying frozen patties at the grocery store and picking up some tasteless white bread buns.
Ozzie's Grill: The only reason they stay open is that they are supported by the middle school and high school that they're halfway in between. Comparable to Phyllis' above.
It's possible that there are some restaurants that have better burgers than Superburger and Barney's, but I haven't had them and, when you think of getting a burger, you think of going to a burger place. Of course, when you think of getting a shake, you'd probably think of going to an ice cream shop, but I think of a burger joint.
So there's your burger rundown to go along with last week's review of Habit Burger.
Having said that, let me further clarify by saying that I don't consider Five Guys a chain joint. Probably, it is, but in my head it's not. Still, it's been almost a year since we went to Five Guys, and that was because my wife was out of town and the kids wanted to go there. Anyway...
So Five Guys...
We like Five Guys. I mean, if you want a burger on the cheaper side that is still pretty good, Five Guys is the place to go. One thing about burgers is that no good burger is not messy, and Five Guys has nailed the messy part of burger making. You'll have "sandwich hands" for days after eating at Five Guys. Plus, their fries are good. Really good, actually, in comparison to other burger places. Unfortunately, you're getting fries or you're getting their other kind of fries and, for an onion ring guy, that's a downside no matter how good the fries actually are.
In-and-Out...
Don't believe the hype. Okay, well, actually, if your experience with burgers doesn't extend beyond the big three (McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's), you can probably believe the hype. From that standpoint, I can understand why non-Californians get so worked up over In-and-Out (even John Scalzi!). When I first moved here 20 years ago -- 20 years ago! -- and my experience with burgers mostly didn't extend past the burger chains, I thought In-and-Out was great. I was blown away by it the first time I had it, in fact. But that was 20 years ago, and they haven't changed any. They have the worst fries of any burger place I've ever been, and their menu, also, is pretty limited. So, sure, they're probably better (maybe) than BK or McDonald's, but they don't stand up to Five Guys. Oh, and I'd probably go to In-and-Out over ever going to Habit again, so there's that, too, I guess.
Barney's...
Barney's is probably the best burger I've had that was made outside of my own kitchen (other than that one I had in D.C. when I was 15, but I have no way to legitimately grade that against any other burger ever, because that one has achieved Legendary status in my brain (I have a post where I talk about that somewhere, but I'm not going to pull the link up right now (too busy)))). Barney's is a place we stopped on the way back from a softball tournament many years ago, and my daughter immediately fell in love with them. According to her, they are the pinnacle of burger making. I suppose mine come close, or maybe she's just being nice. Who knows? Unfortunately, we don't have one close enough to us to make it a place we can just decide to go to on short notice. Going to Barney's is an event or, actually, gets rolled into some other event.
Superburger...
As far as burger places go, burger places we can just decide to go to if we decide we want burgers (because making burgers at home is a multi-day process, so we have to plan to make burgers at home ahead of time, days ahead of time), Superburger is the best place around. Period. I actually think their burgers are comparable to Barney's, but you'll never get my daughter to agree with that. However, they don't have good fries. They do have onion rings which are pretty tolerable, and they also make yam fries. They don't have anything close to the menu offerings that Barney's has, though, so Barney's has the edge, overall, as a place to go eat. Superburger does make some awesome shakes and, if shakes were a thing I partook of, that would definitely be my choice of places to go. Look, these shakes are better than any shake I've ever had from any ice cream place, which is kind of like if the best burger you could get came from KFC or Taco Bell.
Superburger does have one pretty huge drawback at this point: the cost. [And I'm looking at their menu online, right now, and I'm pretty sure those prices are not accurate to the last time we went there.] When we first started going there, I would say their prices were pretty reasonable, but, now, taking the whole family to Superburger is much more expensive than a family night out at the movies. In other words, I think we went to Superburger, like, twice in all of 2018. Not that we get food out all that often, anyway, but Superburger is not a part of the normal conversation of places to go if we are going to get food out. It just costs too much. It's become a "special occasion" place, which is unfortunate.
There are some other burger places in the area that we've tried that aren't worth mentioning, so I'll go ahead and mention them as places to never ever go, the first of which I'm seeing has actually gone out of business:
Bibi's Burger Bar: Very expensive but with fast food level food. I'm not surprised they had to close their doors.
Phyllis' Giant Burgers: Frozen burger patties at their finest. Seriously, these are the kind of burgers you can make at home by buying frozen patties at the grocery store and picking up some tasteless white bread buns.
Ozzie's Grill: The only reason they stay open is that they are supported by the middle school and high school that they're halfway in between. Comparable to Phyllis' above.
It's possible that there are some restaurants that have better burgers than Superburger and Barney's, but I haven't had them and, when you think of getting a burger, you think of going to a burger place. Of course, when you think of getting a shake, you'd probably think of going to an ice cream shop, but I think of a burger joint.
So there's your burger rundown to go along with last week's review of Habit Burger.
Saturday, January 5, 2019
A Bad Habit (a food review)
Doing food reviews is not a thing I've spent a lot of time doing, for no other reason than that I haven't spent a lot of time doing it. Any time I've had an urge to review a restaurant, I've always fallen back on "That's not a thing I do." I guess that's changing.
Mostly, I've had the urge to do reviews on places that I've enjoyed. Actually, that's completely true... until today, but I'll work my way back through the restaurants I think are really worthy of being visited.
However, today, I'm going to warn you away from a place, and I'm starting here because this is a chain place, whereas most of the places I'll be talking about are local spots. Which may not be the most helpful for most of you out there, but we don't (1) eat out all that much and (2), when we do, we don't visit many chain establishments.
But we went to Habit Burger, which is supposed to be a big deal; I was sorely disappointed.
See, my daughter is a bit of a burger fan, a thing that is somewhat related to softball and going to tournaments and getting her burgers on the road. It's only natural that she wanted to try Habit Burger when it moved into our area. As it happened, New Year's Day turned out to be a great time to do that because we'd been off doing other things, and I wasn't going to be able to cook dinner in any kind of reasonable time frame. Since we'd just been talking about Habit, like, the day before, I decided it would be a good time to give them a try.
Obvious disappointment #1:
They messed up the order. Despite the fact that the guy taking the order read the order back to me correctly and despite the fact that the girl who gave me our order when it was ready read off the order correctly, when we got home with the food, the order was not correct.
Less obvious disappointment #1:
Nothing was labeled, so I had to open every fucking burger wrapper to figure out who was supposed to get what, which is how I discovered the above disappointment because pickles had been left off of all of the burgers rather than off of just one of them.
Obvious disappointment #2:
The food was soggy. All of it. We don't live very far from where Habit Burger is located and ate as soon as we got home and, yet, all of the food was soggy when I took it out of the bag. If this is going to be a problem with your food, you should warn customers, like the "microwave not recommended" warnings on some frozen foods. Soggy burgers are just not pleasant. Neither are soggy onion rings.
Less obvious disappointment #2:
The onion rings and tempura green beans weren't quite cooked all the way. Both had a doughy flavor which is common when the dough doesn't cook through. Not that the onion rings would have been that much better if they had been all the way cooked, because the batter was ill-spiced.
Less obvious disappointment #3:
The buns were common white bread buns that you can pick up in any grocery store. Don't offer me something that I can just as easily buy at Safeway. Including the American cheese that passed for cheese on the burgers. If I want to add American cheese to my burger, I'll buy a pack at the grocery store and do it myself, because why the fuck do I want to pay $0.60 for a single slice of fucking American cheese? So tell me upfront that your cheese option is only American.
Less obvious disappointment #4:
My kids got shakes because, you know, shakes, and the shakes didn't even meet approval. The shakes got shrugs of okayness. How hard is it to make a decent shake? Too difficult for Habit Burger, I guess. It made me want to drive them over to McDonald's and have them compare for me. Not that would have been any real help since I didn't try the shakes and I haven't had a McDonald's shake in... um... I don't think my fingers go that high.
At this point, the only thing I can say that Habit Burger has going for it is their pricing which, I think, isn't bad? I don't really know since fast food establishments are not places I frequently visit. All I know is that they were cheaper than Five Guys (but I'll get to them some other time).
On the one hand, some of these issues were specific to the particular Habit Burger we went to (like the order being incorrect); however, assuming all of those issues had been fixed, it still wasn't a very good burger, so I'm not sure what all of the hype is about. They didn't rise to the level of McDonald's or Burger King and, let's face it, those are pretty low bars.
Needless to say, we won't be returning to Habit Burger. As I said on FaceBook, they don't even rise to the level of emergency food.
Mostly, I've had the urge to do reviews on places that I've enjoyed. Actually, that's completely true... until today, but I'll work my way back through the restaurants I think are really worthy of being visited.
However, today, I'm going to warn you away from a place, and I'm starting here because this is a chain place, whereas most of the places I'll be talking about are local spots. Which may not be the most helpful for most of you out there, but we don't (1) eat out all that much and (2), when we do, we don't visit many chain establishments.
But we went to Habit Burger, which is supposed to be a big deal; I was sorely disappointed.
See, my daughter is a bit of a burger fan, a thing that is somewhat related to softball and going to tournaments and getting her burgers on the road. It's only natural that she wanted to try Habit Burger when it moved into our area. As it happened, New Year's Day turned out to be a great time to do that because we'd been off doing other things, and I wasn't going to be able to cook dinner in any kind of reasonable time frame. Since we'd just been talking about Habit, like, the day before, I decided it would be a good time to give them a try.
Obvious disappointment #1:
They messed up the order. Despite the fact that the guy taking the order read the order back to me correctly and despite the fact that the girl who gave me our order when it was ready read off the order correctly, when we got home with the food, the order was not correct.
Less obvious disappointment #1:
Nothing was labeled, so I had to open every fucking burger wrapper to figure out who was supposed to get what, which is how I discovered the above disappointment because pickles had been left off of all of the burgers rather than off of just one of them.
Obvious disappointment #2:
The food was soggy. All of it. We don't live very far from where Habit Burger is located and ate as soon as we got home and, yet, all of the food was soggy when I took it out of the bag. If this is going to be a problem with your food, you should warn customers, like the "microwave not recommended" warnings on some frozen foods. Soggy burgers are just not pleasant. Neither are soggy onion rings.
Less obvious disappointment #2:
The onion rings and tempura green beans weren't quite cooked all the way. Both had a doughy flavor which is common when the dough doesn't cook through. Not that the onion rings would have been that much better if they had been all the way cooked, because the batter was ill-spiced.
Less obvious disappointment #3:
The buns were common white bread buns that you can pick up in any grocery store. Don't offer me something that I can just as easily buy at Safeway. Including the American cheese that passed for cheese on the burgers. If I want to add American cheese to my burger, I'll buy a pack at the grocery store and do it myself, because why the fuck do I want to pay $0.60 for a single slice of fucking American cheese? So tell me upfront that your cheese option is only American.
Less obvious disappointment #4:
My kids got shakes because, you know, shakes, and the shakes didn't even meet approval. The shakes got shrugs of okayness. How hard is it to make a decent shake? Too difficult for Habit Burger, I guess. It made me want to drive them over to McDonald's and have them compare for me. Not that would have been any real help since I didn't try the shakes and I haven't had a McDonald's shake in... um... I don't think my fingers go that high.
At this point, the only thing I can say that Habit Burger has going for it is their pricing which, I think, isn't bad? I don't really know since fast food establishments are not places I frequently visit. All I know is that they were cheaper than Five Guys (but I'll get to them some other time).
On the one hand, some of these issues were specific to the particular Habit Burger we went to (like the order being incorrect); however, assuming all of those issues had been fixed, it still wasn't a very good burger, so I'm not sure what all of the hype is about. They didn't rise to the level of McDonald's or Burger King and, let's face it, those are pretty low bars.
Needless to say, we won't be returning to Habit Burger. As I said on FaceBook, they don't even rise to the level of emergency food.
Monday, June 1, 2015
Growing Up In the Race Divide (part 6c)
Picking up from 6b...
Lunches were included with the convention. The only problem was that the lunches were horrible. Well, that might not quite be fair. Maybe the food was good, but it was frozen, so who would know? Seriously, the first day, we all went and got our boxed lunch, which was fried chicken (and we thought that was awesome because we'd expected crappy bologna sandwiches or something), but, when we went to eat it, it was still frozen. None of us were happy.
The next day, the day of the elevator incident, Jeff decided that we were going out to lunch (and we discovered we were not a democracy despite being in Washington D.C.). Of course, we didn't know where anything was, but that wasn't a hindrance to Jeff. We would just walk until we found something!
Fortunately, the lunch break was rather long (like three hours? maybe four?), because that was also our sight-seeing time. So we walked and we saw bits of the city that we would never have seen on one of the bus tours and, finally, we found a place to eat.
It was a little burger joint; you know, one of those hole-in-the-wall kind of places owned by someone who knows how to cook. I mean really knows how to cook. We strolled in as if it was McDonald's. Which is to say that it wasn't McDonald's, and it wasn't McDonald's in the way that apples are not oranges. Because, see, Burger King and McDonald's are both oranges, and this was not that, and we were the only white people in the place. A relatively crowded place where every eye turned to stare at us when we walked in. Stared at us hard. Stared at us hard enough that we could feel it, which is saying a lot.
After a moment, they all turned away and ignored us just as hard as they had stared at us. We got in line. The ignoring was more uncomfort-making than the staring had been. Especially when we made it to the front of the line and they continued ignoring us. Then, they started taking orders from people behind us, and none of us knew what to say. I mean, it was obvious they knew we were there, and it was just as obvious that they were not going to acknowledge our presence.
Bob and the girl started nudging Jeff and whispering, "Let's just go." He kept saying, "No." One of them started in about being hungry, and I pointed out that we weren't going to have enough time to find another place to eat if we stayed for much longer. Jeff said he wasn't leaving without being served. It was all so very unreal. Almost like we didn't even exist. No, it was exactly like we didn't exist. It could have been right out of the Twilight Zone. Except the racist version.
Eventually, the lunch rush was over and there were no more people coming in. Eventually, we were the only ones standing there. Eventually, people started emptying out of the place, and we were still standing there. And Jeff wouldn't leave.
Jeff wouldn't leave!
But, eventually, the guy behind the counter gave in. I think we'd been standing there at least an hour at that point. He took our order, and we sat down to wait. They didn't actually make us wait an inordinate amount of time for the burgers.
You know what? All of it, all of the waiting, was worth it. To that point in my life, that was the best burger I'd ever had. By far. It was amazing, and it still occupies a mythical place in my mind. The mythical place of "best burger ever." We told them that, too, before we left. They actually looked gratified.
And we made it back to the convention center on time. Barely.
So the obvious point here is that racism can go both ways and, while that is a point, that is not the point. The point is that we would never have gotten away with what we did if we weren't white. No one threatened us. No one called us names. No one resorted to violence towards us. In an opposite circumstance, a group of black kids in a white establishment like that would have been forced to leave, if not through words then through actions.
It was an eye opening experience, to say the least, and a valuable lesson that I have never forgotten.
Now, the epilogue to the elevator incident:
After the "success" of our lunch outing, Jeff decided that we should walk back to the hotel from the convention center. Despite the points of not really knowing the way (he said, "How hard could it be? We just need to go toward the Capitol.") and not knowing how far it was (his logic was that it only took, like, five minutes by the Metro, so how far could it be?), we learned, again, how much not a democracy we were. After all, he was in charge. Right? So we walked...
And we walked...
And we walked some more. Somewhere in there, we stopped for food, but that went more smoothly than lunch had gone, and we walked some more.
We finally made it back to the hotel some time close to midnight. Only three-ish hours late. On the door, on all the doors, was a bulletin. Someone had set off the fire alarm in the hotel that morning (and after the incident with the actual fire at the other hotel, no one thought it was funny), and they were looking for the perpetrators -- there was a reward and everything -- so they could send them home at their own expense.
We were horrified.
Jeff started giving orders about how we shouldn't talk about the thing in the elevator and rushing us up to the room and, generally, making us more freaked out than we already were. Bob and I spent the rest of the trip with this fear poking the backs of our heads that we were going to get found out and sent home. And we didn't have any money to pay to be sent home! We'd worked and scraped to get enough money just to go on the trip. There was nothing left over!
Jeff, though, he was fine. See, unbeknownst to us, he went and did some asking around about it and found out the elevator thing was isolated to the elevator and what they were looking for was someone who had actually set off the hotel fire alarm and caused an evacuation until they figured out that it was a false alarm. Of course, it didn't occur to him to tell us that we had nothing to worry about. We didn't find that out until we were on our way home and one of us said, "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about getting sent home, now." He just laughed.
Yeah, thanks, Jeff.
Lunches were included with the convention. The only problem was that the lunches were horrible. Well, that might not quite be fair. Maybe the food was good, but it was frozen, so who would know? Seriously, the first day, we all went and got our boxed lunch, which was fried chicken (and we thought that was awesome because we'd expected crappy bologna sandwiches or something), but, when we went to eat it, it was still frozen. None of us were happy.
The next day, the day of the elevator incident, Jeff decided that we were going out to lunch (and we discovered we were not a democracy despite being in Washington D.C.). Of course, we didn't know where anything was, but that wasn't a hindrance to Jeff. We would just walk until we found something!
Fortunately, the lunch break was rather long (like three hours? maybe four?), because that was also our sight-seeing time. So we walked and we saw bits of the city that we would never have seen on one of the bus tours and, finally, we found a place to eat.
It was a little burger joint; you know, one of those hole-in-the-wall kind of places owned by someone who knows how to cook. I mean really knows how to cook. We strolled in as if it was McDonald's. Which is to say that it wasn't McDonald's, and it wasn't McDonald's in the way that apples are not oranges. Because, see, Burger King and McDonald's are both oranges, and this was not that, and we were the only white people in the place. A relatively crowded place where every eye turned to stare at us when we walked in. Stared at us hard. Stared at us hard enough that we could feel it, which is saying a lot.
After a moment, they all turned away and ignored us just as hard as they had stared at us. We got in line. The ignoring was more uncomfort-making than the staring had been. Especially when we made it to the front of the line and they continued ignoring us. Then, they started taking orders from people behind us, and none of us knew what to say. I mean, it was obvious they knew we were there, and it was just as obvious that they were not going to acknowledge our presence.
Bob and the girl started nudging Jeff and whispering, "Let's just go." He kept saying, "No." One of them started in about being hungry, and I pointed out that we weren't going to have enough time to find another place to eat if we stayed for much longer. Jeff said he wasn't leaving without being served. It was all so very unreal. Almost like we didn't even exist. No, it was exactly like we didn't exist. It could have been right out of the Twilight Zone. Except the racist version.
Eventually, the lunch rush was over and there were no more people coming in. Eventually, we were the only ones standing there. Eventually, people started emptying out of the place, and we were still standing there. And Jeff wouldn't leave.
Jeff wouldn't leave!
But, eventually, the guy behind the counter gave in. I think we'd been standing there at least an hour at that point. He took our order, and we sat down to wait. They didn't actually make us wait an inordinate amount of time for the burgers.
You know what? All of it, all of the waiting, was worth it. To that point in my life, that was the best burger I'd ever had. By far. It was amazing, and it still occupies a mythical place in my mind. The mythical place of "best burger ever." We told them that, too, before we left. They actually looked gratified.
And we made it back to the convention center on time. Barely.
So the obvious point here is that racism can go both ways and, while that is a point, that is not the point. The point is that we would never have gotten away with what we did if we weren't white. No one threatened us. No one called us names. No one resorted to violence towards us. In an opposite circumstance, a group of black kids in a white establishment like that would have been forced to leave, if not through words then through actions.
It was an eye opening experience, to say the least, and a valuable lesson that I have never forgotten.
Now, the epilogue to the elevator incident:
After the "success" of our lunch outing, Jeff decided that we should walk back to the hotel from the convention center. Despite the points of not really knowing the way (he said, "How hard could it be? We just need to go toward the Capitol.") and not knowing how far it was (his logic was that it only took, like, five minutes by the Metro, so how far could it be?), we learned, again, how much not a democracy we were. After all, he was in charge. Right? So we walked...
And we walked...
And we walked some more. Somewhere in there, we stopped for food, but that went more smoothly than lunch had gone, and we walked some more.
We finally made it back to the hotel some time close to midnight. Only three-ish hours late. On the door, on all the doors, was a bulletin. Someone had set off the fire alarm in the hotel that morning (and after the incident with the actual fire at the other hotel, no one thought it was funny), and they were looking for the perpetrators -- there was a reward and everything -- so they could send them home at their own expense.
We were horrified.
Jeff started giving orders about how we shouldn't talk about the thing in the elevator and rushing us up to the room and, generally, making us more freaked out than we already were. Bob and I spent the rest of the trip with this fear poking the backs of our heads that we were going to get found out and sent home. And we didn't have any money to pay to be sent home! We'd worked and scraped to get enough money just to go on the trip. There was nothing left over!
Jeff, though, he was fine. See, unbeknownst to us, he went and did some asking around about it and found out the elevator thing was isolated to the elevator and what they were looking for was someone who had actually set off the hotel fire alarm and caused an evacuation until they figured out that it was a false alarm. Of course, it didn't occur to him to tell us that we had nothing to worry about. We didn't find that out until we were on our way home and one of us said, "Well, I guess we don't have to worry about getting sent home, now." He just laughed.
Yeah, thanks, Jeff.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Let's go on Vacation! Part 2: The Menu
Disclaimer: Unfortunately, I didn't think to take pictures of any of this part of the trip, mostly because I was busy cooking and, then, eating the food. It just didn't occur to me to tell someone to grab the camera and take any pictures, especially since I'm generally the guy taking the pictures. Maybe next time though.
What to eat on a vacation is always a big deal. Okay, so it may not really be that big a deal to most people. Most people eat out all of the time anyway, so eating out while on vacation is rather expected. However, we don't eat out all that often. We don't even eat out once a week. Even counting pizza, I don't think we eat out more than a couple of times a month. Of course, camping isn't exactly about eating out, but we also didn't want to spend a week eating cheap, crappy hot dogs and stuff. Besides, hot dogs cost more than, well, all but the expensive cuts of steak.
Don't believe me? Go check it out. Generally speaking, at least at Safeway, hot dogs run about $5.00/pound. In my mind, that's freaking insane. Chicken doesn't cost that much. Pork almost never costs more than that, and, just this week, I got some really nice New York strip steaks for $4.99/pound. Why would I even consider paying that kind of price for hot dogs when I can buy steak instead. By the way, lunch meat is the same way (even bologna), which I can (kind of) understand but not really. It just goes to show what we're willing to pay for convenience.
I suppose my family is not very convenient. Actually, I know this to be true.
In the end, camping food ended up being very much like home food. That was the decision, at any rate. But let me put this into context: this was a camping trip with the in-laws (my wife's father and step-mother), and they were rather difficult to pin down about how the whole eating thing was going to happen. Let me put this into more context: for years, they have taken my kids camping once or twice a year. When they go camping, they've always done the typical thing: eat lots of hot dogs and s'mores; they weren't really prepared for how we were planning to eat, and, I think, because we (my wife and I (really just me)) aren't into the whole camping thing, they figured we wouldn't know what to do when we got up there. However, having a stove, a real stove, to cook on is one of the reasons I wanted a cabin. A stove and a bed, see. So they brought lots of hot dogs. And bacon. And marshmallows.
We brought real food.
Needless to say, they ended up eating with us for most meals. Most means all of the dinners and about half of the breakfasts (we didn't really "do" lunch (there was never any need, because breakfast was so big and good no one would be hungry until around 4-5:00 anyway)).
By this point, I bet you're wondering what, exactly, we had for our dinners. Well, let me tell you!
Tuesday: rib eye steak, salad, bread
Wednesday: pork fajitas w/ sauce that we made, homemade ice cream (pineapple coconut)
Thursday: spaghetti, garlic bread (there was supposed to be salad, but, um, the refrigerator kind of froze it, so there wasn't much left worth eating (I did give it my best shot, though, but I just couldn't do it))
Friday: grilled salmon, salmon mac (mac 'n' cheese with salmon mixed in), kale chips (one of my favorite things! (it's something I make from fresh kale, not something we buy)) [and my father-in-law provided grilled chicken]
Saturday: hamburgers (I make the best hamburgers. Seriously. We kind of can't go out for burgers anymore because of it.), homemade buns (and my wife makes the best hamburger buns (we also make pretty much all of our own bread (except sourdough)), yam fries
Those were our evening meals. The in-laws were astounded. They decided that camping is better the way I do it. And it was nice to be cooking for people that appreciated my cooking (as opposed to complaining about it (as my kids do (because they still think sugar and carbs are the best things in the world))).
In no particular order, the breakfasts were
ham and cheese grits (the in-laws had never had grits before, so this was a new experience and, unless they were lying (and I'm pretty sure they weren't), they really liked them -- grits, good grits, are not the easiest thing in the world to make)
blueberry pancakes (homemade with fresh blueberries, of course (my wife doesn't like pancakes, but she loved these))
biscuits and sausage gravy (my favoritist breakfast in the world! (when it's done right))
French toast (my kids' favoritist breakfast and made with homemade bread (it's awesome))
All of these were accompanied by scrambled eggs and bacon (except the French toast, which just had bacon, because it's already covered in eggs). The last morning was just scrambled eggs and bacon as we were trying to take as little back with us as possible. We succeeded in eating all bacon, but we had to tote eggs home again.
All of that and there were 'smores basically every night. That made my daughter, especially, extremely happy.
So there you go... who wants to go camping with me next year?
What to eat on a vacation is always a big deal. Okay, so it may not really be that big a deal to most people. Most people eat out all of the time anyway, so eating out while on vacation is rather expected. However, we don't eat out all that often. We don't even eat out once a week. Even counting pizza, I don't think we eat out more than a couple of times a month. Of course, camping isn't exactly about eating out, but we also didn't want to spend a week eating cheap, crappy hot dogs and stuff. Besides, hot dogs cost more than, well, all but the expensive cuts of steak.
Don't believe me? Go check it out. Generally speaking, at least at Safeway, hot dogs run about $5.00/pound. In my mind, that's freaking insane. Chicken doesn't cost that much. Pork almost never costs more than that, and, just this week, I got some really nice New York strip steaks for $4.99/pound. Why would I even consider paying that kind of price for hot dogs when I can buy steak instead. By the way, lunch meat is the same way (even bologna), which I can (kind of) understand but not really. It just goes to show what we're willing to pay for convenience.
I suppose my family is not very convenient. Actually, I know this to be true.
In the end, camping food ended up being very much like home food. That was the decision, at any rate. But let me put this into context: this was a camping trip with the in-laws (my wife's father and step-mother), and they were rather difficult to pin down about how the whole eating thing was going to happen. Let me put this into more context: for years, they have taken my kids camping once or twice a year. When they go camping, they've always done the typical thing: eat lots of hot dogs and s'mores; they weren't really prepared for how we were planning to eat, and, I think, because we (my wife and I (really just me)) aren't into the whole camping thing, they figured we wouldn't know what to do when we got up there. However, having a stove, a real stove, to cook on is one of the reasons I wanted a cabin. A stove and a bed, see. So they brought lots of hot dogs. And bacon. And marshmallows.
We brought real food.
Needless to say, they ended up eating with us for most meals. Most means all of the dinners and about half of the breakfasts (we didn't really "do" lunch (there was never any need, because breakfast was so big and good no one would be hungry until around 4-5:00 anyway)).
By this point, I bet you're wondering what, exactly, we had for our dinners. Well, let me tell you!
Tuesday: rib eye steak, salad, bread
Wednesday: pork fajitas w/ sauce that we made, homemade ice cream (pineapple coconut)
Thursday: spaghetti, garlic bread (there was supposed to be salad, but, um, the refrigerator kind of froze it, so there wasn't much left worth eating (I did give it my best shot, though, but I just couldn't do it))
Friday: grilled salmon, salmon mac (mac 'n' cheese with salmon mixed in), kale chips (one of my favorite things! (it's something I make from fresh kale, not something we buy)) [and my father-in-law provided grilled chicken]
Saturday: hamburgers (I make the best hamburgers. Seriously. We kind of can't go out for burgers anymore because of it.), homemade buns (and my wife makes the best hamburger buns (we also make pretty much all of our own bread (except sourdough)), yam fries
Those were our evening meals. The in-laws were astounded. They decided that camping is better the way I do it. And it was nice to be cooking for people that appreciated my cooking (as opposed to complaining about it (as my kids do (because they still think sugar and carbs are the best things in the world))).
In no particular order, the breakfasts were
ham and cheese grits (the in-laws had never had grits before, so this was a new experience and, unless they were lying (and I'm pretty sure they weren't), they really liked them -- grits, good grits, are not the easiest thing in the world to make)
blueberry pancakes (homemade with fresh blueberries, of course (my wife doesn't like pancakes, but she loved these))
biscuits and sausage gravy (my favoritist breakfast in the world! (when it's done right))
French toast (my kids' favoritist breakfast and made with homemade bread (it's awesome))
All of these were accompanied by scrambled eggs and bacon (except the French toast, which just had bacon, because it's already covered in eggs). The last morning was just scrambled eggs and bacon as we were trying to take as little back with us as possible. We succeeded in eating all bacon, but we had to tote eggs home again.
All of that and there were 'smores basically every night. That made my daughter, especially, extremely happy.
So there you go... who wants to go camping with me next year?
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