Crossing the Mason-Dixon On My Stomach

I was born in Arkansas. Which means a couple things, 1) I'm contractually obligated to knifefight any Johnny Cash haters to the death, or I am electrocuted and 2) there is part of me that is somewhere, always, yearning for hash browns and fried chicken. It's just a fact.

But I haven't been there in years and now that I've been steeped in everything from Cali-Mex, to rustic Italian to Modern McGreasewad to Vegetarian Approche, we took the 80 m.p.h. route back to my roots when my apartmentmates and I hit the road (and a mechanical bull) on the way down to the good ol' state of Tennessee. Points of cuisine interest even for Yankees abound:

1) Pal's Fast Food. Declaring "Sudden Service!" on their public-toilet shaded buildings, Pal's dishes up its apparently famous sweet iced tea--bit too sweet for me-- and Sloppy Joes and seasoned fries, hitting some kind of weird amoeba memory of eating there before. Or at least eating a Sloppy Joe, which I believe came standard in my lunches at Doris French Elementary School. Definitely a design and kitch high point, but I don't want to be responsible for some distressed bowels later on, is all I'm saying. I escaped...but only just. Plus side though, it's cheaper than dirt.

2) The Mellow Mushroom, Asheville, North Carolina. We visited Asheville for but a few hours, and I instantly became enamored of its groovy crunchy hippie musicality, that somehow combined everyone into a well-rested and slightly muddy Eden. The Mellow Mushroom, which is set in a giant place reminiscent of yes, a cafeteria, has vegan and vegetarian options without the steel bars of separation normally seen in places. I ordered pepperoni on my Mega-veg mini pizza ($11, a New Yorky price for a little town) and the waiter didn't blink. He was kind of a douche though, but it general you could not really tell who was not stoned in that town.

3) Chocolate Fetish, Asheville. A little storefront that I bypassed along with an art supply store in order to run to the book shop (I told you Asheville is quaint) before it closed. But luckily my friends got me pieces which ended up in me sticking something in my mouth what I had no idea about. "Mmm..hmm? Mm!" It ended up being, I swear, Basil Creme. Which was good but for the surprise factor that comes from having sadistic company. There was also a Chai flavor that went over quite well but my favorite when I myself got to sidle into the shop was the more tame flavor of Champagne, which was dusted with sparkly gold and was like heaven in five, delicate, savory nibbles. About what you'd pay at Godiva, but so much less processed and packaged.

4) The Waffle House, various. I think we saw like one for every five miles in at least West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee. We happened to stop at one that was rather dead and paid the price--we were ignored and the one line waiter moved haplessly slow on our "short orders". I got a chop steak (which I completely forgot the terminology of) which was basically a compressed meat patty of rubber texture and jalapeno hashbrowns and an eponymous waffle. The chop steak was horrible, as was the salad consisting of a prehistoric iceberg lettuce chunk liberally decorated with dry radishes, but the hash browns and the waffle were divine to the point of dying. Breakfast, it seems, always triumphs in the end. And cheaply too, had I not gotten the stupid meat. The vegetarians gloated.

So those were four highlights. Our other food outing was a solid, incredibly cliched chain: the Olive Garden where we were plied with stories by our overly chatty waiter as I gnawed on my knuckles from hunger. And one night we cooked a Vegan/Meatan Extravaganza which I may also document later with recipes (go stock up on your garlic Creme of Mushroom cans now!) And finally, a snack food discovery is Virginia Beef Jerky which is so fine and spicy it made my eyes tear as if eating wasabi peas. It came very highly recommended from a woman manning the mom and pop off I-81.

Is the South good for food? Oh yes. Is it good for your arteries?

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