One of the major highlights
from our seven-day road trip was the food.
I decided last summer that “counting” a country or a state—meaning you
can legitimately say you’ve been there—requires that you eat a meal (not in an
airport or train station) in that place.
You can see now why it was
important that we eat well. We had a
LOT of ground to cover.
Enter YELP. This website is a foodie travelista’s dream
come true. You can search for
restaurants across the US with all kinds of filters or preferences. We operated on a fool-proof method of operation: search “restaurant” with your proposed city
of dining, select one and two dollar sign establishments (we may be hungry, but
we’re not rich) then sort by highest rated.
From there, you must use your best judgment based on the information
provided by “the public.”
Early on, we discovered that
restaurants featuring cuisine from around the world were often among the
highest rated in a city. Layla’s Market
in Little Rock offered so many fantastic, mouth-watering selections that we
almost abandoned our trip and permanently camped out in this Mediterranean
diner in a strip mall on the northwest part of town. (Layla’s Market, coincidentally, won “Best Other Ethnic Cuisine”
in Little Rock, which still perplexes me…what constitutes “other ethnic”??)
However, we continued our
journey and made it to Nashville just in time to be the last customers at
Woodlands Indian Vegetarian Cuisine. A
combination of road-weariness and the overwhelming number of options on the
menu led us to put ourselves in the capable hands of our waiter. Our gamble paid off when he brought us a bit
of heaven, smothered in curry and wrapped in garlic naan. I’m not sure if it was our beauty (yeah,
yeah, that had to be it) or our exuberant eating or our tardy arrival when the
staff wanted to go home, but we ate for an audience of the ENTIRE kitchen crew.
Yes, ten men in their
kitchen whites lined up against the back wall, with arms folded, clearly making
comments about us and pointing, watched us eat. For an hour.
We tipped well.
After our first two
restaurants delivered such good results, we decided to yelp our way across the
Midwest and South until we arrived back home in good ol’ Texas.
And so the next seven days
unfolded in a haze of culinary bliss and the emergence of elastic
waistbands. (No seriously, my jeans did
not fit when I got home…but I consider it a small sacrifice.)
We had discovered early on
that restaurants featuring cuisine from around the world were usually among the
highest rated in a particular area.
What began as an amusing experiment—“of course we want falafel in
Arkansas!”—turned into a challenge: eat food from a different country in each
meal.
We ate Ethiopian in
Louisville...
 |
| About to eat Ethiopian fare with our hands at Queen of Sheba Restaurant! |
...Thai in Cincinnati, Italian in Charleston (WV), and Japanese in
Charlotte. There was Middle Eastern
cuisine in Greenville SC, Cajun cookin’ in Montgomery...
 |
| Shrimp and Grits? Yes, please! |
...and Vietnamese Pho in
Pensacola. We sampled Polish chocolate in Seymour, Indiana. At every turn, we met
wonderful people and tasted phenomenal food.
We were commenting on the
irony of our “I Heart America” Reunion Tour featuring so many non-American
cuisines, when somebody (either Steph or Alee) said this is what makes our
country great.
And it’s true. That’s the beauty of America. Though we are far from perfect, this is an
amazing, wonderful country. It’s
fantastic to walk down a street in the United States where Chinese, Afghan, French,
Mexican, and Egyptian immigrants all own businesses that support their families
in their new home while preserving the culinary traditions of their native home. We can experience the great beauty of each
culture through the food they cherish.
We can delight in the richness of flavor, the array of textures, and the
satisfaction of a healthy, well-prepared meal.
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