Let’s say you’re eating a bag of M&M’s. You’ve munched your way through almost the entire bag, and you figure that there are probably one or two more in the bag, tucked away in one of the bottom corners, ready to give you one last bite of chocolatey goodness. You turn the bag upside down to get at the last candies, only to find that you were wrong. There are no more M&M’s in the bag. When you know you’re eating the last M&M in the bag, you take the time to savor it. But when you don’t realize you’re eating the last one, you gluttonously chomp away without an appropriate regard for the sweet deliciousness that is milk chocolate. And once you realize your mistake, you feel as though you’ve squandered a wonderful opportunity to enjoy one of life’s simple pleasures.
Then you die a little on the inside.
You stop in for a meal at a restaurant. You’re thirsty. The waitress asks for your drink order.
“I’ll have a Coke.”
“Is Pepsi okay?”
GAH! Well, it’s okay. I don’t really even dislike Pepsi. If I open up the fridge and see a Pepsi, I don’t mind drinking it. But wanting a Coke and having to settle for a Pepsi is an incredibly frustrating feeling. Some may say that the drinks don’t taste all that different. Trust me, they do. And when I’m really, really thirsty, a fountain Coke is quite possibly the best thing in the world. But to seek that thirst-quenching goodness and then have it ripped away from you by a restaurant’s exclusive contract with Pepsi can be a terrible, terrible feeling.
I admit I don’t know what the economic factors are involved in whether a restaurant decides to serve Coke or Pepsi. Obviously, some national chains have deals with one beverage company or the other. And I’m guessing Pepsi must be cheaper because why the hell would anyone choose Pepsi if it weren’t cheaper? I’ll admit that most people probably don’t scratch a restaurant off their list just because it serves Pepsi—I don’t—but sometimes I really find myself wondering why a restaurant skips out on Coke to serve Pepsi.
And no Coke means no Barq’s Root Beer either. I love Barq’s with a roast beef po-boy or fried shrimp or some other New Orleans-style food—given the regional connection, it just feels right. And Barq’s is so much different from other root beers that there’s really no comparison. I’m not saying that other kinds of root beer are worse; but nothing is really all that much like Barq’s.
So restaurant owners, I realize you’ve got a bottom line to consider, but please give us Coke, okay?
The other night I went out for a post-rehearsal bite to eat with some of my fellow Footloose cast members.* We stopped at City Diner, which seemed like a pretty decent place for the most part. It’s on the I-10 Service Road by Causeway, next to the LaQuinta, where Denny’s used to be. And given the location, it’s only natural that it serves up lots of the diner fare, albeit with a lot of New Orleans twists. One of my friends had shrimp remoulade(!) and liked a lot. Another had some onion rings; I tried one and it was quite good. I myself had pancakes, and they were fine. (Not as good as IHOP’s, I suppose, but not bad.) But that wasn’t the problem. Continue reading ‘restaurants that serve fake chocolate milk’
The 20th century brought us lots of wonderful inventions. The World Wide Web. Satellites. Airplanes. Bikinis. One invention, however, has a few benefits, but on the whole has been a terrible scourge to humanity. I speak of the microwave, of course, that destroyer of taste and producer of soggy, flavorless dishes. Any good New Orleanian must take a stand against bad food. And since microwaves make bad food, we must unite against them.
One of my favorite foods ever since I was little has always been rice and gravy, which my 91-year-old Maw Maw* (who grew up in rural southern Louisiana and whose first language was French) often cooks for us. Rice and gravy is a staple of Cajun cuisine; there’s a few variations with different types of meat, but hers always uses veal rounds, which my family would get from Guillory’s on Derbigny Street in Metairie, just a block down the street from where I grew up. The meat and gravy are prepared by braising the veal rounds with some onions and garlic over a low heat; my grandmother seems to leave it on the stove all afternoon. As the veal rounds cook they make a wonderful gravy. It’s really fantastic, and I’ve never had anything like it.** Continue reading ‘microwaves’
Sometimes there is such a thing as a free lunch (or breakfast). Maybe you’re at some conference or meeting or whatever, and there’s a table with free food. Maybe you’re checking out the continental breakfast at a motel (in which case you paid for the food unless someone else was paying for the hotel, but whatever). Maybe there’s some finger sandwiches or something.* If it’s a free breakfast, maybe there’s a few baskets of muffins and pastries. Or maybe there’s a tray of cookies. I’d like to discuss two specific things: muffins, and cookies. What always runs out first? Blueberry muffins and chocolate chip cookies. Always. Everyone likes them, so why even bother with the other crap? Continue reading ‘inappropriately low numbers of chocolate chip cookies and blueberry muffins’
I admit I can be a bit of a food snob sometimes. Not too much, because I’m too cheap to eat at fancy restaurants, and because when I’m lazy it’s easier to pop some pizza rolls in the oven. But I’m from New Orleans, and that means loving good food. And loving good food means you have to hate the bad stuff. But there’s one area of snobbery I simply condemn outright. And that, my friends, is wine snobbery. I dislike alcohol snobbery in general, but some types I can at least sympathize with. I totally understand not liking cheap American beer—I find most of it drinkable, but some is just disgusting.* But I’m hardly a beer snob—I usually just stick with something from Abita since drinking it makes me feel like a good New Orleanian. And the high-end beer snobs are really just as bad as the wine snobs. And maybe connoisseurs of scotch or brandy or whatever notice a difference among various brands, but I’m not much of a hard liquor kind of guy, except for vodka, and if you think it makes a difference what kind of vodka you drink, you’re a moron.** Continue reading ‘wine snobs’