Entry posted by Sumiki
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The Great American Road Trip really started last night.
Last night, I compiled the places that Guy Fieri has visited for his "Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives" show on the Food Network. (Anyone who has seen the show will attest that it just makes you want to hop in the car and go to the places he eats at just to stuff your face with what he's stuffed his face with.) I listed them by state, then further by city, so as we pass through places we can sample local fare in the stead of fast-food joints. I went (roughly) by our expected route. I also added an appendix listing all the major and minor league baseball ballparks that are along the way - and I expect to accrue massive amounts of pennants by the time we return.
We got started at precisely 2:20 PM, and made good, uneventful time down I-40. Aside from the occasional rest area, our first real "stop" of the day came in Knoxville, TN, where we encountered the first of the many local joints that we will inevitably visit in order to sample their food: a little hole-in-the-wall called Pizza Palace. While its surroundings have clearly seen their better days, Pizza Palace retains a sort of nostalgic air of americana about it. For example, all of its parking spots are drive-ins, and it recently celebrated their 50th anniversary. The building is still the same, though sadly some of it doesn't look like it's been updated too much. A picture of Fieri - complete with goofy hair and even goofier grin - modestly hangs near its inspection certificate.
We didn't see much point in sticking around in our cars for even longer - we needed to stretch our legs a bit - so we headed on in. We ordered the same things that Fieri when he visited in 2007: a pizza, spaghetti, and a half-batch of onion rings.
While the food they served was not anything absurd, creative, or even remotely inventive, what they made was of excellent quality - and boy, do they give you a lot of food. For 21 dollars, only the pizza's size was anything like we expected when we ordered. The "half-batch" of onion rings might have been mistaken for one of the smaller of the Smoky Mountains. The pizza had probably the most delicious crust I've ever had, though it got progressively thinner towards the middle. This was rather an issue - the cheese was piled up so high on this pizza that it took multiple hands and utensils to keep it from sliding off. The spaghetti - which came with meat sauce - was second only to my mom's recipe, and even then it gave it a good run for its money. The spaghetti portion was so monstrous that the lady that took our order originally asked if we wanted the kid's size. We realized this was just for manageability's sake. (Funnily enough, as soon as we showed slight trepidation in ordering, she asked us if we'd seen them on TV. We said yes, as the kitchen seemed somewhat familiar.)
Last item about Pizza Palace: we were all surprised to note the sheer variety of people who made up their clientele. Businesspeople driving Lexuses to construction workers to folks that looked like they were a few notches above being a bum all drove in, ordered, and upon inevitable satisfaction, drove out again.
There are five places like this to eat at in Nashville, and nine more places in Memphis. There are none in Arkansas, though Oklahoma City has five candidates for our gastronomical delight. From there, we plan on heading south to Dallas/Fort Worth, then moseying our way on over to the Grand Canyon.
After eating in Knoxville, and concluding that the Tennessee Smokies minor league team was too far out of our way to get a pennant and/or hat, we thought about where we'd stop. If we'd stopped in Knoxville, we would have had nothing to to except sit in our hotel room and tell stupid stories to each other. Memphis, we unilaterally decided, was much too far to drive. Nashville was a much more reasonable drive, so we broke out a few maps and books and found a hotel to call.
It was booked. You can probably guess how thrilled we were at this. Repeating the 1:00-in-the-morning Pittsburgh epic, which I alluded to in the introduction - was not high on our agenda. Another hotel was called: it too was booked. Yet another - from a different hotel chain - was filled.
We abandoned our hopes that Nashville would be reached within the day. As we passed into the Central Time Zone, and so appropriately readjusted our clocks, we decided to just wing it and hope that there'd be a hotel somewhere. As the mountainous, ear-popping terrain resumed after a brief reprieve when we crossed the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, we stopped at our last rest stop, where a friendly fellow stopped us to ask us where we were headed. His eyes got big when we explained that we were driving all the way out to the Pacific, and when his bald, bearded, slightly dumpy friend walked up, he mentioned where we were going with a tone of voice and look in his eyes that said "I think these people are a little strange ..." (He's right.)
We eventually were able to stop in Cookeville.
Tomorrow will be a fun, busy, and hopefully tasty day, unlike today - which, I will admit, was a rather anticlimactic beginning. Tomorrow: Nashville and Memphis. Tomorrow?
Tomorrow, the fun really begins.
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