“A rolling stone gathers no moss. And gets to eat their way
across the country.” That is a very famous quote, you guys. Word for word. And
brother, have I been rolling. A
couple of months ago I packed my car with snacks and underwear and set out upon
the Great American Road Trip. The plan? Coast to Coast, Bite by Bite.
I Googled directions, and immediately made them irrelevant
by dragging that “suggested” blue line up and down, based on where I wanted to
eat. Google Maps was honest with me about how much time I would be adding to
the trip by insisting upon going to Phoenix.
Pipe down, Google Maps! I have been lusting after the Arizona pistachio pizza at Pizzeria Bianco
for years, you can’t keep me from it! It would be equally ineffective, Google
Maps, to try to keep me from adding fennel sausage on top, even though that added an estimated 6 minutes to the
8 day trip.
Google Maps, you resisted when I pulled that blue line down
to go through Kerrville, Texas. But if I had listened to you, I would
have missed a classic Texas
small town square, and the puffy, sweet-dough kolaches that were the ultimate
road food. In fact, I would have missed that sweet lady’s attempt to introduce
me personally to the Lord, as I sat in my parked car outside the kolache joint eating
the sausage-filled one that had been meant as a snack for later. “Later” meant
120 seconds later, apparently.
She was so very nice, and when I handed her the card for my
blog, she explained that our meeting was even more fortuitous than I thought,
since she would be getting her first computer in a few days.
When my bank misses a decimal point and suddenly I have a
gratuitous amount of unexplainable money, I will be going to Kerrville, Texas,
and buying everyone a computer. And a round of sausage cheese kolaches. An old
favorite and the new world, united right there on the steps of a small town
southern courthouse.
Several orders of Texas Toast, many sweet teas, a flat tire
in Louisiana, and a character-buildingly dicey
Alabama hotel
room later, I hit the East Coast hard. My first three thoughts were as follows:
I am not getting in my
car for one week.
I can’t believe I had
to return that John Grisham book-on-tape to Cracker Barrel before I heard the
last 2 chapters.
I hope they have food
trucks here.
Would I find the kind of innovative, layered, on-the fly
mobile food culture here, that I had become addicted to in
Los Angeles? Belly up amigos, as I present to
you:
CHARLESTON, South Carolina.
On a sticky-sweet southern heat day, I found my hungry
heart’s salvation in the cool shadow of a Charleston Piggly Wiggly.
Though I tried to manage expectations, my hopes got high
right away. I had done my research by then, and I knew I had some great options
in front of me. Assembled before me was a biopsy of the Lowcountry cuisine that
Charleston is
famous for, and rightly so.
“Ok, this is a time for careful strategy and planning, not
impulse.” I said to my mother, wrongly assuming she was still standing beside
me, and not in line at the Auto-Bahn truck ordering shrimp spring rolls with
peanut sauce.
A word on Charleston
shrimp. Lowcountry shrimp is to that frozen grocery store shrimp ring that
people seem to gravitate to around New Year’s Eve, as a scoop of whole grain Dijon
mustard is to that disgusting stream of mustard water that shows up from a
primary color generic bottle of “French” sandwich topping. No comparison.
Lowcountry shrimp tastes sweet and pure and marine, with a
proper snap and chew, and not an ice crystal in sight. And when snuggled into a
sheer stocking of wonton wrapper with crunchy vegetable bits and pieces, it is
a locally sourced tastebud present.
Shrimp is delicious, and peanut sauce infinitely dippable,
but I was in for the caloric long-haul. I had come thousands of miles for this,
I wanted something I could only get here, a guilty pleasure composed of all of
the salty buttered regional specialties that my yoga pants would raise an
eyebrow at.
Give me a break, Yoga Pants! I’ll be good tomorrow. Plus you
know what happens to He Who Guilt Trips Me…Google Maps can tell you allllll
about that.
I gave my mouth the gift of THIS:
Actually, the Outta My Huevos truck gave it to me. A
buttermilk biscuit, fitted with a sheet of Finchville Farms country ham,
pimento cheese, and a side of Anson Mills grits with 3 year cheddar.
Days and ways in which eating this would be appropriate:
for
breakfast before a day of building something with your hands; for dinner on a
day that went completely totally wrong, or completely totally right; hungover
weekend mornings after sleeping late; for lunch on a day which feels like it should
be Friday, but is not. Also, if for any other reason not listed above, someone
sets this in front of you DO IT. Crumbly tender biscuit, saline robust ham, and
a melting mouthful of pimento cheese, the creamy culprit that pushes the whole
thing into a new dimension of wonderful.
Anson Mills grits are always excellent, but the very sharp
cheddar grated in cold shavings on the bottom and top, sandwiched them with the
authentic flavor that cannot be gained by the addition of salt or sugar, but
only by time and patience.
But what of the sweet tooth that haunts my days and
repeatedly forces me into near-criminal acts of midnight snackery? The sweet
tooth that has seen me give in to a heavy slab of glassined gas station lemon
loaf, and administer a spoonful of maple syrup to myself as though it were
medicine, what of that?
Diggity Doughnuts was there in my time of need. In a bright
jewel of a cheery truck, these angels were making life rafts, cakey innertubes
of organic satisfaction, frosted and glazed with unique flavors like chili
cilantro, and topped with blueberries, or spicy sprinkles, or lemon.
For me, it was the Cookie Mintster and the Sin-Amen. Cookie
Minster came dressed in a chocolate glaze and crushed cookies and studded with
bright refreshing mint leaves. Sin-Amen let the egg and dairy-free doughnut be
its naturally lovable self, but powder-puffed with sugar and Saigon Cinnamon
before hitting the stage. The Diggity Doughnuts truck makes the case that
organic really does
taste better. You
are tasting ingredients, not process or additive.
Rome was not built in a day,
and Charleston
cannot be eaten in a day. I have only begun this journey, and I am looking very
forward to the rest of it. In fact, I must say that the food truck scene in Charleston, South Carolina
rivals that of Los Angeles.
I do not intend to start some sort of hip-hop food truck East Coast-West
Coast rivalry here,
because they are both very different and war is not the answer.
“Give me local shrimp and organic vegan doughnuts, or give
me death.”
Famous quote, you guys. Word for word.
