Great food is often found in the most unlikely places
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- February 2, 2018
- 1690
Several years ago a friend passed along a great piece of advice: Never dismiss a possible source. He was talking about clothes, as he was fresh from finding a great suit at JC Penney.
But this bit of wisdom certainly applies to food as well. Don’t assume a cuisine, restaurant or dish is garbage because you think it’s ordinary or hails from someplace you think isn’t up to your standards.
New foodies seem to fall into snobbery rather quickly. I think it’s a phase through which we all have to pass once we have a little knowledge under our expanding belt lines. Finding you can walk through a fancy kitchen supply store and identify all the top-level tools and what task they’re used for, describing the delights a good cook can coax out of them, it’s a short drop to “I’m not eating that. It’s made with soup or something.”
If you’ve given any of your time to reading this column in the past, you know I’m as guilty as anyone. But I couch my snobbery in pillows of health claims, disdain for preservatives and a preference for old-school cookware. When it comes right down to it, a box of Stovetop Stuffing will fill your belly as well as a perfectly executed lobster soufflé.
Give me a minute while I gag on those words.
Last week on an overnight trip to Columbus, I knew exactly where I wanted to have breakfast. Columbus and surrounds offer every delicious possibility. But thanks to a fruitful experiment last summer, I’ve freed myself of the desire to hunt down pricey eggs Benedict or a buffet of lox and swanky sauces. I wanted Waffle House.
For years I’d made jokes about the place. They’re everywhere, and I had only eaten in one or two over the years, very late at night. A friend in a position to eat anywhere he pleased used to sing their praises and insist on going there often. I poo-poo’d it away dismissively. How good could a Waffle House be?
Awfully good it turns out. There’s a reason they’ve been around for decades. They’re so reliable that FEMA makes them part of their disaster-relief plan. Waffle House never closes and has gotten awfully good at preparing for disasters. So if the local one is closed after a hurricane or flood, FEMA knows they’re dealing with an apocalyptic scenario before they even arrive.
I love that walking into one in 2018, you’re going to have pretty much an identical experience to doing so in 1978 with the same food, same pattern on the cheap plates, same fantastic coffee. And because I like to eat well and cheaply, getting eggs, meat, toast, jam, waffle, grits, juice and coffee for chump change ain’t bad either.
Never dismiss a possible source of something delicious. The tiny Latino tienda on the corner will supply fresh tortillas and unusual spices. The hole in the wall bar that has served generations will feed you well and make sure you never have to ask for more water.
The people at the taco truck you’re nervous about trying have worked efficient, cheap food down to a science. The truck stop you always skip will stuff you till you pop and leave you enough change to stop and buy the latest issue of one of the many food snobbery magazines.
Great food is found in unlikely places. We’ve all had an expensive but disappointing meal in a pretentious bistro, and we’ve all eaten sublime scrambled eggs in a dive. I have to remind myself to keep an open mind and reap the rewards.