So, we returned home recently from a food tour of nearly half the US (a 20-state adventure). #justcallmeafoodie

Clanton’s, Venita, OK

First stop was Clanton’s in Vinita, OK for a mean cut-it-with-a-fork chicken fried steak.

Place was packed at 7:35p when we walked in and I was thinking, they will not be closing by 8p, but man, it was almost empty by 7:45! They know how to get people in and out, but you don’t feel rushed and the food is good and the wait staff experienced. This was our second experience with Clanton’s. They do a great breakfast too.

The Shaved Duck, St Louis
Tri-Tip

The Shaved Duck, St Louis

The Shaved Duck in St Louis was our debated stop – try a new place or repeat Sweetie Pie’s? But no regrets – I had the tri-tip sandwich with sautéed brussel sprouts. Excellent. Fred had a Bratburger and mashed potatoes with smoked onions. We’ll be trying brat burger meat now in place of brats for dinner.

The Steer-In, Indianapolis, IN

We were really too full from the late lunch at The Shaved Duck, but stopped at The Steer-In in Indanapolis, Indiana anyway. (I didn’t want to miss any opportunities!) We split a pork loin sandwich. Busy place..lots of folks visit this little diner.

Whitehouse Chicken in Barberton, OH was the only disappointment. We took a listing off the 50 best chicken places in the US. It was Meh. Actually, I was talking when we walked in and the waitress carried 2 plates by me and I lost my words, but the food just didn’t live up to the look. Chicken was juicy, but left a lot to be desired on the coating (and Fred’s gravy tasted canned) and what’s fried chicken without great coating?

Buffalo, NY was The Blackthorn Restaurant & Pub. OMG! And we got to witness a birthday party for a VERY surprised New York sounding lady! Kailah was a great waitress who recommended one of their specialties to Fred: a prime rib and veggie salad that made him VERY happy. I had the Triple D special: beer cheddar potato soup, cheese stuffed tater tots (not your ordinary (aka bite size) tots), mini beef on deck (special bread) with horseradish and crab cake (OhMy!).

The Triple D Special
The Blackthorn Restaurant & Pub

Stuffed Tator Tots The Blackthorn Restaurant & Pub

Campagne’s Antipasta Board

Campagna’s, “Artisanal Italian” in Malta, NY served a lovely solo salad and an Salumi e Formaggio Board of house made sausages like pancetta and boar meat sausage, picked cauliflower, cheeses (Gorgonzola, Parmesan and one we can’t remember), olives with mostarda and house made bread.

The next night we bought Vermont sharp cheddar cheese and Hard Salami for a light dinner – which we forgot in the hotel frig with Gig’s homemade sun dried tomato hummus. That was a bummer. But we remembered the maple cotton candy – or we would have been turning back!

The Townshend Dam Diner in Townshend, Vermont (no website..look them up on Yelp) where the bathroom was so small the toilet paper was mounted on the door because there wasn’t enough room beside the toilet. No lie. “Home cooked food for your money by a dam site!” Burger was good. …..One waitress was working the whole joint well. This was one of those, we’re-driving-by-and-we’re-hungry-places that turned out well. Great character. Don’t ask about all the green glass – they don’t know what the story is..or maybe just aren’t telling.

The Eveready Diner
Hyde Park, NY

The Eveready Diner in Hyde Park (home of the Roosevelts (as in FDR and Eleanor) and Vassar College had unbelievably good mac ‘n cheese served in a HUGE bowl on the side. Fred had the meatloaf. I ordered wrong here. My fault – who eats a meatball sandwich when there are other good things – lots of things – on the menu?! It wasn’t bad…just some kind of brain twitch…I thought I ordered a meatloaf sandwich. and we had a milkshake to go that Fred didn’t share well.

Union Station
Harrisburg, PA

Blackberry Skillet Cake

Union Station, Harrisburg, PA was a place Gig, the google queen, found for us. (“Hey, find us a place to eat in Harrisburg, PA”.) Prime rib ciabatta with maybe the best Au Ju ever and Fred had the Germantown Bratburger and peach and blackberry skillet cake for dessert. He was a happy boy! I think we can make this cake.

Charleston Culinary Walking Tour: Cumberland Street Smokehouse – really this was a full meal and only the first stop of a 5 restaurant tour. The wings – not your ordinary wings – had this great crust – flash baked after smoking – and a white BBQ sauce (got to find a recipe for this!) to die for – really excellent collard greens, pulled pork sliders, pulled chicken & pulled pork, there was mac n cheese and beans too. French fries fried in duck fat which gave them a wonderful unique flavor. Around the corner to Poogan’s Smokehouse. This was another meal: mac n cheese with sugared bacon, pork sliders (and an apology about the duplication but nobody cared), OMG cornbread served with butter where juices from their smoked meat had been allowed to drip into the butter. Then, fried chicken you could cut with a fork with a sauce made from Texas Pete’s hot sauce, pimento cheese fritters (I don’t LIKE pimento cheese – at least not my grandmother’s pimento cheese (sorry MM) but could live on this!) … Then down the street to Carmella’s Cafe & Dessert Bar for a BLT with Jack Nicholson bread (they ship some to him weekly since the ’80s). I saved mine for later because there were still 2 more stops and I was already stuffed), across the street to Amen Street Fish and Raw Bar for white shrimp corn dogs. REALLY. Delicious white shrimp skewered and dipped in sweet corn dog batter. These were heavenly! And the last stop was Kaminsky’s Dessert Cafe for a Tollhouse Cookie Pie drizzled in caramel and chocolate with pecans with cream on the side. Glenn, the tour guide and one of the owners of Charleston Culinary Tours, knows his stuff and was entertaining and informative and fun. But he says, hope you didn’t eat breakfast, but really folks, you shouldn’t eat for at least 24 hours prior. So much great food. We’ll do another trip to Charleston just for the food!

Needless to say, the rest of the trip is kind of anti-climactic cause you’re just not hungry for a few days…but we didn’t let that deter us. We’re tougher than that!

We stopped at The Back Porch in Destin, FL for seafood…and a Passion Punch that had me worried Fred was going to have to carry me out the door and pour me back into the car. He had a Captain’s Platter – fried everything (I don’t know how he does that and has THE lowest cholesterol of any person I know!): scallops, crab cake, mani mahi, shrimp and oysters. I had a blackjack tuna and shrimp salad. This was not my favorite place – wait of about 15 minutes in late afternoon and VERY touristy. Not my cup of tea but very decent seafood which was the goal.

We took a risk in Louisiana @ Jasmine’s on the Bayou (Tripadvisor) that paid off plenty. This was our last “food stop” before Texas. The appetizers would have been plenty, but we’re gluttons…Jasmine’s Trio: Rocket Shrimp (oh my), Boudin Balls (to die for) and ….. . Fred had crawfish étouffée with beans and rice (really good). I ordered the Shrimp Creole with dirty rice, but I think I got the fried shrimp platter. But honestly, it didn’t matter the appetizers were so good and there just wasn’t any room left…except for the bread pudding advertised to “change your life”!

Bread Pudding to “Change your life”

Ridiculously good (even for dinner in bed in Texas later) and it’s about 1/4 of a pie! No small portions here. Rory, our waiter, was fun. But honesty, we were nearly comatose from eating. But what a way to go!

Fred is super good about fulfilling my bucket list (and maybe his along the way too #bassproshop #coveredbridges). So, I had a wish to see New England in the fall. Most folks would fly there, rent a car, spend a few days shopping around mingling with the locals…not us.

We decided to drive it. 4600+ miles (with a slight detour to Niagara Falls because neither of us had ever been there) mapped out by where to eat next via Triple D flavors, but that’s another post entirely…but let my just say, YUM!

Niagra pano

First, it went too fast, but even with the speed of it, there is a different flavor to each state. New York surprised me most – very pastoral, rural atmosphere (We skipped NYC since Fred has a strong -inexplainable because he’s never been there – aversion to it.) Vermont is anti-big business, very artsy…and beautiful even if the fall leaves were not at their best per the local folks. (Thanks for giving us the lowdown @vermontmaplemuseum in West Brattleboro, VT). We spent a lot of time trying to figure out how people made a living in Vermont. Pennsylvania reminded me, not of the civil war, but of the revolutionary war…very patriotic. They are the “revolutionaries” as much as I am “a Texan”. But I must say, getting back on the south side of the Mason-Dixon Line, brought me back “home” to my “southern” roots…and words I could pronounce and spell! (How the heck do you say “Schaghticoke” (a town in New York) which we came to refer to as “Coke” (the closest we could get). I came to the conclusion that some of our Northern friends just can’t spell!

Second, on Fred’s bucket list, we visited SEVERAL covered bridges from Ohio to Massachusetts. The most beautiful, construction wise, was the first, The Mill Creek Bridge, in Ohio built in 1868. The supports had 24 boards curved to make an interior support.

Mill Creek Bridge, OH

Mill Creek Bridge

‘M’ @ Mill Creek

The saddest, was the one burned by arsonists. There was the one that took us down some questionable “roads” only to find that if we’d stayed on the highway, we just would have had to pull off the road about 50 feet (thanks GPS! Not.) Each bridge had a history of the area like the one dedicated to the “memory of Bernice Langlois”. So these were fun, and really could be a trip in and of themselves. Several of the bridges had a “fine” for driving on the bridge faster than a walk. Really – $25 bucks!

We did decide there were several reasons to visit again: bridges, food, history.

We also visited the Shenandoah Caverns. Neither of us had ever been to any caverns (yes, we’ve lived close to some, but never been inside any) and it was a fun experience. I was a little claustrophobic initially, but it was more impressive than scary.

Shenandoah Cavern Entrance

Bacon @ Shendoah Caverns

Thirdly, Gig kind of shamed us into going to Charleston to eat…I mean, this was the point, to eat our way across the states, but Charleston wasn’t on the list…and it turned out to be The. Best. Part. And I want to go back to Charleston to spend some time…after I do some research and understand the area better. (I thought Charleston was a big city, but really is just one small part of a group of peninsulas.) We were concerned (I was flat out worried) about the conditions in Charleston since Hurricane Michael had just been through a week before, but the news reports were greatly exaggerated. Shout out to Glenn #Charlestonculinarytours for the BEST food walking tour! Really it was 2 days before we NEEDED to eat again. Be sure to look him up if you’re in Charleston at charlestoncullinarytours.com. He knows EVERYWHERE to eat and was a great guide! And, honestly, the food, because it’s locally sourced, is not expensive. (Sorry Paula Deen, Savannah just didn’t make the cut.) Charleston is #2 wedding destination and #1 food destination currently. I didn’t know that. And there’s a Farm to Market tour with Glenn in my future – hopefully.

So, 20 states, not counting leaving and coming back to Texas: Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana. (Should have done New Hampshire, New Jersey and Delaware (we were within a few miles) and Arkansas for a nice fat saw-half-the-US-in-one-trip.) #betterplanningnexttime

But, coming home is really the best part…to the pooch who cried when he saw me… and our own bed… and the cool of a Texas fall. (Thanks for babysitting Gig & The Beau and to J for bringing him home.) So much to be said of visiting the “neighbors” and exploring places you’ve never been but Home sure feels good.

Home