More MEMEishness

WW tagged me with a meme, and being the shameless approval whore that I am, I’ll play along. Hey, she reads my scribblings, and that is no small torture.

The way it works is, you link the blog who tagged you, name your top five favorite eating establishments and why, and tag five others.

I won’t tag five others, but if you’d like to play along, feel free.

1. Best Greasy Spoon: Ray’s PeGe in Monroe, Louisiana. The best roast beef poboy in. the. world. The gravy is destined to be added to the food pyramid as its own food group. Big, homemade fries and a custard-like ice cream that is unlike any you have ever tasted. You walk into this place, and it has maybe nine booths, every damned one of them filled. People have been clamoring for more seating space at Ray’s for thirty years, and still they come back every day to stand up for twenty minutes until a booth opens. It’s like eating in a crowded elevator. But damn, the food is good. The walls are decorated with waterfowl prints, and on the fall mornings of my childhood, we’d stop at Ray’s for a pre-sunrise breakfast on the way to the rice fields. My brother used to quiz me on what duck species I could identify from those prints. Back in those days, it was not unusual to find a retriever or two dozing under those tables. The place is usually loud and boisterous, but in the occasional quiet moment, if you listen really closely, you can hear your arteries hardening.

2. Best Seafood: DI’s Cajun Restaurant in Basile, Louisiana. Imagine this little restaurant in the middle of nowhere where the hostess greets with “How y’all doin, cher?”, guides you to a table near the dance floor, and feeds you the best damned boiled crawfish in Acadiana. You can dance to a good Cajun band, or sit back and watch the show; sweethearts in their eighties dancing a Cajun waltz, a father teaching his six-year-old daughter to two-step, or the eight-year-old accordion virtuoso who can sing Jolie Blonde in the Cajun French his PawPaw taught him. Try to keep your toes from tapping. I dare you.

3. Best Barbecue: The County Line, in Austin Texas. Carnivore heaven. If you need to satisfy your jones for animal flesh, this is the place. I was turned on to the County Line by my buddy Wes, the nicest Jewish attorney/EMT you’ll ever met. Wes meets my criteria for good lawyers: he wants to be a medic when he grows up.

4. Best Steak Joint: Doesn’t exist. At least, not that I’ve found. So many restaurants, even those purported to be steak houses, can’t do my favorite meal worth a damn. I prefer my dead cow grilled over hickory or mesquite, hand rubbed with spices and peppercorns. Here’s how you do it: Get the coals covered with a good layer of ash. Drop a big, thick porterhouse on the grill. Count to fifteen, and flip it over. Count to fifteen again, and put it on a plate. If the omnivores in your family are tempted to retch and squeal, “but it’s raw!”, that’s perfect. Keep the steak sauce to yourselves, Philistines. Some garlic mashed potatoes and a little steamed broccoli and squash would be nice.

5. KatyBeth’s Favorite: Bayle’s Landing in West Monroe, Louisiana. It’s run down and shabby, the steaks suck, and the seafood is mediocre. But they make great chicken nuggets with smiley fries, and they think my kid is da’ bomb. They do have great oysters and pretty fair boiled crawfish, so after a day on the river, we’d pull the jet ski up to the bank, tie it off and walk up the stairs onto the deck. KatyBeth would charm the staff between chicken nuggets, and I’d have a couple dozen oysters and ten pounds of crawfish. Mmmmmm. The fried pickle spears ain’t half bad either.

Edit 5-17-07: I almost forgot the world’s greatest beef jerky – Robertson’s beef jerky. You used to be able to find Robertson’s jerky in just about any roadside gas station in east Texas or southeast Oklahoma – pretty much everywhere along the I-20 and I-35 corridors. Now it seems that they’ve shrunk to just a couple of stores and a substantial mail order business. If you want to gain the everlasting gratitude of the Ambulance Driver, I lurves me some Robertson’s jerky.