Southern food is not for the faint of heart

Have you ever gone to a new place and decided to try some local cuisine?

You end up in a small restaurant with a friendly wait staff, small tables and usually, fairly cramped quarters. Sometimes the food is spectacular, just weird or outright disgusting.

When I first set foot into a Southern diner, I was appalled. I'd gone to lunch with some co-workers and they wanted to hit up a local cafe. Or so I thought.

15 minutes after we left the office, we arrived at a gas station. Yes, I said gas station. Adjoining it and with it's own entrance, was our lunch spot. And the place was PACKED!!

Inside, I encountered a hot plate cafeteria like you'd find at a hospital or a school. And everyone in the office had wanted to eat there. Curbing my skepticism - a few of my co-workers actually enjoy food that is not Southern cuisine - I decided I'd get the "meat and three." Three vegetables and a meat, bread, dessert and a drink - sweet tea or water. Who eats that much for lunch?

On the food line, there were several choices for meats - fried fish, fried chicken, country steak, some sort of meat chunks swimming in a whitish gravy, baked chicken and grilled pork chops. I'd normally opt for baked chicken but it was swimming in a greasy looking pool of sauce, but I decided I'd go for the fried chicken and try "real" southern food. Two huge pieces of chicken were dropped onto the plate and passed to the next lady in line.

There were about 20 vegetable choices, which surprised me. One of the choices was tomatoes - just raw, sliced tomatoes. What the heck? Mysterious greens that all looked the same but were, assured my co-workers, all completely different, three kinds of peas, more beans than I could count, a huge pot of mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, two kinds of corn and fried vegetables too numerous to mention. And on the very end - three tiny bowls of salad made from iceberg lettuce, an onion slice, a cucumber slice and five tiny croutons. Clearly, salad was not a popular vegetable at this restaurant.

When I decided on the mashed potatoes, the lady behind the counter asks me "White or brown? We got red-eye too." Seeing the confusion on my face - I thought she meant the kind of potatoes - she says "White gravy, brown gravy or red-eye gravy?" Ah HA! Brown gravy, isn't that the right one for potatoes? The look I got when I asked for that clearly said no. I'm not sure what that red-eye gravy is but it sounds pretty scary. Food named after body parts, especially exhausted body parts, does not equate to an enjoyable eating experience in my book.

The "connoisseur" of my co-workers gets fried okra. That must be okay... I think I'd had it once or twice when I was young at one of those church potlucks I'd been forced to go to. It was definately less scary than the mysterious greens. I grabbed one of the lonely salads and was confronted with the dessert line.

These people are serious when they give you choices for desserts. Banana pudding, chocolate pudding, pound cake, three kinds of cobbler, four kinds of pie, ice cream, cookies or the mysterious "special." Staring at the enormous plate sitting on the counter in front of me, I realized I wouldn't have any room for dessert. The banana pudding was in little styrofoam cups and there were lids at the end of the line so I grabbed one of those, figuring I could eat it later on at work for a snack.

You remember that "bread" that the meal came with? It wasn't just "bread." It was a bread basket. A slice of white bread, fried cornbread (what the heck!?), a honey butter biscuit and a plain biscuit. There really was not enough room on my tray for any more but, it's included so, I might as well. I figured that what I didn't eat, I could take home and feed to a small country to avert world hunger.

Paid for my lunch and dutifully followed the crowd over to a big table. A waitress came over and plunked down a huge glass of sweet tea in front of each of us. Embarrassed, because I hate to be complicated, I politely asked for a glass of water. I swear to you, that glass was half a gallon of water. And it was smaller than the tea glass.

The food was... and I hate to admit this because I was so disturbed at the beginning... absolutely and utterly delicious. I ate until I was almost sick. And everyone else in the restaurant was "tucking in" like they hadn't eaten in weeks. It really was that good... or there is some mysterious famine that I don't know about and everyone else is eating before the food is gone.

When I got back to the office, that pudding sat on the corner of my desk for about 30 minutes, staring at me. Knowing that I'd regret it tomorrow, I went ahead and ate it. I don't want to know what scale is going to say tomorrow. And I think that I'll have a salad for dinner tonight.

The funniest thing about it all - and this comes back to me as I sit here, wondering when we'll all go there for lunch again - when I asked one of the local historians where the best food was, his response was "in gas stations." I thought he was joking. He wasn't.

And to quote Paula Deen from the October issue of Ladies Home Journal, "I don't eat my own cooking every day! My lord, I'd be wider than the table if I ate chicken and biscuits and gravy every day." She's not joking either.