Meat & 3
I just returned from a weekend at Virginia Beach with my family to celebrate July 4th, and more importantly my grandmother’s 80th birthday! I know that sometimes I take it for granted, but it’s truly a blessing to be able to vacation at the beach where we’ve been going for 25 years with both of my grandparents and, though they were not with me this past weekend, to still have all of my grandparents alive and in relatively good health.
Having just returned home from the weekend, I now have a few minutes to finish up the posting I started writing last week.
Alabama is known as one of the homes of authentic southern cooking – deep fried chicken, meat slathered with gravy, corn bread positively soaked with butter, collard greens, fried okra and candied yams - all to be washed down with sweet tea (that’s ice tea with about two cups of sugar per pitcher. I never knew what drinking liquid sugar tasted like until I had sweet tea).
Besides Sunday after church, one of the best times to get a taste of southern food is during the week, at one of the local lunch counters. (Note: lunch counters are located all over the deep south and aren’t indigenous to Alabama, however, each state’s lunch counters have a different character, and oftentimes different menu options). Though there are a few places to pick up tuna sandwiches or even to get take-out Chinese food for lunch in Montgomery (don’t come to Montgomery for its take-out Chinese food!), the most common place to pick up a bite to eat during the work week is lunch counters or low key restaurants known as Meat & 3 or Meat & 2s, meaning a meat dish and 2 or 3 side dishes.
Last week, when I had the pleasure of having Mommy Dearest pay me a visit, I decided I’d treat her to authentic southern cuisine – or at least authentic vegetarian southern cuisine – and take her to a local Meat & 3. I’ve never seen a restaurant like a Meat & 3. They’re usually only open from 12 – 3 on weekdays and each day they have a different menu that’s written out manually on a blank sheet of paper and then Xeroxed. The general choices are variations on fried chicken, beef with gravy or chicken with gravy. The side dishes include everything from steamed cabbage, to creamed corn, to mashed potatoes with gravy, to mac & cheese, to fried okra. Being a vegetarian for the summer it obviously sounds a bit ridiculous to go to lunch at a place where I can’t eat anything, but I love just soaking up the atmosphere, trying out the corn bread and ordering the “vegetarian platter”, which consists of 3-4 side dishes of my choosing.
The first place we went to – and the place I heard was one of the best in town – was the first floor of a person’s house, where the eponymous Martha converted her living room and dining room into a quaint lunch spot. After sitting down and starting to snack on the corn bread, Mom and I realized that everything, and I mean everything, on the menu was cooked with meat or a meat base, including all the vegetables. The waitress apologized, but she had nothing she could serve us. (“Made to order” dishes isn’t a familiar concept at a meat & 3). We were obviously disappointed, but I had a few fallbacks in mind so we made our way to another well known lunch spot.
Davis Café looks like its straight out of the 1960s – outside and inside. Despite its dim lighting and lack of décor, it always draws a crowd for lunch and is known for being a gathering spot for local politicos. In we went, and what do you know but 5 minutes later we were leaving again with the waitress’s apologies that she had nothing vegetarian to serve us following us out the door. After a few more stops we realized we had exhausted all the lunch counters we could find in downtown Montgomery and we weren’t going to have any luck finding a veggie option on the menu that day since everyone was pretty much serving the same thing. In the end, Mom and I had to settle for tuna sandwiches, a disappointing finale to our quest for authentic southern cooking.
Though he might not find a whole lot of cheeseburgers here, Jimmy Buffet would probably be in paradise down south thanks to his “carnivorous habits” (See: Cheeseburger in Paradise). For Mom and me, however, we learned the obvious lesson that it’s not easy being a vegetarian in Montgomery. I always marvel at the luxuries we have in the Northeast, where it’s virtually a given that every restaurant has at least one solid veggie option in order to succeed. It’s easy for me to imagine that if more southerners came up north for a spell then America would be less of a meat eating culture, which could have a positive impact on transforming our “Fast Food Nation” into a country of more health conscious eaters. On the other hand, I think northerners have a lot to learn from the southern concept of food – which is more similar to the European take on things – that we were put here on this good earth to satisfy our appetites, and we might as well have a passion for what winds up getting digested in our stomachs, even if it could potentially raise our cholesterol levels a few notches.
Last but not least, since this posting is all about food, I’m sorry to say that my grit count has been completely static the last week (I'm not counting the grits I tasted at Virginia Beach, which don’t hold a candle next to the real thing down here.)
Next time I’m going out to lunch on Wednesday, when I’m guaranteed of getting some (vegetarian) macaroni and cheese!!
Having just returned home from the weekend, I now have a few minutes to finish up the posting I started writing last week.
Alabama is known as one of the homes of authentic southern cooking – deep fried chicken, meat slathered with gravy, corn bread positively soaked with butter, collard greens, fried okra and candied yams - all to be washed down with sweet tea (that’s ice tea with about two cups of sugar per pitcher. I never knew what drinking liquid sugar tasted like until I had sweet tea).
Besides Sunday after church, one of the best times to get a taste of southern food is during the week, at one of the local lunch counters. (Note: lunch counters are located all over the deep south and aren’t indigenous to Alabama, however, each state’s lunch counters have a different character, and oftentimes different menu options). Though there are a few places to pick up tuna sandwiches or even to get take-out Chinese food for lunch in Montgomery (don’t come to Montgomery for its take-out Chinese food!), the most common place to pick up a bite to eat during the work week is lunch counters or low key restaurants known as Meat & 3 or Meat & 2s, meaning a meat dish and 2 or 3 side dishes.
Last week, when I had the pleasure of having Mommy Dearest pay me a visit, I decided I’d treat her to authentic southern cuisine – or at least authentic vegetarian southern cuisine – and take her to a local Meat & 3. I’ve never seen a restaurant like a Meat & 3. They’re usually only open from 12 – 3 on weekdays and each day they have a different menu that’s written out manually on a blank sheet of paper and then Xeroxed. The general choices are variations on fried chicken, beef with gravy or chicken with gravy. The side dishes include everything from steamed cabbage, to creamed corn, to mashed potatoes with gravy, to mac & cheese, to fried okra. Being a vegetarian for the summer it obviously sounds a bit ridiculous to go to lunch at a place where I can’t eat anything, but I love just soaking up the atmosphere, trying out the corn bread and ordering the “vegetarian platter”, which consists of 3-4 side dishes of my choosing.
The first place we went to – and the place I heard was one of the best in town – was the first floor of a person’s house, where the eponymous Martha converted her living room and dining room into a quaint lunch spot. After sitting down and starting to snack on the corn bread, Mom and I realized that everything, and I mean everything, on the menu was cooked with meat or a meat base, including all the vegetables. The waitress apologized, but she had nothing she could serve us. (“Made to order” dishes isn’t a familiar concept at a meat & 3). We were obviously disappointed, but I had a few fallbacks in mind so we made our way to another well known lunch spot.
Davis Café looks like its straight out of the 1960s – outside and inside. Despite its dim lighting and lack of décor, it always draws a crowd for lunch and is known for being a gathering spot for local politicos. In we went, and what do you know but 5 minutes later we were leaving again with the waitress’s apologies that she had nothing vegetarian to serve us following us out the door. After a few more stops we realized we had exhausted all the lunch counters we could find in downtown Montgomery and we weren’t going to have any luck finding a veggie option on the menu that day since everyone was pretty much serving the same thing. In the end, Mom and I had to settle for tuna sandwiches, a disappointing finale to our quest for authentic southern cooking.
Though he might not find a whole lot of cheeseburgers here, Jimmy Buffet would probably be in paradise down south thanks to his “carnivorous habits” (See: Cheeseburger in Paradise). For Mom and me, however, we learned the obvious lesson that it’s not easy being a vegetarian in Montgomery. I always marvel at the luxuries we have in the Northeast, where it’s virtually a given that every restaurant has at least one solid veggie option in order to succeed. It’s easy for me to imagine that if more southerners came up north for a spell then America would be less of a meat eating culture, which could have a positive impact on transforming our “Fast Food Nation” into a country of more health conscious eaters. On the other hand, I think northerners have a lot to learn from the southern concept of food – which is more similar to the European take on things – that we were put here on this good earth to satisfy our appetites, and we might as well have a passion for what winds up getting digested in our stomachs, even if it could potentially raise our cholesterol levels a few notches.
Last but not least, since this posting is all about food, I’m sorry to say that my grit count has been completely static the last week (I'm not counting the grits I tasted at Virginia Beach, which don’t hold a candle next to the real thing down here.)
Next time I’m going out to lunch on Wednesday, when I’m guaranteed of getting some (vegetarian) macaroni and cheese!!
posted by Ariel Glasner @ 2:31 AM
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