Food on the Road (Minnesota to Arizona)

Janie and I took a drive of some 1,600 miles and back to see what sort of yard sales there were in Mesa, Arizona during the winter.  Along the way it didn't occur to us that there was anything to write about.  Then we stopped for breakfast at the livestock auction yard in Texahoma, Oklahoma and I started to think maybe a road food post was in order.

As we entered the cafe, I could smell what I assumed to be stockyards.  We waited a good 40 minutes by the drone of Fox News, only to have the waitress come tell us she had forgotten our order, and it would be up soon.  It was quite tasty anyway.  We tipped her about 30%.  It's a matter of principle.  Wait staff always get a really good tip.  It's one way we've decided we can make the world a better place.

After we were done, Janie had a nice conversation with a man who had much to say about Jesus.   I headed over to the restrooms to discover maybe it wasn't stockyards we were smelling.

I finished up, and walked out into the hall looking for other things to photograph.  This ad on the wall I thought gave a nice flavor that exemplified our locale.

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The night before we went a little off the main drag to find a mom and pop place in Kingman, Kansas.  From the outside, Jeri's Kitchen seemed to fit the bill.  I took the buffet, which was unremarkable.   When I got back to the table Janie looked bothered.  She said the french fries with her fish and chips were inedible, and while she may have been right, I can turn myself into a veritable garbage disposal if the situation calls for it.  Plus, I had never had an inedible french fry; limp and raw maybe, but not inedible.  To my great surprise, I can only conclude the cook was intentionally trying to disgust us.  All I can figure is that these were stale fries from the previous day (or earlier).  It was how you would expect something from a dumpster to taste.  Sorry about the bad review, Jeri.  Check your duty roster for 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, 2/7/09.

The next morning we got off the road a ways, back into the heart of Grants, New Mexico for huevos rancheros at the Grants Cafe.  Excellent huevos rancheros.  I love the way an egg yoke blends with green chile.  Basic everyday fare, but very good nonetheless.

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I remember a day when just about every cafe in the Four Corners area had a "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" sign,

But not a one of them had any of these newfangled things (I can't say I've ever used one).

We cut off at Holbrook, and opted to go through Payson instead of Flagstaff.  About 40 miles in we encountered a sign that said we needed 4-wheel drive or chains to go further, and the hell if I was going to backtrack just to go through the same storm 2 hours later in Flagstaff.  I have thousands of miles of driving experience is blizzards - seriously - and if anything, 4-wheel drive is a liability on slick roads, not an asset.  The fact is they would only issue tickets to those who got stuck.  I drove; Janie ran the camera.

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It did indeed get sketchy after we dropped over the canyon rim,

but we made it into Payson, where we hoped to get some good Mexican food.  We pulled into the first place that offered any.  The sign "El Rancho" seemed promising.

Payson is maybe two hours from the Navajo Nation, so I assumed the Navajo taco on the menu had a good chance of being real.  Navajo fry bread is a flat and thick tortilla that is fried instead of grilled.  The Navajos serve it freshly cooked and hot, layered with pinto beans, onions, tomatoes, lettuce and cheese and with a good salsa on the side.

This was not a Navajo taco.  It was on a sort of waffle made a while back, and I couldn't swear it was fresh at any time the day before.  I usually clean my plate, but I had to make an exception for this.

Janie's enchiladas were decidedly worse.  The enchilada sauce was - brace yourselves - tomato soup.

El Rancho appears to be a steak house and sports bar that also serves "Mexican food".  For it being in the middle of Arizona, we saw only one Hispanic or Indian employee.  That would explain a lot, I suppose.

Once into the Phoenix metropolitan area, we were at the mercy of chain outfits, but we did find one we mistook for a one-off so we went in for breakfast.  Mimi's is a New-Orleans-branded chain of uncertain size.  We were very impressed with our breakfast and we were asked if this was our first visit to Mimi's.  Being early in the day we were at our freshest, and I think we made a good impression (not that that should matter, but, well you know if you've ever made a bad impression at an eating establishment).  Neither of us remembers what we had, but when we got ready to leave the manager came over and presented us with a rather large container of muffins, saying this is their way of welcoming new customers. 

A couple days later, we came back to Mimi's fresh off a full morning at a windy flea market, and my hair was a little wild, so I put on my Gather cap and kept it on throughout lunch.  We were not asked if it was our first time, and no one offered us muffins, so they either remembered us (which seems unlikely) or we did not look muffin-worthy.

Anywho, since my objective in going to mom and pops is to get comfort food, I ordered chicken fried steak, and received enough for two meals, easy.

The potatoes were freshly-cooked potatoes that were then mashed either by hand or processed just enough to be just so.  This may sound like a small thing, but real mashed potatoes are a delight, while the alternative - which generally comes from a box - is all too common these days.

Janie had some shrimp with Thai cole slaw,

She left me a taste of the slaw, and while predictable, it was something I would order if I knew it tasted like that.  Janie didn't finish her slaw, because she also ordered

a bowl of corn chowder.  She didn't know it was going to be huge, but she - unlike I - asked for a to-go container that turned out to be impressively leak proof.

The one thing that I have to mention before moving on from Mimi's was the attention to detail.  Remember above the stalls at the Oklahoma Panhandle place we stopped, the ones that were made by a welder out of angle iron and roofing?  Well, I kid you not, the restroom stalls at Mimi's look like this from the inside.

I swear this is the inside of a bathroom stall.  Well, I never . . . not that comfort is a bad thing . . .

On our way out, we went through Globe instead of Payson, because we didn't know when we'd be back and I'd always wanted to go that way.

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In Show Low, I thought I'd try one more attempt at a Mexican Restaurant, and the first sign was indeed Licano's Mexican Foods.  It too turned out to be a steak house, but I held out hope anywa.  The menu had an "Indian Taco", which I thought odd, but I ordered it.  Janie had a burro, which I took to mean a large burrito.  She liked hers.

What I hoped would be a real Navajo Taco missed the mark once again, and while good enough to be edible to the end, I was really bemused to find not fry bread, but a pancake(!?!), at the bottom of the other fixins.   I mean, horrors, pinto beans on top of a pancake.

That night we had quite respectable Thai food in Dodge City.   I don't remember the name.

The following morning we ate at a real pancake house.  I've always avoided them because I hate commercial pancakes.  I was raised on pancakes that were half egg and not the slightest bit fluffy.  I have no illusions of finding anything like that for sale at a pancake house.  They did have omelets, and mine was great.  Janie had pancakes, and she likes the fluff, so she was satisfied also.

Now, lunch was a different matter.  We drove all the way to Emporia and I was really ready for a nice fresh chef salad.  Anyone can do that.   Well, the only place to eat at the intersection with I-35 was a Flying-J truck stop.   One sliced egg graced the top of the greens, along with four slices of thin lunch meat topped with a single slice of - I think it was swiss - cheese.   This meager ration of protein was chopped into 5 strips.  The kicker though was the lettuce, which had been chopped, then washed with water you can taste (if you get my meaning) and not drained before being put in the bowl, where the water formed a pool at the bottom.  The french dressing was apparently made in house, and not as good as what you'd expect from a generic branded bottle.  Through all of this I got to listen to some more of Fox News.  I now have a rule of thumb that TVs in cafes are bad enough, but if they're tuned to Fox News, I'll assume the establishment doesn't believe in quality anything.

We ended the day on a high note, with dinner at Osceola, Iowa.  Nana Greer's is right on I-35 and we'd had a great breakfast there on the way out.  Again, I was so taken with my reuben

that I can't say what Janie had and she doesn't remember.

On this trip we also ate at a Village Inn (as bad as any I've had to eat at in the past).

The other place I remember was our first stop (come to think of it) - the Trail's Travel Center in Albert Lea, Minnesota.  Though the food was good there, memories of it are surpassed by the woman a couple of tables over who ordered, and ate, an entire fried chicken.

Well, there you have it.  Nothing too fancy, but people have surprised me before in finding something to appreciate in the retelling of our more mundane moments.

Before I go, I'd like to share a link to the one place we ate that was so good it warranted its own post, Charlie's Spic and Span Bakery in Las Vegas, New Mexico.