Poll: Dining out

[Raider Bill]

Chicken fried steak with smashed potatos, white gravey and southren stlyle green beans! Good Chewing!

[Furby]

Chewing................. the perfect way to describe it! :-\

[WDH]

Have you ever had chicken fried venison?  It is hard to beat that ;).

[metalspinner]

We hit the Cracker Barrel restaurant every week.  And what do i order everytime?...Chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes,a dn green beans. Mmmmmm

[Engineer]

Boy I guess I'm wierd.  Or don't fit the mold or something.  I'm a human dumpster, I'll eat Mickey D's and Wendy's, go to the local watering hole for a burger or a steak (the BEST restaurant around here is a bar, and it is GOOD eatin')  but I am also a total food snob and can just as easily eat at the best of the best, the Michelin stars and the James Beard Foundation Award winners, the foie gras and the champagne truffles and pate and filet mignon with asparagus and caviar and what-have-you.   And my cooking at home ranges about the same, from the hot-dogs-n-beans to something that my family or guests think I was trained at a culinary school for.  But usually, with a family of seven and two of 'em under three years old, we don't EVER eat out, and even then, it's Friendly's or McDonald's.  

But I have my standards.  Burger King makes me barf.  

[WDH]

Engineer,

Listen to the Metalspinner ;D.

[WDH]

Tcsmpsi,

BBQ would be nice.....Chinese would be nice..........Mexican would be nice........... :

[Ron Wenrich]

So, I made a change to the poll.  You can change if you like, or just add another vote.

My favorite is one of the local taverns.  Its a sports bar and we liked their burgers and bar grub.  The sign on the door says no tank tops or do rags.  So, we knew it was a safe place.  We started to take our kids there, and noticed others started to do that. 

A couple of years ago, we started to get friendly with the owner.  Their bar has lots of autographed sports stars pictures on the wall.  Our daughter was swimming for Special Olympics at the time.  So, the owner says to give him a picture and he'll hang her picture up with all those big shots.  This past February, we finally did that.  And it now hangs with the big shots.  You can't get that kind of friendliness from the chains or upscale places. 

They also had a change of cooks.  Some of the best soup that you can get, and their daily specials are top notch. 

[tcsmpsi]

Tcsmpsi,

BBQ would be nice.....Chinese would be nice..........Mexican would be nice........... :

Anytime.  Well, anytime you hang around long enough.  You might have to infer, 'Hey, scrapple for brains, I'm haungry.'  It slips by me sometimes that other folks eat more than once a day.

In all fairness, though, I gotta tell you, I do not eat in a hurry.    :D

[Dave Shepard]

You only eat once a day? I only stop eating once a day, it's called sleep, and I try to keep that to a minimum.


Dave

[WDH]

If I only ate once per day, I think that i would eat in a hurry ;D.

[Don_Papenburg]

I don't like to eat at resturants  . But if I have to I like places like  Monas and Cuponis in Toluca  . Hickory house for ribs in Ottawa . Chalkys tavern for a burger in Streator.and Lamberts in Sykston Mo.  Most chain or fast food joints don't have a clue how to make ribs . I Know right away if they bring a steak knife with an order of ribs that I made a mistake .  We stop at the Fronteer resturant when we head up to Eagle River Wis. they have good burgers and waffle fries.

[Patty]

We rarely eat at a sit down restaurant, the local one just has lousy food. About once a month we splurge and I get take-out at McDonalds  :D . Norm is such a great cook that the restaurants cannot compete with such good food. We eat only once a day, like that guy from Texas  . However that meal usually begins at 7:00 pm and runs all the way through to bedtime!

[sawguy21]

I eat out a lot because I am too DanG lazy to cook for one and it shows. :D I don't like most fast food, can't handle what McDonalds calls coffee, but Tim Hortons grub is pretty good. There is a nearby pub that is very good but they have a smoking section inside and the whole place stinks. That will end with new province wide smoking ban in public places next year.
Patty, I find if I eat a heavy meal just before bed I don't sleep well.

[metalspinner]

There is a nearby pub that is very good but they have a smoking section inside and the whole place stinks. That will end with new province wide smoking ban in public places next year.

That is my biggest gripe of all when going out.  Asking for the "non-smoking" section of a restauraunt is like asking for the "non-peeing" section of the swimming pool. :  It's impossible to have "smoking" air and "non-smoking" air.

One local restauraunt gets alot of our business because they are non-smoking.  Of course it works the other way, too.

[tcsmpsi]

We eat only once a day, like that guy from Texas  . However that meal usually begins at 7:00 pm and runs all the way through to bedtime!

Foraging, after the cows have gone to bed.  Yep. ;D

[Patty]

Patty, I find if I eat a heavy meal just before bed I don't sleep well.

Sawguy, I find that mass quantities of  beer normally takes care of that little problem!  ;D

[sawguy21]

 :D :D :D :D :D

[Onthesauk]

We're small enough and far enough out here that we don't get a lot of choices in places to eat.  As someone explained before we moved here, "There may be different resturants but we all use the same cooks."  If a new place opens up the cook will be from somewhere else in town.  So what you got is what you'll get.

[timcosby]

cover that chicken fried steak with maple syrup ..... yum yum

[Cedarman]

Every so often when I'm traveling along the I# roads, I like to stop at Waffle House and get nothing but a double order of hashbrowns with onions, scattered and grilled well done so that they have that brown crispy glaze on both sides.  Then cover with a thin coating of ketchup and some pepper sprinkled on.  Its a monomeal, true, but boy does it satisfy me.

(Monomeal is a meal made up of just one item.  A dozen White Castles would qualify.)

[TexasTimbers]

I never even heard of anyone who has never heard of chicken fried steak. I thought it had made its way round the globe by now.

And if it is "chewy" then it ain't done right. And if it ain't real tenderized round steak it ain't chicken fried steak it is "fried, battered, frozen hockey puck".

Chicken fried chicken is good too. Alot of people think that is a joke till they come south and see it on the menu. Serve with homemade slightly-lumpy mashed taters and white gravy with fresh ground black pepper, fresh green beans cooked with slab bacon and onions and flavored with Old Bay seasoning, fresh sour dough rolls with a huge dollop of land O' Lakes real butter, and top it off with a slice of hot homemade pecan pie with a big scoop of Bluebell vanilla ice cream.

Y'all come back now, hear?

[scgargoyle]

We don't eat out often, but prefer local places or once in a while an upscale place. We're both good cooks, so we're often disappointed when we go out. My favorites are little hole-in-the-wall places with outstanding basic comfort food. If I was just a little crazier, I'd open a restaurant of comfort food- old favorites, made well.

[Tom]

Ah yes, Pork neckbones and rice, collards, a couple of pieces of cornbread and a cup of potlikker.   MMMMboy!

[WDH]

Ah yes, Pork neckbones and rice, collards, a couple of pieces of cornbread and a cup of potlikker.   MMMMboy!

My Mother used to cook pork backbone with collards and the best cornbread you could imagine.  MMMMboy! is right on ;D.  Neckbones and rice was beyond compare.  Chicken and rice too.  I'm hungry :D ;) ;D.