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The True Story of the Southland Southland Recipes The Secret of Southland Mac and Cheese How to Make a Southland Club Sandwich Southland Stories Always be Nice to Your Waitress What You See Is What You Get |
WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET - AND REAL Several weeks ago we were invited to meet dear old friends at a local chain restaurant for dinner. I'll have to admit I was tired and didn’t want to go, but my always gracious and sensible wife talked me into it with little effort and I'm glad she did. Of course, it was wonderful to see the old friends that we had had so much fun with back in the day but I was distracted by the restaurant that can only be described as bizarre and crowded as judgment day. They had a parking lot that was absolutely packed and I thought to myself, "It's good I came tonight, maybe I can learn a few things." I did, but I'm not really sure what these lessons mean. The first thing I noticed inside was a barrel of Grade Z peanuts surrounded by a mob of children who were jamming their arms into it and pulling out fistfuls of the humble goobers and wolfing them down like there was no tomorrow. Every few seconds a waitress would come by with a small galvanized bucket and scoop up a couple of dry quarts and take them to the tables for ' Appetizers'. It made me wonder how many of those kids had washed their hands before plunging in. Yummy. There had been a display of very nice looking steaks and when it came time to order I had the serf and turf combination-a twelve-ounce beef filet and a lobster tail. It was without exception the toughest piece of meat I've ever been served in my life. I've never had African warthog but it can't be any tougher than that combative little steak. And absolutely flavorless, but that may have been a blessing in disguise. The "lobster", if that is what it was, was a pathetic little creature belonging to a species I'm not familiar with. Heck, I've pulled bigger crustaceans out of the Sipsey River. The baked potato was hidden under a glob of sour cream and the rolls were cold and tasted cheap. It also seemed like virtually every adult except us was drinking alcohol and who could blame him or her? After all, when the dessert is a bucket of "fudge" extruded from a machine, it's nice to have something to take the edge off. Maybe the waitresses are used to people who have had a little too much to drink because when my wife gave our waitress a hundred-dollar bill, she returned the change to the wrong person and disappeared. Like all other 'theme' restaurants it was loud and garish to the point of being obnoxious. It had food that was mediocre at best and completely fake. You see a lot of them. There is a famous chain restaurant with an antipodal theme (but headquartered in Florida) that serves a decent enough cut of steak but ruins it with a crust of black pepperish like substance that completely submerges the taste of the meat and leaves it's taste in your mouth for hours. There is a chain that advertises "classic American food" but their cooking tastes like a prop from the movie Soylent Green. It goes on and on and people can't seem to get enough of it. For all of our faults, which are many, we are the real deal at the Southland Restaurant. My family serves real, traditional, local American food and there is nothing fake about us or the people that work there. I'm proud to say the Barbecue is still cooked on the original pit built by my uncle, father and grandfather when Harry Truman was president. The pies are made fresh every morning from family recipes and we actually cook our vegetables as opposed to just dumping something out of a can and heating it up. Our fish and fried chicken are hand breaded and deep fried just like in the old days except now we use soybean oil instead of lard. But one of the things I'm proudest of is that we never took a dime of money we didn’t earn with our own sweat and effort. Sure it would be nice for the local government to float a bond issue to help us out, or a backroom deal to help us with taxes. It would be great if there were a special little gas or tobacco tax to subsidize our operating costs, but it would be wrong. At the Southland we have more than our share of quirks. Compared to a drive through we can be almost unbelievably slow, but it's because we have a tiny crew and we're actually cooking your burger when you order it, not hours before you got up that morning. We don’t serve alcohol, something that’s become increasing rare at a sit down restaurant these days. Booze might bring in more customers but it would bring its associated problems also - higher insurance premiums, customers who can't hold their liquor and worse. It's true we run out of things frequently. It's also true we're not always in the best of moods. Sometimes we barely get through the day at all. But we're not fakes. The only time we ask for your money is when you've bought something to eat. There is no fakery at our restaurant and we will never pretend to be something we aren’t. We are still the Southland restaurant in Sheffield Alabama, USA, and what you see, is what you get. And it's real. Thomas McCay January 20th 2009
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