Tuesday, July 28, 2009

33: A Munch and a Sip

It's late, I'm hungry and tired.

Thirty miles on the bike from Wilmington to Southport has made my wrist painful and the hangover from last night's Special IPA in the Wilmington brewery has done the same to my head. All I want is plenty of water, several glasses of wine and some nice food. Doesn't have to be fancy, just has to be OK. Could be Cabernet with red meat, could be Chardonnay with seafood - I don't much care, but the combination is everything my abused body requires to get back on the right track.

Slainte, the local Irish pub, is so close to the motel I could spit and hit its door but I don't want Irish food. They'd murder anything like a steak, the only fish would be battered and deep-fried and I'm not in the mood for chicken wings or any of the so-called traditional Irish favorites like bangers and mash, corned beef and cabbage or shepherd's pie; not tonight.

The Surfer's Paradise is half a mile away and I head there, past the low-grade fast food joints and walking on the sandy grass against traffic, all of which wants to kill the pedestrian. It's a game we play, me and the drivers; I act like a normal person and they become homicidal maniacs, intent of mowing down He-Who-Dares-Walk.

It's hot and I get sweaty very fast. All I can think of is red meat and red wine so I guess the reds have it. Burger perhaps? No. Steak. Ribeye? New York Strip? Could be either, but it must be rare and the wine makes it a meal.

When I reach Surfer's, I'm perturbed to see that closing time is 8.00pm - only half an hour away. I had thoughts of staying for several hours, writing notes and ruminating on life and the bike trip. Inside, it looks like a cross between a school dining room from England in 1968 and an old folks' eating house. No cosy booths, no old wood - just plastic-topped tables. Also, it is quiet, except for the sounds of people eating; no music.

I saw a documentary on the TV Food Channel two days ago where the hero of the program found a haute cuisines chef working in the restaurant of a gas station in Texas, so perhaps the room layout I see before me is indicative of the high-class feast to come.

I get a seat and notice the cutlery - every table setting has a single fork, encased in a paper packet. There are no knives. The diners are mostly old - are they not trusted with sharp objects? Does someone on the staff arrive when dinners is served, to cut our food into little squares? Do we get bibs? Is someone on hand to execute the Heimlich manoeuvre should a piece of meat go down the wrong way and bring and early termination to someone's dining experience?

My waitress arrives to tell me her name is Kelly. It should be Fat Kelly, I decide, in a moment of devilry. Fortunately I have enough sense to not pass on my humor. Kelly delivers a menu and asks me what I want to drink, so I tell her it depends on what I'll eat but, in the meantime, I could have a beer so what do they have on tap? That's when my world begins to shatter.

They don't have beer on tap. They don't have beer in a bottle, as I find out a millisecond later. Of course, I could gamble on the steak choice and go straight to the wine selection and order a Cabernet, but that's also not going to happen because Kelly, realizing that I am asking for something well beyond her ability to supply, blurts out, "We don't umm, umm, umm - serve," and I correctly take this to mean that there isn't a drop of booze in the house. Well, not for me - maybe the chef is a complete alky and glugs a bottle of gin whilst he's preparing the grub, but that's not for me to say.

Kelly leaves me with the menu and I decide that I should at least give the place a try because I am pretty hungry but, after scanning all three pages, I am at a loss to find something that is not fried. There are no salads, not that I want one, but their absence is relevant. Finally, I do manage to locate two non-friend items, both of which are steaks. hen I realise that every item - and I mean every item - is accompanied by a superlative adjective.

Both steaks are of generous proportions and would be grilled perfectly to my liking. The pork chops (fried of course) are described as delicious, the fish is gently battered, the scallops are fried to golden perfection. Not a single entry is without such a description and it reminds me of a used car lot where every car sports a placard bearing a similar boast.

Between the superlatives, the atmosphere and lack of alcoholic stimulation, I decide that a burger and a beer in the Irish pub might be the best choice. Maybe they have wine. They'll certainly have knives and, if they don't have Guinness, I'll carve off my own head with one. So, I exit quickly and trudge back up the road, past the gas station that has no shop, past the pizza place, which has now closed, across the parking lot and into Slainte.

They have Guinness, so I order one.

They have music.

I ask the bar guy about food.

"Not until September," he says, scratching the back of his head. "We have no kitchen. There's a place called Surfers about half a mile away..."

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