Reply #34: Heh ... [View All]

[RoyGBiv]

HIT ME! I'll take the heat. :-)

I once spent two weeks in New Orleans, savored the local cuisine, and by the end of my trip, all I wanted was a baked potato. Not a microwaved potato. Not a potato that had been cut up, had all this crap mixed in with it, then heated in an oven or a pot or the microwave. I wanted a friggin' potato, wrapped in foil, straight out of the oven, and I wanted a potato bar from which I could choose my garnishments. This doesn't mean I didn't like the local flavor (I in fact loved it), but damnit, what my appetite wanted eventually, they could not give me. And so when I returned to Oklahoma, the first stop I made after getting off the plane was a chain restaurant about half a mile from the airport that serves real baked potatoes. And I enjoyed it. And I'm not sorry.

Expensive is relative. Everything in Oklahoma is fairly cheap. "Local flavor" here is County Line BBQ, at which you can feed a party of four for under $40. I spent that much at OG on just my daughter and me. It was worth it, though. What I had really was very good.

And here's a weird thing. After that, I took a vacation to Branson, MO with my daughter, one of her friends, and my mother. (My mom has always loved the place. I dislike it, but I like some of the surrounding areas ... caves, historical sites, etc. so it was cool.) In the Branson of today, finding "local" food is not easy. Chains have sprouted everywhere. We did find a few local places in the non-tourist areas, ate there, and found them underwhelming. It was sorta like eating Sunday dinner at Grandma's on a day that Grandma was having a bad day. In the middle of the week, after visiting an attraction, we decided just to eat at a Denny's and pray for our stomachs. It was horrible, but filling, and for the four of us, it cost about $50. At Denny's. Choke and puke to the world cost over $10 per plate. The next day we were driving around and saw an OG. My daughter, who had fallen in love with the place from our dinner back in Oklahoma, asked if we could eat there, so we did. For the four of us, I spent about $45, tip included.

Now what kind of sense does that make? Denny's more expensive than OG and the OG in Branson less expensive than the one in OKC? I'm clueless.

I'll stop rambling now ... I think I'm hungry.