Food was a big part of our Road Trip - as you will have seen from the blog - and 99% of the time the food was outstanding. Over the course of the 6 months, we've compiled a small list of US Food Lessons Learnt, which we now present to you in no particular order. Of course there are exceptions to the observations below, but these are the general themes that set the US apart from, say, the UK.
In and out
Nope, not a reference to the
burger joint, rather the rate at which customers are turned around at eating establishments. If you're thinking of a leisurely dinner lasting a couple of hours, think again. Food comes really quickly (although often hot piping hot, paradoxically) and the check (bill) is presented as soon as you've taken your last bite without any option to order any extras.
For an evening meal, make sure you have post-meal activities planned, otherwise it could be a very early night!
Don't ask for more thinking time
The exception to the above rule is that you need to think quick as soon as you sit down. If you spend time chatting, looking around, searching stuff on your phone, you could be caught out. Many, many times, if we didn't know what we wanted when the server first came over and asked for a couple more minutes, we would be forgotten about and would have to arm-wave frantically to get someone to come over and take your order. It seems you have one shot at ordering, so look lively.
Be prepared for option overload
The 'be ready' mantra is somewhat complicated by the excessive level of choice you typically have. Let's take eggs as an example.
In the UK you typically have two options, or three if you're in a posh place and they have the means to poach an egg. In the US, you will be asked how you want them. "Erm... fried?" Not so fast, my English simpleton. Sunny side up, over easy, over medium, over hard, poached, baked, shirred, soft boiled, hard boiled, basted, Spanish, soft scrambled, hard scrambled... "Erm... fried?"
Ordering a sandwich is equally perilous. Ham sandwich? Is that regular or country ham, or Canadian bacon? On white, wheat, rye, sourdough, pumpernickel? Cheese? Sure! Cheddar, Jack, Swiss, American, cream, cottage, feta, Muenster, blue... The same palava continues with sauces, accompaniments, fries or chips (crips). By the time you've placed your order, you're both exhausted and unsure about what you've actually ordered!
A final sting in the tail is that, if you make the mistake of not knowing all the options up-front and ask for them, they will typically be delivered at a pace that most speed-talkers would be proud of, served with a side of mild annoyance.
Be fussy
The upside of option overload is that you can customise your food almost indefinitely. In the UK you'll see "no substitution" on meals, but in the US it is almost expected. Don't fancy beef links (sausages)? No problem - be brave and sub them out for turkey links.
Soft drinks
In the UK, soft drinks can sometimes cost you almost as much as an alcoholic drink. This is particularly infuriating when you realise the syrup and soda water that makes up a pint of coke at the bar costs less than 10% of what it costs. Which is great for promoting cutting back on getting hammered all the time, obviously.
In the US, bars treat soft drinks like water. Not only are they incredibly cheap, you'd be unlucky to find one that didn't give you free refills. If you have a round including alcoholic drinks, soft drinks might be free to start with.
As a side-note, if you're ordering an iced tea make sure you know what you're ordering. It could be the sickly-sweet Southern staple of sweet (sweetened) tea, or the unsweetened type, which you can sweeten yourself if you wish.
Dressing on the side
A small one this. If you're planning on a nice healthy salad to balance out all those burgers and fried cheese, make sure you ask for the dressing on the side. Otherwise you'll get your salad drenched in the stuff, and the burger your naughty side had its eye on might just have been the low-calorie option after all.
Use the bar
One of my pet hates in UK bars is when people sit at the bar, leaving you and twenty other thirsty punters a small gap to squeeze into to place your order. I totally reverse this in the US and would always prefer to sit at the bar, for a number of reasons.
The top reason is interaction. So many times we met interesting people who, as soon as they heard the accent, were genuinely interested in our life and our epic travels. Whether it was the bar staff or fellow drinkers, we never came across someone who didn't want to chew the fat with us. (Okay, so Boston was a bit snooty, granted). Sitting at the bar also gives you a good chance to leisurely peruse the various beers they have on offer (see Beer below).
Secondly, you can nearly always get food at the bar. If the restaurant looks a bit busy, just ask to sit at the bar. You'll get the same service as at a table. Wings, beer and banter? Yes please!
Thirdly, the bars are often huge, meaning plenty of space for sitters and orderers alike. Many places have table service which means that the bars are rarely used for ordering drinks anyway.
Sandwich for lunch
Fancy a light bite? Beware ordering a sandwich, as these can often come out the size of a burger complete with a whole host of sides which will keep you full late into the day.
Appetiser
A variation on the sandwich item above, appetisers or starters are rarely anything like their UK counterparts. Chips (nachos) and salsa was a particular killer for us. We were quite peckish and ordered these to tide us over until the mains arrive. What a mistake-a to make-a! They were HUGE.
The same went for most starters - either have them as a main, or share them as a main!
Can I box this?
Sorry, another addendum to portion sizes. Clichéd as it may sound, the truth is that most US portions will be too big for UK visitors. Sam and I absolutely hate food waste, so we did like the locals do and asked for a takeout box for the remains of our meals. Don't be timid, no-one will bat an eyelid.
This worked really well when we were leaving a city and heading to a campsite, as it often provided us with a tasty, quick lunch en route, or breakfast the next day. Cold pizza and wings for breakfast - what's not to like?!
Kombucha
With increasing regularity during the trip, we found a drink called Kombucha being offered at bars alongside their craft beer offerings. Thinking this might be another translation anomaly akin to scallions (spring onions), curiosity took the better of us and we asked. It's a magical tea, we were told. Really?!
After some Googling, we discovered that Kombucha is a sweetened tea that has been fermented with wild yeasts and bacteria. It is not dissimilar to a 'wild' beer, and is not without some level of divisive debate as to whether it is good for you or not. Needless to say, we (Sam) had to try some. "Odd" was the feedback. Something she'd try again, but not in a hurry.
Coffee
If you're on the road, then - unless you're a real coffee snob - always buy your coffee from a gas station. The quality is somewhat variable, but is generally above average and more than anything, it is cheap! Taking your own refillable cups in is the way to go, as you can usually get a fill-up for 99c or less, irrespective of the size. This never failed to kick-start us into action after a poor night's sleep in a damp tent with a long drive ahead of us.
Beer
Without a shadow of a doubt, the road trip's biggest effect on me as a person is the US beer scene. I could - and since returning, have - endlessly waffled on about the American craft beer scene. So I'll try to keep this succinct.
Like most people, I imagine, I thought American beer was all about horrible, watery lagers like Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Light and so on. And indeed, up until fairly recently it was. But pretty early on in the road trip, I noticed a lot of the more highly-rated bars we tried to head for also offered a selection of their own beers, often brewed on site. I was, of course, tempted to try these.
Holy cow! I was asking myself how the hell had I made it to my mid 40s before seeing the light. At home I was exclusively - and I mean, exclusively - a Stella drinker. A few beers in on the trip and I knew I wouldn't go back. There were just so many different, interesting flavours to try. Not every one hit the mark, but the fun was trying.
The choice is bewildering. Part of this is due to the US licensing laws that make it expensive to ship out of state. So each state - hell, county - has its own beer ecosystem. This seems to result in every bar having or being associated with a microbrewery. Which is great for the punter. The US beer scene is absolutely outstanding and, dare I say it, the best in the world.
I think part of my sheltered beer upbringing was due to the fact that, in the UK when I was a lad, you had a choice of lager or real ale. The latter was warm and bitter, so I naturally tended towards the cold, fizzy lagers. I was born at the wrong time, as it is really only of late that the UK craft beer scene has started to resonate with the drinker.
You will now not find a single can of Stella in the house. Tonight a Stella-drinking friend popped in and I had to make a special trip to the petrol station to grab a 4-pack. He drank one, and upon leaving I gave him the other three. Such is the scale of my epiphany.
I just wish I had downloaded the
untappd app before the road trip, and not after.
BBQ
Blog readers will have noted my obsession with (no, not chicken wings) a good, open camp fire. There are few things better in this life than pitching a tent in one of the amazing US National Parks, building a roaring fire in the fire pit, and sinking back into the chair next to your wife with a cold (craft) beer in your hand.
As much as my mild pyromania simply liked setting fire to wood, there was nearly always a purposeful side to this activity. Cooking! I am a keen BBQ'er at home, and we're talking real BBQ'ing with charcoal rather than gas, which is essentially just an outside hob. Cooking on an open fire was not only a quintessentially outdoorsy thing to do, it was often a necessity. Many campsites didn't have any kind of bar or restaurant nearby, and the propane hob was very limited in what you could cook on it.
That suited me down to the ground. I started with a massive fire which soon burnt down to a glowing red inferno. Turning the grill over onto the fire, it was soon both sanitised and ready for cooking. Corn and potatoes were double-wrapped in foil and placed in the pit, around the edges. Potatoes were somewhat hit-and-miss, but the corn was always a hit. We embraced the potential banana skin of chicken right from the word go, along with sausages ("brats"), pork, beef and salmon. Even veggies such as snow peas (mangetout) and onion were done on the fire by making a little frying pan out of tin foil and throwing in a knob of butter stolen from a hotel the night before.
Sitting down in the fading light eating the food you had just cooked on the fire was at times quite an emotional experience. There were far too many good meals to mention, but Sam's videos and blog posts do a good job at capturing a lot of them. I think my crowning glory had to be the rack of ribs I did at Lake Tahoe. Slow-cooked ribs on an open fire? Easy. So good, even a bear (allegedly) came to see what was on offer.
Only once did I nearly poison us with undercooked chicken, but I blame that on the poor firewood and failing light. And, anyway, we survived.
On the rare occasions that we had to resort to the propane hob for our evening meal - due to lack of firewood or firepit, time constraints, or fire restrictions - even though the results were lovely, we couldn't help feeling that it would have tasted better on the fire.
I couldn't end this section without mentioning Sam. It is a running joke, here in the UK at least, that the man gets all the credit for "the wonderful BBQ he cooked" when in fact all he did was make a fire and flip and turn the food his other half had spent half the day preparing. I'm not saying my cooking wasn't skilful, but without Sam doing all the prep whilst I marvelled, bare-chested at the huge flames I had created, we would have undoubtedly starved to death.
Weight
All this talk of food and drink has led me to close out on the topic of weight. Not once throughout the trip did we consciously think about what we were eating - we just ate and drank what we wanted, when we wanted. Not necessarily something to shout about, but of the 6 months in the US, I only had 4 days where I didn't drink beer.
I mention this because, upon my return to the UK, I found that I had actually lost 6 lbs in weight. This was initially unfathomable, but in hindsight, the fact that 50% of the time we were out in the great outdoors - hiking, chopping wood, erecting our tent, making and cooking good food on open fires - it kind of makes sense. No-one - least of all me - expected that I would go to the US for 6 months and lose weight.
It is possible, y'all. Eat and drink what you want, but make sure you get your walking boots on and take plenty of time to experience the natural wonders of the wonderful US of A.
