The Quest for Rocking Southern Food

(Posted a bit after I got home, sorry!) 

Since leaving New Orleans, I have been on a quest for rocking Southern food. I have tried Church's Fried Chicken, The Cracker Barrel, Little Tea Shop in Memphis and Southern Bred in Nashville. 

I love questing for Southern food because it is so foreign to my Bay Area understanding of food.  Sure, I have had fried chicken and macaroni and cheese.  However, fried chicken and mac and cheese did not prepare me for the wealth of previously unheard of dishes. 

One example of Southern food leaving me wildly confused is breakfast at the Cracker Barrel in Jackson.  The basis of a Cracker Barrel breakfast is eggs, gravy, biscuits, and grits.  How are these four things meant to be eaten?  Up until now, I thought that gravy was a sauce.  However, I received a bowl of gravy.  Was the chef trying to tell me to eat it as soup?  And what is the deal with grits?  Are they meant to take the place of hash browns and be mixed with eggs and catsup?  Should I have treated them like Cream of Wheat and added sugar and butter?  In the end, none of this matters.  The biscuits were the best I have ever had.  Buttery, flakey, with a kick of buttermilk sour; I would eat these not just with every meal but for every meal. 

Another moment of Southern food confusion was the broccoli puff at the Little Tea Shop in Memphis.  After a couple weeks on the road, The Little Tea Shop’s three veggie plate called to me from the other side of Memphis.  The turnip greens were amazing; briny, warm, and comforting.  The broccoli puff, however, left me a bit boggled.  In defense of both puff and Tea House, I ordered the thing without any idea of what it might be.  I imagined, perhaps, a pasty like “puff” pastry or something soufflé-like because soufflés “puff” up while cooking.  What I received was somewhere between cheesy broccoli and cream of broccoli soup with chewy bits that might have been egg.  I don’t know if I lacked the context to appreciate the broccoli puff (as I’m sure was the case with grits) or if even someone who grew up with broccoli puffs would have turned this one down.  Oh well, one tragically off moment in an otherwise delicious and satisfying quest is not enough to slow me down.  I moved on to Nashville and the delight that was Southern Bred.

Southern Bred has been my favorite southern restaurant so far.  In fact, I may call my quest quits after tonight because I don’t know if it can get better.  The meal started with a trio of warm breads with butter.  After a day exploring Andrew Jackson’s house and grounds in the rain, nothing could have been better.  Our Fried Green Tomato starter arrived shortly after the breads.  It left me with a loyalty problem.  Before embarking on this journey, I worked at Nibblers, the most amazing restaurant in the Bay. Chef Daniel’s Fried Green Tomatoes were one of my favorite dishes on the menu and were topped with a red tomato salsa which was excellent.  However, these were served with ranch dressing which added a grungy, eat-with-your-hands snack food element to the experience.  Is it wrong to like another chef’s tomatoes?   It feels wrong.  I was mostly full by the time the mains arrived and while it was all delicious, I experienced the food in a warm, full, happy haze that makes remembering or describing it challenging.  My mother and I did, however, sneak some cinnamon rolls back to our room.  We swore up and down that we would save them for breakfast the next morning.  Nope.  No way.  The rolls were gone by midnight.  I blame my mother entirely, pastry pusher that she is.

So that’s it.  No more Southern food quest.  My food expectations have been challenged and perfection has been attained.