Marilyn Hagerty Goes Viral

[annabelle]

I'll take an Olive Garden Salad and bread sticks over that any day.

Amen.

In my post that got eaten , I made a reference to a diner that had been reviewed by that couple (whose names escape me) who review "Roadfood" in various spots in the US. This particular diner is on historic Route 66 a couple of towns over from me. The authors had raved about the chicken fried steak, so we decided to stop in for lunch when we were in the town and try it out.

It was dreadful. Bland, obviously frozen, white gravy from a mix. Instant potatoes and canned green beans on the side with heat 'n' serve rolls and margarine pats to round it out. If that wasn't the worst of it, the iced tea was terrible as well and I had to ask for clean flatware and napkins at our rickety uneven table. Our waitress dropped off our food, with the check and disappeared.

Some might find that sort of thing "charming"; I call it a waste of $20.

The only out I can give the diner and the reviewers is the possibility that the diner owners were given a heads-up about being reviewed and busted out some good product and then fell back into their shiftless ways.

Give me Denny's anyday.

[mskerr]

Apparently there are not many good local/non-chain restaurants in Grand Forks. I guess this is meant to "excuse" North Dakotans for their "naivety"/apparent sin of enjoying Olive Garden. But in any town or city, no matter what size, or how many fresh/ethnic/great places there are to eat, the fast food places are always doing thriving business. I lived in Santa Cruz, CA, a town where you can get a lot of great food of all sorts, especially Mexican, for under $10, and there is a ton of consciousness about local/organic/etc, and yet - a lot of my friends and housemates just love their Taco Bell fix. So why do small-town heartlanders get flack for patronizing and yes, enjoying, chain food, when it seems to be just about the most universally popular thing in the whole States?

I agree with lots of the aforementioned comments - at home I have my favorite little local spots, but after a couple days on the road, I can get pretty excited about a Subway. Even Jane and Michael Stern acknowledge that out of 12 roadfood meals, on average only 2 or 3 are even decent, and even fewer are really good. A meal at a local spot on the interstate can quite easily consist of microwaved frozen mozzarella sticks and a leathery piece of old lettuce. For great roadfood meals, you usually have to know where to look, which can be a bit of a challenge.

North Dakotans sound like a great bunch of people! Flash food isn't everything.

[gdenby]

Just because there's a cute little independently-owned family restaurant in a small isolated town, that doesn't necessarily mean it's any good.

Yeah. I remember when my parents took me on a trip around Lake Michigan, probably '63 or '64. Most of the diner food was not so good. I remember my mother saying that it was worth stopping "at the place with golden arches." As I recall, she said something like the food was not very good, but not very bad either. There was one place. tho', up at St. Ignace that had a great burger. Wish we had found a place serving pasties, or some smoked fish.

I imagine that finding a good or decent independent restaurant is about 30%. With so few left, there are lots of small towns where odds are, the local cafe and the convenience store only compete on comfortable, not tasty. Too bad. While I expect a good pork tenderloin sandwich, I'm often disappointed. Think I'll have a McRib.

[CaliPoutine]

I live in Santa Clarita, CA. We're known for our chain restaurants, seriously, we have one long street where they are mostly all located( on the same street as Magic Mountain, gotta attract the tourists). My partner received a gift card for OG so we sucked it up and went. The restaurant was packed, there was over an hour wait on a Tuesday night. I DONT GET IT. The salad had the weirdest odor, like preservatives or something. It definately came in a big bag. I asked for breadsticks that were plain( no "garlic salt butter" brushed on top". I was told I had to wait for them. No one ever asks for them like that. Our meal ended up being comped because we sat at the bar and were ignored for 30 min. It saddens me that local restaurants that serve good food go out of business and yet there is an hour wait to get into these horrible chains.

[rotuts]

Well ....

they liked it in N.D.

not so much comp. there.

[CaliPoutine]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

[IndyRob]

Yeah. I remember when my parents took me on a trip around Lake Michigan, probably '63 or '64. Most of the diner food was not so good. I remember my mother saying that it was worth stopping "at the place with golden arches." As I recall, she said something like the food was not very good, but not very bad either.

This is a good point. I think there was a time when consistancy was more valued than variety - for good reason. I think McDonald's capitalized on this big time.

[IndyRob]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

I think http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/honey-badger (Caution, bad words).

[haresfur]

I'll take an Olive Garden Salad and bread sticks over that any day.

Amen.

In my post that got eaten , I made a reference to a diner that had been reviewed by that couple (whose names escape me) who review "Roadfood" in various spots in the US. This particular diner is on historic Route 66 a couple of towns over from me. The authors had raved about the chicken fried steak, so we decided to stop in for lunch when we were in the town and try it out.

It was dreadful.

On the other hand I had a great chile relleno at the Club Cafe on Route 66 in Santa Rosa NM. When you find the great local meals they make the trip.

I agree as I mentioned above that independent isn't necessarily good. The point above about the difficulty getting good ingredients may be part of it. However, sometimes people without the right skills or temperament try to fill the culinary void.

[annabelle]

Oh, I wasn't trying to dog on Ma and Pa restaurants. I was just mad that this particular diner had been reviewed in Gourmetmagazine and raved about.

I felt betrayed. I could have gone a few miles up the road to the awesome Mexican restaurant that costs less and is mucho better.

[IndyRob]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

[gfweb]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

This. There are a few not safe for work words.

Edited March 12, 2012 by gfweb (log)

[gfweb]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

Duncan Hines was the guy. Salesman who travelled and made a list of good restaurants.

[annabelle]

The cake mix guy? Who knew?

[IndyRob]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

Duncan Hines was the guy. Salesman who travelled and made a list of good restaurants.

Thank you.

[gfweb]

I remember traveling as a little kid and seeing a Duncan Hines emblem on small town restaurants. A paleo-zagat.

[gfweb]

I live in Santa Clarita, CA. We're known for our chain restaurants, seriously, we have one long street where they are mostly all located( on the same street as Magic Mountain, gotta attract the tourists). My partner received a gift card for OG so we sucked it up and went. The restaurant was packed, there was over an hour wait on a Tuesday night. I DONT GET IT. The salad had the weirdest odor, like preservatives or something. It definately came in a big bag. I asked for breadsticks that were plain( no "garlic salt butter" brushed on top". I was told I had to wait for them. No one ever asks for them like that. Our meal ended up being comped because we sat at the bar and were ignored for 30 min. It saddens me that local restaurants that serve good food go out of business and yet there is an hour wait to get into these horrible chains.

Where we live there are plenty of chains and plenty of non-chains. The OGs are all backed up with lines at night and the owner operated are busy, but not jammed. I think that the Darden group has got it figured out. I've read that their formula is so loved by the customers that they can't change dinnerware without hearing complaints. Changing a recipe is even worse.

[heidih]

Mrs Hagerty is a honey badger.

What am I missing?

I had to google it as well - took it to mean she is a tough old gal basically

[Jaymes]

Wasn't some iconic name made by reviewing road food in America? I thought it was Howard Johnson, but a quick read at his Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bear this out.

Duncan Hines was the guy. Salesman who travelled and made a list of good restaurants.

And before Howard Johnson and Duncan Hines made their marks upon the world of dining out, there was Fred Harvey - a Brit credited with creating the very first chain restaurants, and therefore the concept, in the US. So all y'all can blame him.

My grandmother was Harvey House Girl back around 1910. In fact, she met her hubby while she was working at a Harvey House. He was a conductor for the Kansas & Topeka Railroad.

The Fred Harvey Company

[gfweb]

Fred Harvey was an amazing guy. All but forgotten now. He brought fine dining to small town America and civilized the place too. A great bio of him came out a couple of years ago.

[rotuts]

Ive heard that Harvey House Food was quite good, and rail service specifically stopped and let people off to eat.

[suzilightning]

this kicks up several things for me:

i like to patronize local non-chains. i have, however, had some perfectly dreadful food at them. and i know that with standardization i can get a pretty good chicken sandwich on whole grain roll with honey mustard dressing, banana peppers, black olives and some good greens at Subway.

my husband, the johnnybird, is an engineer who over the years has traveled to almost all 50 states. many times coming out of meetings they folks just want something that is reliably good to eat as many of those guys think of food as fuel, not a dining experience. sometimes the best option in some of the far flung outposts is a chain. if you ever meet him please have him tell you what it is like driving down the main road to Yuma Proving Grounds (Taco Bell, In 'n Out Burger, McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King, Taco Bell.....). On the other hand being married to a semi-worldly hooked in woman like me he has now eaten at Jaleo in DC twice and I haven't darkened it's doors once .

growing up off the east end of Long Island in the 1950's and 1960's there wasn't a lot available outside of our home kitchens. i ate at Nettie's Italian

Kitchen once. i never ate pizza again until i met my friend ,joyce, 19 years latef. it was that bad. the nearest McDonalds went in 30 miles from where i grew up in the very late 1960s. once coming home from a field trip we stopped there and considered it a treat. i did however get instruction from teachers when were were out on other field trips on how to behave and order in white tablecloth restaurants and found it an invaluable lesson throughout my life.

i'm glad that those folks have another possiblility for meeting and eating at, perhaps, a reasonable price for ladies who probably have cooked most of their life.

[Kouign Aman]

Oy. We had a little family owned italian place that had been open longer than the 30 years I've been in town. When we moved close to it, we tried and tried to like it. Three separate visits, with friends, to try many things on the menu, and the best it ever got was mediocre. Most of the stuff was worse than that - little flavor, overcooked textures, very salty in a plain-white-salt way. Olive Garden walks all over them. (As do many other independant italian restaurants in town).

[Jaymes]

Ive heard that Harvey House Food was quite good, and rail service specifically stopped and let people off to eat.

Oh, it was much more than that. Witness these excerpts from a recent Epicurious article about the Harvey Houses:

It was so well organized and operated… well, let me give you an example. When the train pulled out of a station, the conductor would announce the next dining stop. He would also announce that eating in the dining room at the restaurant was 6 bits and that the counter was paid from the card. At the next stop, a trainman would wire the orders into the restaurant so that the staff could be ready to accommodate all the passengers within their 1 hour stop. As the train neared, a Harvey employee would ring a gong that alerted everyone and put the final touches in motion. When the customers entered orders for beverages were taken quickly and glasses arranged on the table in a coded layout so that any waitress could tell who got what drink.

And as I said, my grandmother was a Harvey House Girl. One of the earliest things Fred Harvey decided upon was not to refer to them as waitresses. Waitresses were not held in the very highest esteem, and many good families back east would not have allowed their daughters to go west, unescorted, to wait tables in the rough towns of the wild, wild west. This was a time when, as one wag quipped, "there were no ladies west of Dodge City, and no women west of Albuquerque."

Fred Harvey knew that calling his waitresses "Harvey House Girls" put them in an entirely different light. His young women had to be single, "attractive," and of "good moral character." They lived in dorms governed over by strict matrons.

Another quote from Epicurious:

Now about those waitresses. Fred Harvey was amazing in this regard. His second contribution to American history was the Harvey Girls. Will Rogers once quipped that Harvey had “kept the West in food and wives”. Harvey hired young ladies between 18 and 30 and made them conform to a strict set of moral and ethical guidelines. Mrs. Harvey met each girl as she was hired. Paid $17.50 a month, this was a dream job for many who were unable to cope with the burgeoning populations of big cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia. So many Harvey Girls, always respectable, became the wife to a customer. One railroad baron said “The Harvey House was not only a good place to eat; it was the Cupid of the Rails”. It is estimated that more than 100,000 girls worked for Harvey House restaurants and hotels and of those, 20,000 married their regular customers.

Like I said, my grandmother was a Harvey House Girl. Wish I had asked her more about it. I was just too dumb to realize how treasured those stories would be to me now.

But one thing I do remember. In her later years, I often helped her to prepare bounteous meals in her large country kitchen. And if we were having ham, she never failed to remind me, "Slice the ham thick, Darlin' - that's what Mr. Harvey always said. 'Slice the ham thick.'"

[IndyRob]

...And if we were having ham, she never failed to remind me, "Slice the ham thick, Darlin' - that's what Mr. Harvey always said. 'Slice the ham thick.'"

I might have to adopt that phrase as a general way of offering approving encouragement.

"Oh yes, my friend, slice that ham thick."