Country Roads, Take Me to a Stone Building With a Window Unit.

“Restaurants near me.” It’s what I’m texting in the search bar when everyone else in the car is looking at the fall foliage or counting cows. I look for the mom-and-pop restaurants you can’t get at home. 

But the near-me part of “restaurants near me” is pretty relative. The good ones aren’t going to be right off the interstate exit. In fact, the contestants in the “counting cows” game are about to boost their scores. 

There are levels of good when it comes to the non-chain eateries. You’ve got the ones in the strip malls. Drive past those as a rule, especially if they’ve got another business combined there, such as JJ’s Grill and Lottery Scratch-Off or Snake’s Bail Bond and Subs. They only have time to do one thing well, and it probably has more to do with scratching than cooking. The only strip mall places I consider are the narrow shotgun ones with a back and front entrance (possibly in case the shotgun becomes more than a design metaphor). The skinnier the passageway from front to back, the better the food. 

Then you’ve got the ones with camp in their name. Shout out to Stogner’s Fish Camp in Walthall County. You’re basically in a rustic shed probably built by the WPA. Bring a strong back- because the benches don’t have any - and an empty stomach. Servings are generous, and you know when you get there, you’re going to leave a little bit miserable. It’s that good.

Then a level up from that are the metal warehouse buildings sitting on half gravel and half broken-asphalt parking lots. These are named after real people such as Mildred or R.D. They have good food until it’s gone every day. They have homemade pies and cakes brought in each morning by people on oxygen. Do it. These are must-stops. You only live once; don’t waste it in a nationally advertised casual diner when you can have something brought over from Aunt Jim’s kitchen. 

But the top tier of a backwoods diner is very pronounced and consistent in its hallmarks. Here’s how you know. First of all, the design usually looks like a brick cottage on the front, but the truly over-the-top good ones are stone instead of brick. They have a square and cracked Coca-Cola sign on the front, and if you could still read the cursive black letters above the Coke sign, they would only have the town name followed by “Restaurant”: Alder Bluff Restaurant, Elmtown Restaurant, Farrisville Restaurant. They run a no-nonsense loose ship, and they spend less time on creative names and more time hand-stirring the pot.

I always feel a little conspicuous going in because I’m pretty sure everyone has noticed out the windows (the ones without the air-conditioning units) that I got out of – not a truck. 

As I walk in, I know it’s going to be good when I see the separate dining section designated with the Lions Club insignia. Tell me it’s home cooking without telling me it’s home cooking. How about with the American ingenuity which is not dead and gone in these establishments? They have engineers without degrees that can solve a problem with whatever’s laying around. Last week, I saw what used to be an oscillating cylinder fan with its base ripped off, turned on its side, and mounted to a ceiling beam with a zip tie. It doesn’t vie for the beautification award, but it keeps the customers ventilated. (Most men are gonna need it because they have a girlfriend in their armpit.) Visit the facilities, and you find that toilet paper mounts are an engineering genre all their own.

There is also signage everywhere which keeps the index card and sharpie factories in business. Most of these signs have to do with what parade they’ll be closed for, what you can’t put in the toilet, and what payments they accept, with check being a popular option. 

Customer service is key. If the waitress doesn’t call you “Shug” or “Hun,” you’re in the wrong place. The clientele is also recognizable. Any one of them could have been a stand-in for an episode of Duck Dynasty, and you have a feeling they fought HARD against the no smoking ordinance imposed in the early nineties. 

They have the daily meat and three choices on a chalkboard (a step up from the index card signs), and I promise I went to two of these restaurants in Tennessee a day apart last week, which had kraut and wieners as one of their three choices - an entree that hadn’t occurred to me since it sat next to Watergate salad on a long church table in the late seventies. And speaking of salad, theirs comes out in a wood-grain plastic bowl with a cottage cheese scoop on one side, and a handful of Captain’s Wafer packs. If you opt to order off the menu instead of the meat and three, you have a pretty good shot at fulfilling a fried bologna sandwich craving. And anything you order comes with hush puppies. 

The tea is good, and we all know that’s the main thing. Though if you look at the tea station, you see the pitchers were all five-gallon mayonnaise jars in a former life. 

When it’s time to pay, go directly to the spot where all the t-ball pictures are thumb-tacked to the wall. Prices are generally modest, but whatever the cost, the experience is worth it to the palate.

As you leave, be careful where you stop in the parking lot. It’s not as bad as it looks. It’s only chewing tobacco clumps.