Life in the USA : restaurants

Restaurants in the USA

Mike Leco — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:35:00 GMT

Contrary to popular international beliefs, we do not eat only fast food in the USA. It is true that fast food is very popular in the US, but we also have many traditional sit-down-and-eat restaurants including some really fine-dining establishments. These restaurants tend to fall into several loosely-defined categories.

The chain restaurants are owned and operated by large corporations, and they have numerous facilities in various cities and towns across the country. Their menus are typically similar in every location, and their quality is quite consistent. if you frequent these type of restaurants, you can be fairly sure of the type abd quality of food that you will be served. I go to such restaurants when I am looking for casual unadventuresome dining. The chain restaurants include: TGI Fridays, Ruby Tuesdays, Houlihans and Chilis offering traditional American fare; Red Lobster and Joe's Crabshack offering seafood; the Olive Garden with Italian cuisine, or the Cracker Barrel with southern cooking. There are many others.

When traveling, I often prefer to seek out more adventuresome dining experiences such as sampling the regional specialties in popular local restaurants. I usually find those restaurants by asking for recommendations from the people I meet in the area. They frequently tell me of some obscure local restaurant that offers the best fried chicken, the best barbeque, the best home made meatloaf or the best apple pie in town. These restaurants often have names like "Mom's Diner", "Bubba's Barbeque", "Charlie's Chicken Shack" or the "Kettle Cafe". I have found some wonderful food in such places.

Steak Houses are a typical USA specialty. They all feature grilled beefsteak, but also offer a few other standard selections like chicken, and seafood. If you visit the USA, I strongly recommend you try at least one meal in a good steak house. I have traveled extensively throughout Europe and the UK. I know it is possible to find a good steak dinner in those countries, but you must seek one out, and are likely to find it only in the more expensive restaurants. The average quality of the steaks in most other countries seems to be inferior to what you are served in the USA. Even the cheaper steak houses in the US serve some very tasty meals. The higher priced steak houses serve some succulent steaks that are delicious beyond description.

Ruth's Chris Steak Houses, Morton's Steakhouses and the Capitol Grill are all high-end steakhouse chain restaurants. They ate not cheap, but the quality of the steaks and the service is all top rate. Landry's, Shulo's and a whole host of other local restaurants offer the same top quality at the same high-end prices. If you can afford it, I suggest you try at least one meal featuring steak in one of these finer restaurants. There is also a wide selection of more modestly priced steak houses that serve delicious steaks, but not quite as succulent as those in the higher priced steak houses. Outback, The Lone Star Steakhouse and the Texas Steakhouse are popular steak house chains offering more modestly priced steaks. The later two restaurants also feature cowboy-costumed staff that intermittently line dance for the entertainment of the diners.

We have some strange quirks in our restaurants throughout the USA. On most menus, the term "entree" means the main course not the first course. The first course is usually termed "appetizer" or "starter". The side salad is typically not served along side of the main course. It is served with the bread before the main course. Coffee or tea are usually served with the meal, but can also be served after the meal in finer restaurants. Most restaurants offer the "bottomless" cup of cofee or the "bottomless" glass of iced tea or softdrinks. This means that the waiters will continue to refill your coffee or softdrink throughout the meal, but will only charge for one drink.

The noonday meal or "lunch" is typically served between 11AM and 3PM at most restaurants and it is a smaller meal than the evening meal. The evening meal or "dinner" is normally served between 4PM and 10PM and it is usually larger and more expensive than the lunch. All restaurants tend to be very flexible, so you can order just an appetizer or two appetizers or just a desert if you prefer

Many restaurants offer vegetarian meals and low-calorie diet meals. Dinner salads are quite popular. These culinary concoctions are meant to replace the main course. They usually consist of a large bowl of salad greens and/or vegetables topped with various meats cheeses or seafoods. A steak salad has grilled strips of steak along with cheese and french fried potatoes atop the usual greens. A chef's salad is topped with strips of ham, turkey and cheese. A cobb salad has bacon, crumbled egg and blue cheese. The grilled chicken salad, the salmon salad, the shrimp salad and the antepasta salad all have self-explanatory names. Salad dressing is the sauce or salad creme served with nearly all salads in the USA. Italian dressing is simply oil and vinegar with spices. French dressing is a creamy, tomato-based sauce. Thousand islands is more of a remoulade, and honey dijon is a piquant mustard based cream. Dinner salads provide you with a lighter more healthful alternative to the usual fare, and they can be quite tasty.

Here are a few typically USA foods that you should sample on your visit to this country: New England Clam Chowder, a white cream-based soup made from the meat of the sweet succulant shellfish found in our northern waters. Maryland crab cakes made with the tasty flesh of the blue crab. Barbeque pork spareribs and pulled pork barbeque served with differing regional sauces. Sandwiches in countless varieties with infinite variations of ingredients. Especially tasty are the submarine sandwiches or hoagies like the Philadelphia cheese steak hoagie. Chili usually served as an appetizer, not in the finer restaurants, but in the neighvorhood cafes and diners especially in the Southwest. Pies for dessert, especially those homemade confections found in local diners. This includes fruit pies like apple, berry and cherry; cream pies like banana, coconut, lemon and chocolate; or regional varieties like pecan, key lime and shoo-fly.

During the summer months, fresh corn-on-the-cob is available in most areas. You cannot find the good stuff in restaurants or cafes as it does not taste great unless it is very fresh and cooked immediately before eating. You can sometimes find it at festivals or at roadside stands. If you have cooking facilities, you can buy some fresh corn directly from a farmer, boil it for a few minutes, smear it with some butter, sprinkle on some salt and eat it directly off of the cob. What a great summertime delicacy!

Remember, waiters and waitresses are usually paid very low salaries in the expectation that they will earn sufficient tip money to supplement those salaries. If you get good service from the wait staff, you should add a generous tip to your reimbursement. Good service means that your server pleasantly greets you, is attentive to your needs, makes helpful suggestions on choices, checks back frequently to insure you are kept satisfied and aplologizes for any delays. Fifteen percent is normal, twenty percent is generous. Anything less is either stingy or indicative that you were not satisfied with the service. If you pay by credit card, there will be a space at the bottom of your bill where you can pencil in an additional tip amount. It is also acceptable to leave tip money on the table as you depart.

Sin City in Winter

Mike Leco — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 14:19:00 GMT

I have been to Las Vegas in the winter, and I know that the weather is usually cool and pleasant, but I have also seen it rain in the desert at this time of year. I was not suprised when our pilot said that the weather in Las Vegas was overcast with rain showers. As we decended through the clouds, Henderson and the southern suburbs of Vegas became visible. I was puzzled to see a sizable river flowing through the community. There is no river in Las Vegas? I slowly realized that the dry riverbed that wends its way through these suburbs with little or no water in it for most of the year, was now a full-sized river.

Las Vegas only receives a few inches of rain every year. It had just gotten about one fourth of its year's allotment of precipitation within the past 24 hours. The mountain peaks surrounding the desert valley in which Las Vegas is situated were sugar coated with white snow cover. This beautiful phenomena typically lasts only a short while before the desert sun returns to make it evaporate.

Building cranes punctuate the horizon of the fabulous Las Vegas Strip. Old casinos and hotels are constantly being torn down and newer, bigger, more spectacular casinos are incessantly replacing them. High-rise condos along the Strip are the latest fad. Just behind the giant casinos, tall buildings housing expensive luxury condominiums are sprouting like weeds.

The Monte Carlo Casino just suffered from a roof-top fire that devastated its top floors. Fortunately, no one was injured, but the guests from its 6,000 rooms were evacuated and the hotel was closed. Smoke stains still soiled its top rim. The local newspapers reported that every guest in the hotel was relocated to other hotels within hours, All reservations for incoming guests were diverted to other properties before the fire was completely extinguished. Only in Las Vegas with its 150,000 hotel rooms would such a feat be possible.

The Alladin Casino on the Strip has now become the Planet Hollywood Casino. The old San Remo just off the Strip has been refurbished and resurrected as the new Hooters Casino. The frontier has been demolished and construction will soon begin on another new mega-casino. Near the heart of the strip, a huge swath of businesses and hotels have been cleared and construction begun on the new City Center business/hotel/casino complex. This city of Las Vegas never stops re-inventing itself,

I drove out to Summerlin for dinner at the Red Rock Resort. It is only 14 miles from the strip to this suburban bedroom community in the Northwestern quadrant of Sin City. You can even take the new six lane freeway most of the way. It should take no more than 20 minutes to get there. Yet, if you go during rush hour, and there is any sort of auto mishap along the way, you can get stuck in traffic for an hour or more.

The Red Rock Casino is one of the newest off-the-Strip properties. It was completed only a year ago. Like its couterparts on the Strip, it is huge. Unlike the on-the-Strip casinos, it is surrounded by vast landscaped grounds and beautiful golf courses. It only offers 800 rooms, but they are suposed to be spacious. The casino is gorgeous. Every one of the thousand or more slot machines has a high-backed padded leather chair in front of it. The restaurants are excellent. There are no crowds of tourists at this casino. It is quiet and somewhat empty. Local Las Vegas Natives have learned to avoid the Strip and its crowds of tourists, so they come here to gamble. Visitors from surrounding states that wish to avoid those same tourist crowds, book accommodations in this hotel and enjoy the relatively quiet atmosphere.

There are a thousand or more restaurants in Las Vegas, including some of the finest dining establishments in the USA. Sure, Vegas is known for the all-you-can-eat buffet, but that is no longer the only option available. Today, some of the great chefs from around the world have opened restaurants along the strip. You can get every type of food immaginable from Japanese sushi to French haut cuisine. You can even get gourmet foods at some of the buffets. No, not at the all-you-can eat-for-$8.95 buffet. Those inexpensive buffets are usually located in the less popular casinos or the out of the way casinos off of the Strip. They provide copious quatities of food for cheap prices just to entice you into their gambling establishment.

The buffet at Bellagio costs a bit more ($27 for dinner) but it offers a plethora of gourmet cuisine. More than you can comfortably eat even if you only take a very small portion of each. The buffet at Paris provides a sampling of French cuisine from various regions of France. It is one of the better buffets. If you are a seafood lover, the buffet at Rio offers a magnificent spread of various foods from the world's oceans. (It cost about $30 but is well worth it to a seafood lover.)

Backroad dining

Mike Leco — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:12:00 GMT

One of the things I enjoy when exploring the less-traveled roads in the USA is eating in the local diners.

We have many fast food restaurants and chain restaurants all over the USA. When traveling, they can be very trusted and convenient places to eat. If you stop at a McDonald's restaurant in Montana, you are assured that you will get the same quality hamburger as you get at a McDonald's in New York City or in Miami Florida. The cleanliness is assured, and the service is uniformly good. These same standards hold true for most fast food restaurants and most chain restaurants. Unfortunately, they offer very little culinary adventure or dining excitement.

I prefer the smaller diners, frequented by the local residents, and offering only "slow food". These little restaurants are usually much more interesting than the fast food or chain restaurants. They offer "home cooking" that a typical family in the USA would prepare at home. The menu might include such favorites as: fried chicken, pot roast, meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, fish sandwiches, chili, and apple pie. Most diners also serve regional favorites such as, chicken fried steak and grits in the South, barbeque beef and burritos in the West, clam chowder and fish cakes in the New England States or steaks and ribs in the Midwest.

It is a bit more risky than eating in a chain restaurants or in a fast food establishment. You never know if the quality of the food will be good or not so good. On the other hand, you might just stumble into a local diner that serves some great "down home cooking" with a local specialty that you have never tasted before.

The atmosphere in these local diners can be quite interesting. I stopped at a diner in small town in southern Utah and had some succulent barbeque ribs. At the next table sat two cowboys dressed in their full working gear. They wore scrufty high-heeled work boots, worn faded jeans held up by wide tooled-leather belts fastened with giant silver and turquoise buckles. They both wore wide-brimmed "ten-gallon" cowboy hats that they did not remove during the entire meal. At their waists, they both sported finely made and decorated leather holsters containing, not trusty colt revolvers, but the latest high-tech cell phones.

The waitresses tend to be matronly local housewives that work part time while the "kids" are in school. They treat each and every customer with the warm familiarity of a close friend. Terms of endearment like darling, honey or sugar are liberally granted to every stranger. Don't be suprised when you are greeted with: "What can I get for you darlin?" or "How about some coffee hun?" or "Try the meatloaf sugah!". Eating in a local diner can be like eating home-cooked food served to you by your own mother.

We call it comfort food. It is not haut cuisine, but it sure brings a lot of comfort.