Hello again! Welcome to another installment of Food On The Road. I have had amazing luck on this tour so far, but don't get it twisted - it's not all gourmet and home cooking, not by a long shot. Case in point: on the road today from Jacksonville, FL to Gainesville, FL, all I had for sustenance was a gas station Turkey Ranch pre-made sandwich and a bag of Ruffles. But I still liked it. =) Every now and again there is a void that only a gas station sammich can fill. It was a great day, sunny and warm but not too hot for comfortable travel. I think I washed this down with a chocolate milk. Yum!
Once we got to Gainesville, we checked in at the venue we were slated to play that night. The place is called the 1982 Club. It's an all-the-time all ages club right on the main strip. It was a Monday night, which happened to be free video game night. Totally ok with me! I checked out their video game menu and started working up an appetite. The 1982 has a great set up where there are multiple TVs set up around the place with vintage video game consoles hooked up to them and controllers accessible to patrons. We've played there before and are friends with the folks that run the joint, so I felt confident in asking their advice on where to find some great food in the area.
The advice I got was to try the Vietnamese place just across the street and half a block down. Armed with this suggestion, a few bandmates and I headed over to the place. It was a small family run restaurant, maybe 10 tables. We were warmly welcomed by the matriarch, a smallish woman with laugh lines just starting at the corners of her mouth. Once seated, we checked out the menus.
I started with iced vietnamese coffee, which came out in small glass with percolator on top, still filtering down. You could see the layed of condensed sweet milk at the bottom of the glass. A second taller glass filled with ice was then brought out, along with a long handled spoon. Once the coffe had fully filtered, the coffee was stirred then poured over ice. Thick and sweet, it was perfectly what I had hoped for. Vietnamese iced coffee is in my top three of favorite coffees ever, along with Cuban coffee, and a rich, dark Italian after dinner brew. I was so excited that I forgot to whip out the cameraphone until after I had already poured to the second cup over ice.
For an appetizer I chose corn soup with chicken. It was like cream corn with chives and chicken and a few spices added. Too hot to eat right away, but I keep burning my mouth because it's so good I can't wait. One of the things I enjoy about Vietnamese cuisine is how often the dishes feel light, due to the particular seasonings used. The soup was no exception.
We settled up our bill and as a last touch, the lady told us that they were out of fortune cookies, but they had some freshly made desserts that they were giving us for free to take with us. I was actually happy to hear this. I can get fortune cookies whenever, but the little treats she gave us were special. They were doughballs, about the size of a Dunkin munchkin, or just a little bigger. These doughballs were covered in sesame seeds and filled with what I believe was a sweet red bean paste. The doughball had been fried, so the outside was crisp while the paste was creamy, thick, and flavorful, sweet but not overly so. A perfect ending to a great meal.
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Chestnut Growler plays drums for The Swaggerin' Growlers, a punk/folk band based in Boston, MA. He tours full time. This blog is about the food experienced on the road: the good, the bad, and homemade and the gas station sammiches. You can find the band here: The Swaggerin' Growlers
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