This last week, I was down for a half week, although not deep down - only to Everett WA for a conference.
It started out poorly (one of the reasons I try not to cross the border these days) with the ever friendly customs agents at the border, who seemed to thnk that the fact we had no written/printed confirmation of our alleged reservation at the Everett Holiday Inn smacked of possible terrorism. My explanation that we happened to know exactly where it was located and had talked to the motel the night before seemed to make no impression on them. No wonder many friends who have spent a lot of time in the US visiting over many decades no longer have the stomach to endure the bureaucratic idiocies any more. OTOH, you used to have to go to Eastern Europe to get this sort of thing, so if it is your thing, it is now much more convenient.
Lots of fun meeting internet friends in person and listening (and trying to place) accents from Texas to Denmark. The Northwestern rendering of "Uh-huh" in various rising or flat intonations is something we are used to in Washington State, but it is fun hearing people from further afeild and trying to place them.
What we had forgotten was the really bad food you get at some highway side motels, even ones with supposed decent restaurants attached. After postponing palate shock for a day by hitting a really nice local restaurant on the pier to wathc the sunset on Wednesday evening, we had breakfast at the motel the next morning.
Bacon was plentiful and recognizable, some sort of meat patty was reasonaby recognizable, but it got a bit fuzzy from there. There was bread that looked a lot like French toast, but (I rely on my wife for this) tasted like some sort of fried cardboard, and what was plainly intended to be scrambled eggs but which were probably some sort of processed homogenized egg-food. Fortunately I like bacon and the wife survived on fresh fruit.
Tried the same in house restaurant for dinner (too tired to work out a foray into the great outdoors, and my Googling of the adjacent Hunan Palace revealed specific and potentially horrifying details about that establishment). Ordered something called a BBQ beef au jus. What came were two fast fried patties stuffed into hunks of some sort of bread roll, and salty fries that looked like they got about 4 out of each potato. And then the waiter plonks down a cup of something, saying "Here's your au jus" although he pronounced it more like Aw Jews. My effort to explain that it wasn't called 'aw jews' but simply 'jus' was overshadowed by the answer to my request about it's origin ("I think they have a big jug of it in the back') followed by my request for its speedy removal and disposal.
We realized that we were locked into a food loop we couldn't get out of, confirmed by my attempted consumption of what purported to be slices of pork at the next lunch, quickly abandoned by me as being prematurely fosslized, and the next night when we had to endure the 'banquet'.
My wife had chosen a salmon dinner, which turned out ot be very wise - as long as it smells OK, it probably is OK. I dared the chicken, which appeared to have been crafted from some sort of premade breaded chicken cutlet, probably nuked and then some tomato stuff (close as I can get for a description) was ladled over it. The veg was frozen chopped up stuff as seen in Costco in those large freezer bags. But the piece de (my) resistance was the so called (by the waiter - I'd had to ask) risotto. I asked She-who-must-be-obeyed if risotto was really intended to come off the plate in one hardened lump when you tried to sample a single fork full. Seriously!
When one of our table mates (from Pennsylvania) opined that this constituted 'pretty good grub (at the time they were eating and I was regarding with distrust a sort of cheesecake dessert that looked as if it would never require refrigeration as it was proof against any insect except maybe a termite and surely contained no actual milk products) it caused me to wonder about the level of food interest in the US and Canada.
We are probably by any account all foodies here and would search out and enjoy decent fare wherever we were, but do others' experiences match mine with motel food? This place would be put to shame by any self respecting Dennys, and as they often coexist you have to wonder why anyone would eat at the motels. If we'd had a Denny's instead of the Ptomaine...er Hunan Palace next door, I'd have been out of there in a second.
Anyway, it was a great half week, getting to meet people from all over that had a shared interest (Rhododendrons in this case). I just wondered if this rare (for me) experience with motel food might be an exception, or the rule.
Denny's all the way from now on, whenever we can't find an interesting local cafe.
