Casual Dining Restaurants and Tractor Tire Innertubes

I recently read that the phrase dining al fresco (Italian for “in the cool air”) is no longer used in Italy.  Instead they use either fuori or all’aperto.  Al fresco is used to refer to someone dining in jail, if you can believe that.  While I have never broken the law when it comes to food or eating, I have been known to break commandments (thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s cinnamon roll) or commit a deadly sin (gluttony, but just barely).   However, if lying about your knowledge of food or pretending you know what something is when you don’t is illegal, then I, dear readers, am a straight up criminal.  Full Disclosure:  I only know the definition of al fresco because back in the early 2000’s there was a restaurant in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, named after the phrase and they had outdoor seating and I had to pretend I knew that already when I went there with some very fancy friends.

Besides the occasional picnic related to fishing, dining outside of my home during my formative years meant we ate at church, Piccadilly, or a steakhouse.  The Dad still has very specific criteria for food consumption.  In high school eating out meant Sonic, Danny’s Fried Chicken (in Tylertown, MS) and the occasional visit to the Pizza Inn buffet on Sundays when my mother didn’t feel like cooking and answered the siren call of her usual order of one slice of supreme and one slice of peach cobbler dessert pizza.   I say all that to say this, casual dining establishments like TGI Friday’s, Chili’s, etc. were not part of my world, he said trying his best not to sing those last few words.  My limited experiences weren't something of which I was aware, as my mother was an extremely talented cook and nothing beats a good ribeye steak or the mac and cheese from Piccadilly. 

The summer before my sophomore year in college, I attended a yearbook camp on USM’s Gulf Coast campus.  I had recently been selected to serve as Co-Editor of the Whispering Pines yearbook with a very talented and similarly well-dressed classmate (Garland Tullos) at Southwest Mississippi Community College (Go Bears!).  Even though neither of us had edited before, the school felt we could do it.  Or at least, it appeared they did as they  were footing the bill for the trip.  This included paying for our food, therefore, I was in possession of a monetary largesse previously unequalled in my day-to-day life; if I remember correctly it was around $20 per day!  Keep in mind, this was 1989 and I was someone who never ate a Mexican pizza at Taco Bell because it was prohibitively priced at $1.09.

Garland and I, being friendly and delightful, had met several other college editors and decided to go out to dinner one night, to an exciting culinary destination called O’Charley’s.  Long before I became the gastronomic Sacajawea my friends know and love, I was very Southern Baptist in my tastes; everything was fried or covered in cream of mushroom soup, or both.  I had an internal rule that I would follow the lead of the fanciest person I was with, should I ever find myself in an unfamiliar situation.    I don’t remember who I was watching that night, Garland or one of the ladies from East Central Community College, but someone ordered a fried chicken salad with something called ‘honey mustard dressing’.  I wasn't sure how I felt about the name, but I knew I wasn’t a fan of honey or mustard individually.  Unsure of the combination, I was definitely intrigued, and I didn’t want to seem pedestrian, so I took a ‘taste and see’ attitude.  I was feeling very cosmopolitan, y’all. 

When the food arrived, there was cheese toast on the side, and I always enjoy something unexpected and covered in cheese.  I gave the honey mustard the once-over and decided it looked safe enough to taste.  It was delicious as most of you know.  Where had this condiment been all my life?  It’s the same reaction I had when I first discovered salted caramel.  I was ecstatic to have finally experienced it but equally angry that my taste buds had been denied until that moment.

I’d like to believe that I hid my excitement and ate as nonchalantly as someone who had eaten this exact dish the week before.  Full disclosure:  I might have squealed or at the very least ‘mmm-mmm-mmm’ed’.  Garland knows, but will never tell.  

When I returned home I tried to recreate the flavors as I had been unable to find a jar of it at the Piggly Wiggly, much less at B&B Grocery, the discount store where we  often shopped.  My mother kept no honey at home and I couldn’t justify spending money on an experiment, so I made do with what I had.  I mixed yellow mustard with TJ Blackburn Pure Cane Syrup.  It was not great; so sweet it made me shiver.  I thought about just adding sugar to mustard but that was another shivery failure.  As my family’s recipe for Thousand Island salad dressing was simply mixing mayonnaise and ketchup, I tried mixing mayonnaise and mustard together to get the right color.  It wasn’t the same, but it was delicious.  I kept an eye out whenever I went anywhere to eat, but I typically only found it accompanying the ‘rich people meal’ at Sonic.  You may know it as the chicken strip dinner. 

That yearbook camp changed my life in two ways.  Garland and I actually learned how to edit a yearbook and we won the state competition which helped me get a scholarship to MUW, where I edited the Meh Lady yearbook and won national competition twice, which, in turn, helped me (finally) choose Journalism as my major.  It also started me on my journey toward culture and refinement, which has led me to becoming one of the four fanciest people to have ever floated down the Bogue Chitto River in a tractor tire innertube.  Am I right, y'all?