Chapter XVIII

Eating while travelling can be a real adventure. I have come across world class restaurants in the most unlikely places.
The best food I have ever come across on the road  is the Rimrock Restaurant just up the road from Capitol Reef National Park. When I walked it, I expected to find your normal chicken fried steak and mashed, but instead ended up enjoying a cranberry demi-glazed steak done to perfection, with fresh vegetables. It was one of the best meals I have ever eaten.
Not so with the Golden Harvest Cafe in Vantage. It was more like what I expected from a roadside restaurant. A menu heavy on fried foor, biscuits and gravy, coffee that would eat a hole in concrete, and silverware that had long ago lost it's luster. This is something I have never understood. One of the first things a patron sees when he enters your cafe is the silverware. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it should look like it has been taken care of. I guess I know where school cooks go when they retire.
The food is generally bland, so as not to offend. Various condiments are available on the table. The latest trend seems to be putting them in an empty six pack carton from some local brewery.
The double bacon cheese burger with fries would do my cholesterol no good, but wasn't too bad if you managed to scarf it down before the grease congealed. I assume it was hamburger, but the color didn't support the theory that it was anywhere near fresh. The bun was brown, and had started out stale, and wasn't improved by being seared on a dirty grille.
Liz ordered a green salad, and it was no better than my burger. Limp lettuce. Iceberg of course. Everyone pictures iceberg lettuce when you talk about salad, but it is the worst lettuce on the face of the Earth.
You know why it is so prevalent? because when we first became capable of  moving fresh produce over fairly long distances, it was the variety that stood up to transportation the best. Not taste, not texture, not appearance, not dietary reasons. You can throw it in a refrigerated rail car in California and it will still be relatively intact when it gets to Chicago.
On the farm we grew most of our own produce, and I favor Bibb, Looseleaf, or Black seeded Simpson. Anything other than Iceberg. If I was to order a salad in a respectable restaurant, I would want to know what it's made from. A good dash of vinegar/oil/spice dressing and you have a good salad.
The waitress called everyone "Hon" or "Sweetie" looked like she had worked about a twelve hour shift and her feet hurt. But she was prompt and treated us nice, so I left her a nice tip.
Liz surprised me by being silent during lunch. I had figured she would lay into me for stopping to help someone we didn't know anything about, and I had prepped myself with all the possible replies, but she  never brought the subject up.
I now knew she would lie in wait for a moment of weakness, aen pounce on me like a lynx on a rabbit.
So we wished the waitress a good day and climbed into the Power Wagon and got back on the freeway, crossing the Columbia River on the Vantage Bridge.