HALLIE EPHRON: A few weeks ago I wrote about the Giant Artichoke t-shirt my husband used to wear that so embarrassed our daughter. Julia found a photograph of the Giant Artichoke restaurant, still operating in Castroville, California, about 50 miles north of Monterey. In the front, still standing is the 20-foot tall artichoke featured on the t-shirt.
A good portion of the menu featured artichokes. Stew. Soup. Salad. Dip. Their fried artichoke hearts were delicious with a lemony mayo.
Behind the restaurant is a warehouse where you can buy humongous artichokes that looked like the plaster model out front, along with an eye-popping variety of canned and marinated artichokes (as well as t-shirts).
The town is the self-proclaimed “Artichoke Center of the World,” and has been growing and processing them since 1922. It holds an annual Artichoke Festival--Marilyn Monroe was the first artichoke beauty pageant queen in 1948. Sadly this year’s artichoke festival has been cancelled due to covid-19, but it’s scheduled to make a comeback June 5-6, 2021.
What’s the most unusual place you’ve ever eaten and do you have a t-shirt to commemorate the experience?
JENN McKINLAY: I do not have a T-shirt but by far the strangest place I’ve ever eaten was
in Coopertown, FL (an unincorporated area with a population of 0008, if I remember right). We took the famous airboat ride into the Everglades, fed the alligators marshmallows - hey, it was 1984, we didn’t know any better - and then retired back to the cafe to try frogs legs. Yes, they taste like chicken. What I did not expect was that they came attached, as in it was the frog, battered and fried, from the waist down. Naturally, my brother proceeded to pick one up and hop it across the table. I laughed so hard, sweet tea came out my nose. I highly recommend a visit to Coopertown if you find yourself on Route 41 in Miami-Dade.
RHYS BOWEN: I have eaten in several questionable places: in a Bedouin house in the Atlas Mountains (where the home made bread was delicious) and I’ve drunk buffalo milk in a Toda dwelling--a mud structure about four feet high and maybe eight feet long with a hole in the top to let the smoke out. Todas are an indigenous people in the mountains of South India. They didn’t allow outsiders but we got an introduction through a Toda woman who had married outside the tribe. Quite an experience. Alas they do not make T-shirts!
On that same trip we had our worst meal ever--in the primitive overnight lodge of a game park--it was the oldest chicken who had died of questionable causes (probably run over by a truck) and cooked in grease with so much grit from blowing dust that we gave up after a couple of bites. Also no T-shirt available.
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, gosh, the weirdest. Well, it might have been the restaurant in Florence, Enoteca Pinchiorri. Imagine elegant, then increase ten fold. Gorgeous, spectacular, five stars. The exclusivity is off the charts.
At the next table, the ugly Americans. Mom and Dad, and the two most entitled California (we heard then refer to it) blonde teenagers you can ever imagine. Don't even bother imagining, your brain does not need the sludge. Anyway, they blithely ordered, the fish I think, and proceeded to tell the waiter (who might have been John Gielgud), that they wanted the sauce on the side and no butter. And double vegetables, no butter. Without a glimmer of a response, he took their order. Very good, he said.Five minutes later he came back.
The chef says he cannot prepare the food your way, he will prepare it his way. And furthermore, he said in perfect English, he says he cannot cook for you, and we cannot serve you, and he is requesting you leave.
They did! They slinked out, and it was all the rest of us could do not to cheer. I endlessly wish I had a t-shirt. I wonder where those people are now.
LUCY BURDETTE: This isn’t about a weird restaurant, it’s one that will linger in my mind forever. About six years ago John I attended a family wedding outside of Salt Lake City,
Utah. We took a few extra days to cruise through Utah and see a couple of the wonderful national parks in that state. I, of course, was in charge of where to eat. In between our two days of driving and gawking at the astonishing scenery, we stopped for a night in Boulder, Utah, to eat at the legendary Hell's Backbone Grill. I made reservations months in advance for dinner. They serve exactly the kind of food I like, delicious but not fussy. I ordered a spicy meatloaf and John had a chicken quesadilla casserole that was hot, cheesy, and addictive.
Of course we had to have breakfast there the next morning, too. I chose blue cornmeal pancakes, which they served with cinnamon butter and syrup. The pancakes were sprinkled with little purple flowers. Oh, and we ordered a box lunch to take with us the next day too. Three meals in less than 20 hours – that's a great restaurant. Now the chef/owners are finalists for best chefs in the Mountain Region by the James Beard Foundation for the 2020 season! (And ps, I don’t have a tee-shirt but I did buy the cookbook.)
Here’s my rendition of Hell’s Backbone Grill meatloaf recipe.
JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Gosh, let me think about this one. Most, I guess, exotic would be the dinners we had while on safari in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia. Five-star gourmet meals served communally so we had a chance to talk with the most interesting people, in open-air tents that could have come straight out of Isak Dineson’s memoirs. We dressed for dinner! (The travel agency gave us a heads up, so I had a skirt and a couple of scarves that looked good over anything.) Truly different than any other experience, before or since.
The dining spot that seemed farthest away from anything else in the world: the Three Chimney’s Restaurant on the Isle of Skye. Ross and I went on our honeymoon, and it wasn’t nearly as famous as it is now - it had only been open a couple of years - but already had a reputation as a destination for foodies. We walked from the farmhouse we were staying at, and I’ll never forget the contrast of eating in this tiny stone crofter’s cottage (this was years before it would be expanded and have an inn added on) and being served the most amazing food and wines.It was utterly dark by the time we left, with nothing but the starlight and the occasional bleat from a sheep to guide us as we wended our well-lubricated way back to our B&B. Heavenly.
Worst dining experience ever: Chuck E Cheese’s for the Sailor’s 7th birthday. Greater love hath no parent than to dine on that flabby excuse for a pizza while an animatronic band lays waste to the very concept of music.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: No one can compete with Rhys's memorable meals! But the place that popped into my mind was a little restaurant bar in the wilds of central Florida. I was on book tour with Charles and Caroline Todd. We had several book festival events over a couple of days, so our publisher put us up in the most central location, a very (very) basic Holiday Inn that seemed literally in the middle of nowhere--it was just plunked down on the highway. There was no coffee shop and there were no restaurants except for a sort of bar shack across the motel parking lot.
With no choice, we ventured over for our first dinner. A raised walkway crossed over the shallow end of a lake and when we looked down, it was full of alligators! Big ones, little ones, all cruising lazily below us. Our hopes did not go up. But we were seated on a big open deck, and the food turned out to be delicious! Charles and I had fabulous oysters; Caroline and I stuffed ourselves on the best whitefish dip I've ever eaten. We ate every meal there over the next couple of days and at the end of the event we were sorry to go!
HALLIE: UGH, Chuck E. Cheese. And I was sure Debs was going to tell us that the featured items on the menu were... alligator!
Aren't we all yearning for a great restaurant meal, something we'd never make at home? What are your uniquely memorable restaurant meals?
