Road Food

Hallie and Lucy on the road in NC

LUCY BURDETTE: You’ve probably been able to guess this, but food is very important to some of the Jungle Reds! For example, all seven Reds are having dinner together before the Bouchercon mystery convention begins. (Which is by itself a small miracle—I don’t think that this group of 7 women has all been together in the same city, ever!) That aside, we let Debs choose the restaurant because she’s local and Dallas has been named the 2019 best restaurant city by Bon Appetit Magazine. When Debs told us she’d made the reservation, those of us who truly care and anticipate every meal have already studied the menu. (I’m thinking of King crab toast, or short rib potstickers, loaded smashed potato with aged white cheddar and chives, jalapeño creamed corn…)

But I digress, I wanted to chat about about road food. This conversation was sparked by an email exchange the Reds had only last week…it went like this…

HANK: I am now, by the skin of my teeth, in Appleton Wisconsin after a few delays which would have resulted in missed connections, sigh, but now all is well, and I got from gate B 2 at O’Hare to gate F 24 in record time :-) 

Now off to some motel which apparently does not have food :-) So I think I am going to the wine store, and then Wendy’s. How glamorous is this! 

LUCY: what entrée from Wendy’s goes with wine??

HALLIE: Baked potato with everything!!

RHYS: After the wine store who cares? I once had the hotel shuttle bus drive me through the McDonalds drive through because there was no other food and it was snowing.

LUCY: Your turn now Reds... Does it matter what you eat while traveling? Is there a great meal you remember, or something truly awful? 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: That very same trip I bought TWO turkey clubs at the airport just in case, and wow, that was a good thing, turns out,because right now I am someplace where there is NO food, and my backup day-old semi-soggy turkey BLT was dee-licious. And at a recent event I was so rushed and starving that for "lunch" I had a bag of potato chips that was in my swag bag topped by the peanut butter from the little container that came with my breakfast toast that I had saved for just such a circumstance. Potato chips with peanut butter, people!  SO glam. And not as good as it sounds, sadly.

HALLIE EPHRON: On one of my last trips I was in Oregon with the Southwest Washington Writers and the lovely Jennifer Vandenberg and her husband picked me up at the airport. It was dusk (AMAZING sunset), but I was on east coast time and exhausted. So where to get dinner? I was so grateful when they agreed to stop at Burger King and then drop me at my hotel.  Loved my kid-sized whopper with cheese and fries. And the pillow.

Whenever I go to California I try, first thing, to run into a grocery store and pick up a tomato and an orange. Even in a chain store they're better than what we routinely get on the East coast. (In Washington State in season, it's cherries. In New Orleans in season it's satsumas.) I've learned the hard way DO NOT GET supermarket maki rolls. Chewy. And not in a good way.

RHYS BOWEN: I always take granola bars, those little Gouda cheeses and a banana with me. I find it hard on book tour when the car is coming for me at 6 and I won't get back to the hotel until after 9. I don't want to eat before and I'm too tired to eat after.  Actually what I'd like is a bowl of soup but I'm not ordering soup that has been sitting around since lunch

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I'm sorry, but I'm laughing at your peanut butter and potato chips story, Hank. Two great tastes that don't taste great together. My road food staple, if the hotel has room service, is chicken caesar salad, which, I have learned through experience, is impossible to screw up. I've had some that were better than others, but never a really bad one, and I've never regretted it the next day. In my bag, it's granola bars, like Rhys, and almonds, which is a tip I got from Hank, and which really do help to stop the hunger pangs until you can get to something more substantial. If the only thing around is a vending machine, I'll get those little orange crackers with the peanut butter - just like being back in elementary school again!

Best road food I ever had was when Denise Hamilton and I did our "Murdering Mommies" tour. Denise is a dedicated foodie, and because we always rented a car wherever we were, we could stop by and get interesting stuff to eat. I'll never forget stopping at one of the best Greek restaurants I've ever been to in Lincoln, Nebraska. We got everything to go, and spent the next hour driving through the Great Plains toward Kansas noshing on gyros, olives, feta cheese and spanikopita. 

not croissants but reminded me of Jenn

JENN McKINLAY: I'm not really a foodie. Heresy, I know. Honestly, I'm an appetizer and dessert girl, meaning my perfect meal is loaded potato skins followed by a slab of cheesecake and we can just skip all that stuff in the middle. No, not kidding. Having just come back from Paris, I do feel as if they get me. We ate in many restaurants, but my favorite stops for sustenance were the boulangeries, where I could grab a double espresso and a croissant the size of my head, eat at a minuscule table outside while people watching and then toodle off to my next activity. My favorite stops were the crepe carts and the occasional street food vendor. My sons' favorite was a man on the banks of the Seine, who cooked up skewers of curry chicken and sausages with sautéed onions and stuffed it all into a delicious baguette. And now I'm hungry. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Now I am really on the hook if everyone doesn't like the restaurant I picked in Dallas! I've been doing a lot of restaurant research because I live thirty miles from downtown and don't actually eat in the city that often. The restaurant I picked for our REDS dinner (Yay, all seven of us!!!) I have actually been to and loved.

But road food. Book tours always sound so glamorous, but really...not. I had one of those days last week where I'd had half a cup of oatmeal at the airport in the morning, then nothing all day until after my evening event. By the time I got back to the humdrum airport hotel at 9:30, I would have killed for food. I walked straight into the hotel restaurant and asked the manager what was the absolute best thing I could get from room service. He said, "The salmon. It's terrific. Best thing on the menu, period." And amazingly enough, the whole dinner was fabulous!! But the same major hotel chain, two days later, same scenario, except this time it is not the humdrum airport hotel but the major downtown conference hotel.  I order a sandwich and a glass of wine, and the dinner comes up in a cardboard box. With a plastic glass for the wine. All absolutely horrible. So disappointing. But the very worst thing is when you get into a hotel after not eating all day and the kitchen has just closed. This happened to me in Chicago, in a blizzard, so not even pizza joints were delivering. The bar stayed open an hour later than the kitchen, so the bartender took pity on me and filled me up with almonds and olives. And there might have been a gin in there somewhere, so not a terrible outcome!

Ok, Red readers, share with us your best or worst road food experience! 

RED HOT NEWS:

We can't wait to see some of you very soon at Bouchercon--the Jungle Red game show panel is at 2:30 on Thursday, 10/31!

DEBS: A BITTER FEAST debuted on the USA TODAY Bestseller List last week at #31! I was so thrilled!

And even better, the book just got a terrific review in The New York Times!