[Sca-cooks] Alton Brown News

[Terry Decker]

It is the sin of pretentiously bad taste in a place that supposedly makes 
things that taste good.  A kitchen don't need kitsch, it needs cookin'.

In terms of Route 66, it's all those ersatz eateries cluttered with junk 
memorabilia trying to stake a claim on the nostalgia for the Mother Road for 
tourists who never ran it before it was decommissioned in 1985 and never had 
the pleasure of roadhouse steak in Flagstaff or fried clams at the Midway 
Howard Johnson's (the furthest west at the time) on the Turner Turnpike 
where Route 66 and what would be part of I-44 met.

I remember the heyday of the rattlesnake museums and the petting zoos, 
Whitten Bros., crazy cement buildings, and post cards with cowboys riding 
supersized jackalopes.  Local joints serving bad food, good food and great 
food.  Fanta root beer, Coca Cola (with real sugar), cream sodas from local 
bottlers.  It was a great place to be a kid.

Now it's mostly chains and mediocre local places trading on a past that died 
in the late 70's.  The Rock House in Stroud is still with us, but I haven't 
eaten there in a few years, and I know the menu changed after the tornado 
ripped out the Outlet Mall.  And there is Anne's Chicken Fry House (OKC), 
which moved to easier to reach digs and added memorabilia, but still turns 
out a decent chicken fried steak.  But the railcar diner, which turned out a 
decent breakfast for a good price, is long gone as are a bunch of cafes, 
greasy spoons and road houses I ate at from 5 to 30.

I'll watch Alton anyway.  Maybe he'll find some of the places I've forgotten 
about.

Bear

>
> How can you have too much kitsch in a kitschen?
> :-)
>
> Huette