Tallahassee Love, Part Two: Food

October 26th, 2011

In case you missed it, Tallahasee Love, Part One: Football is available here.

Spend a few years in any city and you will quickly identify your favorite eating establishments. Some might be local and unique, others not, but they all hold a special place in your heart (and more importantly, your stomach).

Months before my college roommates and I returned to our beloved Tallahassee for some Seminole football, we started putting together a food schedule to ensure that we would be able to hit all of our favorite establishments in two and a half days. The food schedule was revised through multiple emails until we finally reached the perfect balance.

I now present to you, the perfect weekend of food, Tallahassee style:

1. Backyard Burger: BYB makes a delicious bacon cheeseburger (with cheddar, as it should be, American is for rubes) and a side of waffle fries that beat out all other fast food burger restaurants (fast food in this case being defined as “has a drive-thru window” and therefore excluding Five Guys). We loved BYB so much that even though Tallahassee’s franchise closed before we left town, we knew we had to start our trip with an 11:00 a.m. pit stop in Gainesville, the closest Backyard Burger (it should speak volumes that four Seminole fans willingly went to The Swamp just for a taste of BYB…incidentally if we’d had more time we would have gone to the restaurant The Swamp which makes an even more delicious burger…it hurts me to admit that Gainesville has anything good to offer to anyone ever).

2. One Fresh Stir Fry: Fresh ingredients, stir fried together with the sauce of your choice while you wait–could there be anything better? It saddens me that it took us three years to discover the joy of One, but we made the most of it during our remaining time in Tallahassee. Select all the vegetables you want, your choice of starch, some protein, sauce, plus a topper and you’re set! It’s a ton of food, great for leftovers and it’s DELICIOUS. My combo of choice: White rice, corn, tomatoes, carrots, teriyaki sauce and scallions–amazing!

3. Po’ Boys Creole Cafe: Tallahassee’s geographical location gives it a fantastic mix of flavors including Southern comfort, Gulf seafood and spicy creole flair — all of which are available at Po’ Boys. My favorite thing on the menu, without question, is the fried pickles. If you know anything about me you know that I have thing about fried pickles and therefore am qualified to tell you that Po’ Boys fried pickles are the best. Not too greasy, not too much batter, just right. Their shrimp po’ boy is also excellent, but it’s worth the stop just for the fried pickles. Trust me.

4. Guthries: I wouldn’t call myself a germophobe, but I would admit to being more cautious than the average person where sanitary issues are concerned. I am particularly leery of eating establishments that seem like they wouldn’t pass a health inspection in Tijuana, but I make one noted exception (provided that I only go through the drive-thru and never NEVER set foot inside or so much as peer in a window). Only after dark (and especially after a football game) can one fully appreciate the glory of Guthries. It is an establishment built to meet the needs of two demographics that frequently overlap: Southerners and drunks. This is not a drive-thru where difficult decisions must be made — your only option is to choose the quantity of chicken fingers you want to consume (a box or bucket). Guthries takes care of the rest.

A few quick facts about Guthries: You will be in line for a minimum of 30 minutes, you will not be able to wait until you get home to start eating and you will want to pay the extra 25 cents for additional sauce.

Bonus story: Two years ago my roommates and I made our first post-grad trip to Tally for a game and swung through Guthries around midnight after a football game. While waiting for our food, we turned and gawked at the car behind us in which the passenger was completely passed out hugging a giant teddy bear, a girl in the backseat was wearing an eyepatch, and the driver (THE DRIVER) was guzzling Grey Goose FROM THE BOTTLE while sitting behind the wheel in the drive-thru line. These are just the kinds of things that happen at Guthries.

5. Waffle House: On our final morning in Tallatacky we funneled into the Waffle House closest to our hotel and tried not to think about how close the building was to reaching fire code capacity. Remember how I said I make one exception to my sanitary standards for restaurants? I lied, I make two exceptions. Though I’m 97% certain you can contract dysentery (and cholera and other Oregon Trail type diseases) just from touching a Waffle House menu, the food undeniably contains the world’s greatest cure for hangovers. My favorite thing about Waffle House (aside from the waffles) is the practiced plate mathematics of true Waffle House patrons. Four people with four All-Star meals yields twelve plates on a tiny table, which is why my friends and I have our plate combinations down to a science, thus allowing the necessary space for quickly and efficiently devouring our food. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve never been to Waffle House.

6. Publix Chinese Food: Our final stop on the Tallahassee Food Tour of 2011 was the most nostalgic on our list. Though still stuffed with waffles, scrambled eggs and bacon, we could not leave the homeland without picking up some Publix Chinese Food (PCF) for the road. Only a handful of Publix grocery stores are lucky enough to have a chinese food section in their deli, and the Club Pub on Ocala Road happens to be one of them. Their bourbon chicken is the single best Chinese food entree ever made (make sure you ask them to pour extra sauce on the chicken and fried rice). Best of all for the college kid’s budget, a box will easily make two meals and even reheated (or inhaled cold while driving down I-10 toward home when you can’t resist the tantalizing smell anymore) this Chinese food is still spectacular.

I can’t wait to return to Tallahassee again. Maybe for a weekend…maybe for forever. The trip has left me with some lingering questions about my future, but more on that another time…

Later days,

- Shannon

Tags: Backyard Burger, Guthries, One Stir Fry, Po Boys, Publix, Seminole Football, Tallahassee, Waffle House
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The journey never ends.

August 25th, 2011

It was one o’clock in the morning eastern time on August 18, 2001 and I was on an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. The sun was rising above the clouds beyond my window while the stranger beside me snored loud enough to wake up the fishes swimming in the sea below. As I watched the morning unwrap itself, one thought entered my sixteen year-old mind:

What the HELL have I done?

Despite being the kid who lived in one town her whole life, never went away to camp and had the same friends since second grade, I found myself on an uncharacteristically adventurous expedition to Spain with a group of people I just met. My Spanish was barely passable, yet I had volunteered to spend two weeks living with my exchange student, Adali, and her family in the countryside of Northern Spain. Volunteered.

A little back story: I was born and raised in beautiful St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the U.S. St. Augustine was founded in 1565 by conquistador (and all around badass) Pedro Menendez who hailed from a fishing town on the Northern coast of Spain known as Avilés. Sometime around the sixties, St. Augustine and Avilés decided to take their shared history to the next level by becoming “sister cities” (I’m not sure what steps are involved in this official process, but I assume it includes some sort of blood oath). Over the next few decades they often spoke of having a student exchange, but it wasn’t until 2001 that they were actually able to put things together and make the exchange happen.

So in early August before my junior year of high school, twelve students from Avilés arrived in St. Augustine along with their chaperones to spend two weeks experiencing all that Florida has to offer (which in August is heat, heat, Disney World and more heat). They returned to Spain a day before we followed suit, traveling for almost 24 hours from Orlando to Philadelphia to Madrid and then finally to the Asturias Regional Airport in its capital city of Avilés.

The Cathedral at Covadonga (unfortunately these were the days before digital photos and I don't have a scanner for my hard copy photos, so I had to borrow pictures from the Internet as my illustrations)

Though I was a little nervous at first, my fears were quickly assuaged by a group of great kids and a beautiful country. Fourteen days of exploration unfolded in such a hurry that I feared I would never be able to capture it all in my mind. But ten years later I still remember all of the sites–the cathedral and chapel at Covadonga, the open air anchor museum in Salinas, the crowded beach in Luanco, the modern sculptures on the cliffs of Gijon and of course the historical relics of Avilés. (Sidenote: I also remember the food–paella, calamari, boiled shrimp, empanadas and these potato & egg breakfast squares that I’ve never seen since but I swear I can still taste sometimes…).

An example of the Los Castros (couldn't find a picture of the ones we went to see, but you get the idea...)

But of all the incredible places I visited on my trip, one sticks out above the others. A week after our arrival, we spent the better part of a Saturday morning climbing to the top of a mountain in the Picos de Europa. We passed a small village and a contingent of wandering cows before arriving at the summit. Clusters of circular stacked stones were spread over the top of the mountain, the remnants of a fortress (called Los Castros) built by the Celtics around the sixth century. Even more incredible than laying your hands on a structure built before the birth of Christ was the view–three hundred and sixty degrees of green mountains. For me, it was a life changing moment perfectly built inside of a life changing adventure.

Also among my chief accomplishments for this trip, I was designated as something of a spokesperson for our group (perhaps an early nod to the public relations profession I would go on to pursue). I did a cable access interview (in embarrassingly bad Spanglish) and a few newspaper interviews as well as some correspondence with my local newspaper back home (if you follow that link and read my article, please PLEASE disregard the photo). I was even quoted in a Spanish newspaper following our arrival:

“‘No se nada de Aviles, pero espero aprender mucho en estos dias’ afirmaba Shannon O’Neil.”

(I think this is loosely translated to: “‘I don’t know sh*t about Aviles, but I’m gonna learn some stuff over the next few days,’ said ignorant American Shannon O’Neil.”)

It is painfully cliched to call a European trip in your teens “life changing” but there is no other way to describe it. I simply would not be the person I am today, ten years later, without that trip. It gave me confidence I didn’t know I had and a travel bug that I hope will never be satiated.

Life is a journey, it’s up to you to make it an adventure.

Later days,

- Shannon

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Bluegrass is beautiful

August 5th, 2011

I love to travel but find that my constraints (job+empty bank account) often leave me unable to get away as often as I’d like. As a writer, I especially enjoy visiting new places with new cultures and new vistas ripe with inspiration. So naturally, when the opportunity arose for me to visit Lexington, Kentucky, in late July, I jumped at the chance.

My cousin has lived there for a little over a year with three of the best companions a gal can ask for–a Shepherd mix named Potter, an ex-racing horse named Liberty and a former show horse (aptly) named Big Mikey. They keep her pleasantly busy when she’s not working and what free time there is leftover she spends tending to a wild brood of beautiful flowers the wrap her front porch. It’s an easy lifestyle to envy–and I didn’t even mention the clawfoot tub in her downstairs bathroom.

Anyhow, it was a beautiful vacation and while I could easily give you a few thousand words on it (at one point in time I thought seriously about defecting), I think my pictures would serve you better as ghost writers of a sort.

Just one last note–if you get a chance to visit Lexington, do it. Beautiful city, wonderful people, you will not regret it.