Meat and Three in Tennessee

I don't always need to find a place to eat that does everything right. Sometimes one great dish is enough. I've driven miles out of my way to places that only make a great home-cooked bowl of soup, the perfect grilled sandwich or even a plate of crunchy, kettle fried potato chips. Last Thursday, as I hot-footed it home from the Tailgate show in Nashville, I managed to find one of those places that did almost nothing right…

Three stomach rumbles south of the Kentucky line, at the “lotto, liquor, and discount fireworks” place I stopped for gas, I noticed a promising place to eat across the road. Its weather-beaten sign read “Exit 123 BBQ, Home Cooking and Catering” (I’ve changed the name to avoid the potential for future litigation). Now normally I would have sense enough to steer clear of a restaurant that included an interstate highway exit number its name, but I was so hungry that I had begun to pick two week-old bits of broken pretzel out of the cracks in the passenger seat.

The parking lot was jammed with trucks – usually a good sign. Unfortunately, it turned out that most of those trucks belonged to emergency tree trimmers brought in from somewhere in Ohio to deal with the aftermath of a huge ice storm that had hit the mid-south the week before – not a good sign.

The place looked passable from the outside, but two steps in the door and I was overwhelmed with the perfume of Pine-Sol, fried fish and cigarette smoke. Too late, the smiling hostess made eye contact with her one good eye and my polite Midwestern upbringing shut down my natural “flee or fight” response. I began to get that feeling you get just after swallowing a bad oyster...not sick yet, but you know it's going to be a long night.

The dining room was a big threadbare cave of stained ceiling tiles and chipped melamine wall board. There was an ancient avocado folding room divider to one side so the “Benevolent order of Muskrats” could have their Monday-at-noon meetings in private. The walls had been scrubbed so many times that the paint was worn off of every spot that a greasy hand might have landed since the Nixon administration.

A giant, sagging salad bar separated the smoking from the non-smoking areas. Its rusty pile of iceberg lettuce nicely absorbing the odor of chainsaw fuel from the platoon of tree-trimmers who all smoked and watched "ultimate kick-boxing" on the five overhead TV’s while eating. Too bad the sound of its chugging compressor was not quite loud enough to drown out the squawking of their radio phones as they worked to bring in all the other crews that had also invaded the area.

Note to self… do not take food recommendations from a waitperson who has to travel more than halfway down the menu just to find an item that hasn’t somehow left her emotionally scarred. “Oh no, I don’t eat catfish, their faces remind me of my aunt Shirley”. “Chicken and dumplings - no that’s all I could eat for three months straight after my gallbladder surgery.” “I just can't face a bowl of red beans and cornbread after my divorce.” When we arrived at meatloaf, tears welled up in her eyes.

See, this is the problem with rural healthcare in this country; there are way too many vets and not enough psychiatrists. I should have just pretended I had to use the restroom, left a tip and snuck out the back.

Well, it was all downhill from there. I let her talk me into ordering their version of a “meat and three” - a pallid heap of mediocre ribs (greasy, un-smoked and barely browned under the broiler) with a full complement of monochromatic side dishes. I’m sorry, I don’t care how good collard greens are supposed to be for you; Vegetables should not be gray. By the way, since when are green Jell-O and macaroni and cheese considered vegetables?

I think many “meat and three” restaurants are probably quite good. Check out www.meatandthree.com for an extensive compilation of these hometown places stretching from Indiana to Georgia. It’s worth the look if only to a get load of the goofy restaurant names. This site calls a “meat and three” “a place that serves old-fashioned, down-home cooking like Grandma or Mom used to make.”

Maybe so, but I don’t think even my mom ever cooked dinner in a stained housedress with a Pabst Blue Ribbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other.