French fries with gravy

I am a bit of a foody. Which is too bad for me really since America is a vast wasteland of fast food, convenience products and God awful restaurants. Go into a diner or a cafe where the food SHOULD be good and reasonably fresh and you'll find yourself dining on canned veggies and watered down soups, pre-packaged fried chicken and sauce from a can. Why do people pay good money to eat this crap? Either you want to eat vegetables or you don't. He who wants to eat those veggies soggy and salty as hell from a can does not truly love veggies.

I'm not a snob about these things, mind you. I just know that Papa John's Pizza isn't the best pizza regardless of how fresh they say their toppings are. I've yet to see a tomato garden atop the strip mall where Papa John's makes these miracle pies that are supposed to put Pizza Hut and Dominoes to shame, so I'm just gonna assume their sauce is canned or frozen in a bag as well, OK? Unlike most Americans, I know when I'm getting something that "tastes funny" because it's fresh. Most Americans can't eat anything unless it's got high quality packaging and then they think it tastes good. Taco Bell is a great example. NOTHING at Taco Bell tastes better than the food at my local taco shack/burrito barn Alvarado's, yet I hear people with pedestrian palates shit on them all the time in favor of their usual run for the border. Fuck all that shit.

Most Americans eat fast food a hell of a lot more often than they admit. I see people who eat it daily, but if you asked them, they'd probably only admit to once or twice a week. Some of them are so used to eating the dead, stale crap fast food restaurants prepare that they get sick eating fresh food, which only reinforces their misguided interpretation that the fresh stuff is actually not "good food."

I don't anybody who doesn't know what a Big Mac is, but talk about the American classic fries with gravy, even to a waitress at a diner these days, and you get this look like you're a fucking foreigner who doesn't know any better. Time was, one could count on some local specialties, too, now you get the same jalapeño poppers and bloomin' onions from Maine to New Mexico. I'm from Iowa and I've never had a stuffed porkchop nor have I met anyone who even knows that that is supposed to be one of our signature dishes. We also make one of the finest bleu cheeses in the world, Maytag. But I can't get it in my local corporate mega store or catch a glimpse of recognition on the face of the dairy case manager when I ask about it.

Where are the hot beef sandwiches? The meatloaf dinners? The Texas toast? Where are the crab cakes? Where is the hand-cut, hand-breaded, pan-fried pork tenderloin of my youth? Biscuits and gravy? Hoe cakes? Natural casing wieners? Hand-pressed hamburger patties? How about a loaf of bread made from scratch, huh? When was the last time you saw one of those?

There's just no love in our grub any more and we should all consider that the next time we think about what dive restaurant we want to help keep open.