Did "the open road" lead Alton Brown (& Crew) to Brownwood's Tabletops ?

Searching for authentic 'road food' in a fast-food culture

By MICHAEL COLLINS
July 24, 2006

A fire crackles softly beneath an outdoor grill, and the faint scent of burning juniper wood hangs in the air as evening settles in over the desert.
At the Mexican Hat Motor Lodge, ribeyes sizzle on the open grill, pots of beans simmer on an outdoor stove, and plastic tubs of salad sit on a counter. The nearby canyons, majestic rocks in iridescent shades of red, orange, brown and purple, practically shimmer when illuminated by the setting sun.
Most people come to this corner of southeastern Utah for the scenery, not the food. Alton Brown came for the food. Or, more precisely, the food AND the scenery.
"This is kind of a mythic, in-the-middle-of-nowhere spot," said the Food Network celebrity chef, finishing off a beer at the restaurant's outdoor bar. "Look at this place. Not a shred of artifice. Everything is completely real, and I think that is hard to find in this day and age."
And, he said, "I heard the food is really good."
Brown's trip through the Utah desert was just part of his latest culinary journey - the search for what he calls "road food," the local and regional cuisine that hungry travelers used to find along the nation's highways before the interstate system came along and the fast-food craze brought a McDonald's at every exit.
In May, Brown and a television crew hit the open road on motorcycles to see how much, if any, culinary authenticity is still left along America's byways. They avoided the interstates, sticking mostly to the back roads that twist and turn through small-town America.
The journey is documented in "Feasting on Asphalt," four one-hour specials on the Food Network. The first installment will premiere Saturday, July 29. The other three episodes will be broadcast over the next three Saturdays in August. Airtime for each episode is 9 p.m. EDT/PDT.
On some levels, the trip confirmed Brown's worst fears.
"Back in the heyday of road food, in the '30s and '40s, 90 percent of eating establishments you would come across in travel would be mom-and-pop places, or owner-operated places, places where whoever was behind the counter owned the joint and it was an expression of their individuality," he said.
Now, because of the invasive and homogenous nature of fast-food dining, "there are very few true mom-and-pop roadside places left."
Yet, throughout his cross-country jaunt, "we have stumbled into wonderful situations - little joints, tearooms, cafes, really terrific barbecue places," Brown said. "We've gone into places that 99 percent of people would pass up, because they look strange, unfamiliar."
One of the most rewarding experiences occurred in Estill, S.C., where the owners of the Palmetto Inn invited the crew into their home and gave an on-camera demonstration on how to cook a sumptuous Indian dish.
"It was a yogurt soup that they called curry, which you drank or served over rice," Brown said. "It was awesome. Most road food, you value for its authenticity or its individuality. But it's not very good. This was one of the top 10 things I have ever put into my mouth."
Brown also swung through La Junta, Colo., where he stopped by the Copper Kitchen. There, he met waitress Norma Cox and her sister, June Daniels. Between them, the women have more than 100 years of experience waiting tables.
"Not only did these two women believe they had the most fabulous life on earth, they thought they had the most fabulous jobs on earth, and for all of the right reasons," Brown said.
"So many people today are in the food industry either waiting or cooking because they are doing that to get by until something else comes along. These women had made it their lives, and they felt deeply, genuinely fulfilled by it. That was something to see, because that attitude is gone."
There were other noteworthy adventures along the way. In Florence, Kan., for example, Brown went to a community festival and ended up paying $200 for a cake at an auction.
Then, there was the pork-brain sandwich at the Hilltop Inn in Evansville, Ind. The sandwich itself was a bit disappointing, Brown said, but "what's important in a situation like that is they had it there, because it's a charming community, and it is their link to that heritage. Whether it's good or bad is almost secondary."
Before it was over, Brown and his crew had traveled through 19 states, starting in Savannah, Ga., and zigzagging down through the Great Smoky Mountains and the Natchez Trace through Mississippi, then heading through the Louisiana bayous and hill country of Texas before crossing the Rocky Mountains and the desert in the Southwest.
The group had no real itinerary. Most of the places they stopped were spotted along the way. The idea, Brown said, was to follow the open road wherever it might lead. But the one place that Brown made a point of visiting was the Mexican Hat Motor Lodge in the Four Corners area, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet.
The restaurant, one of only two in the tiny Utah town (population 88), is something of a cross between a cowboy bar and a rest stop for the weary yet adventurous traveler. It looks like something straight out of the Old West, the kind of place where the cook wears a cowboy hat and jeans and the diner at the next table just might have arrived on horseback.
The menu is primarily steak, which is cooked outdoors on an open grill that is held up by a wagon-wheel-shaped frame and swings back and forth while the beef sizzles. Hence, the restaurant's motto - "Home of the Swingin' Steak."
J.D. Mueller's family has owned the place since coming to Mexican Hat in 1979. (The town gets its name from a giant sandstone rock formation that resembles an upside-down sombrero.) Initially a dance hall and beer bar, the restaurant opened in 1990 and has been dishing up slabs of beef ever since to tourists who come to town to go hiking, rafting or horseback riding.
There is no indoor seating - "it's too nice outside to be inside," Mueller says.
Everything is cooked and served outside, except for the beans, which are first prepared in a pressure cooker for an hour and a half, then finished off on a wood cook stove outdoors.
The dining area is lit primarily by a string of bare light bulbs that bathe the place in a yellowish, campfire-like glow. On some nights, a garage door raises to reveal a makeshift stage. Mueller and his family are all musicians, and the family band often entertains guests by playing covers of country and rock songs.
Brown had heard a lot about the establishment from friends and wanted to see it for himself. In many ways, he said, the restaurant typifies what "road food" is all about.

"If I've learned anything, or had anything confirmed that I had hunches about, it's that the real important part of food is hospitality," he said. "The breaking of bread - it's the thing that holds all of us together. And it's the thing we're losing by eating in our SUVs."

(Contact Michael Collins at CollinsM(at)shns.com)
source: http://www.sanangelostandardtimes.com/sast/lv_food/article/0,1897,SAST_4946_4868630,00.html