Tag: utah

Categories
mexican tio wally

Tio Wally Eats America: El Mexsal Restaurant

I’m happy to have Tio Wally (long-time Me So Hungry reader) aboard to send in his eating adventures from across America. Here he is in Provo, Utah.

Greetings from Provo, Utah
N 40° 13.7581’ W 111° 39.7303’ Elev. 4528 ft.

Most people are familiar with cashew nuts. Some may even know of cashew butter. But it seems few know where cashews actually come from, how they grow. Fewer still may be aware that parts of the cashew tree is juiceable.

A short course (of course): Cashew nuts grow on trees. The “nut” is not a nut but a seed. The seed protrudes from the bottom of the fruit of the cashew tree, the cashew apple. The cashew apple is know by a number of names: Star apple in English, Caju in Portugeuse, Marañon in Spanish. Ripe cashew apples resemble a red bell pepper, with the kidney shaped seed hanging out of the bottom.

I had no idea about any of this until I ran across a flavor of aguas frescas I’d never heard of before. I’d gone to El Mexsal, a Mexican/Salvadorian restaurant I’d spotted previously and they had Marañon on the drink menu ($1.99). I asked the server what it was and she kept saying “cashew.” Cashew juice? How the hell do you juice a cashew nut? So I asked if I could try it.

They weren’t juicing the nuts/seeds but, rather, the fruit that produces them, the cashew apple. As it turns out cashew apples are used to make all kinds of stuff: liquor, wine, sodas, candy, syrup, jams and chutneys, preserves, etc. The ripe apples can be eaten raw or juiced, and the fruit contains over five times as much Vitamin C as an orange.

14 Mexsal_marañon

Like many aguas frescas, the marañon was sweet and mildly tangy, with a unique flavor that, though tropical tasting, is neither perfumy nor really exotic tasting. I read where it was compared to Passion Fruit but I didn’t think it was anything like it. I wish I could describe it other than to say it’s very, very good.

I discovered on the InterTubes that marañon is available in the States in most Indian stores as well as stores specializing in Central and South American products, usually as a concentrate. I wish I’d known about marañon before because I’d have looked for it, sought it out. It’s that good.

As for El Mexsal: As you can tell by the name it’s a restaurant with a dual personality, offering a range of Mexican and Salvadoran specialties. I had a combination plate: Beef enchilada, Chile relleno and Beef tamale ($7.49). It was all very good. The tamale was fluffy and cakey the way banana-wrapped tamales tend to be. The relleno was a fresh chile in a fluffy batter, stuffed with lots of cheese. The beef enchilada was likewise quite good. Both the enchilada and the tamale were stuffed with classic desebrada, tender and succulent shredded pot roast.

El Mexsal was a great find, especially considering that it’s located in one of the whitest of the white places in America. They have great food, great service, reasonable prices and, best of all, Marañon!

And so we roll.

El Mexsal Restaurant, 325 S. Freedom Blvd., Provo, Utah

Tio Wally pilots the 75-foot, 40-ton(max) land yacht SS Me So Hungry. He reports on road food from around the country whenever parking and InterTube connections permit.

Categories
tio wally travel

Tio Wally Eats America: Sapp Bros

I’m happy to have Tio Wally (long-time Me So Hungry reader) aboard to send in his eating adventures from across America. Here he is in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Greetings from Cheyenne, Wyoming
N 41° 09.429’  W 104° 39.667’  Elev. 5979 ft.

I love Sapp Bros! Any company with enough class to dress up water towers — and storage tanks and light poles — into coffee pots has to be lovable.

The first Sapp Bros truck stop was founded by the four Sapp brothers in Omaha, Nebraska at the junction of I-80 and Highway 50 over 40 years ago. It now has 15 truck stops scattered mostly throughout the Midwest, with locations as far west as Salt Lake City and as far east as Clearfield, Pennsylvania. Needless to say, I’m attracted to it because of its funk … and the food. And the free WiFi is nice, too.

According to its website the Sapp Bros’ “iconic logo began as a simple water tower in 1971 to supply the needs of the businesses that were located to the west of the Omaha metropolitan area on Highway 50 and not accessible to the conveniences of city water and sewer. A few years later the coffee pot handle and pour spout were added to the refurbished water tower and the landmark became known to Omaha residents and I-80 travelers alike.” And it’s bitchen.

In years past Sapp Bros leased out its restaurant space, mainly to The Great American Restaurant. In recent years, however, the company has taken the spaces back, remodeling the restaurants and running them itself under the name Sapp Bros Cafe.

This is both good and bad. Good because they’ve introduced more consistency to its restaurants. But bad because with all the remodeling and such all the really funky stuff is gone, like the “ass-dentations” in the all-too well-worn booths, the separate “Drivers Only” room with a  phone at each table (this was BC — before cell phones) where truck drivers still smoked cigarettes and used “spicy” language, and the regular folk just weren’t invited to hear the truck drivers — who, curiously, had plenty of time to hang out in truck stops — tell endless lies about how much money they made.

But the food, I think, has improved as a result. Or, rather, it’s a little safer to order with confidence and knowledge that you’ll get what you ordered, and expected, regardless of time of day; they serve the full menu when its open. Then again, they’re no longer 24-hour affairs, which kind of sucks.

I’ve eaten in three of the Sapp Bros Cafes but will focus on the last one I ate at, in Salt Lake City, where I ordered the Chicken Fried Steak. For $9.99 you get the Steak, one side, and the soup/salad bar.

This is classic Chicken Fried Steak. It’s nicely breaded, crispy outside and tender inside, and truly a generous portion. It comes smothered in homemade country gravy that is, easily, the best I’ve ever had on the road. Made from scratch, it’s got a lot of nice little bits of sausage in it, and the gravy’s consistency is perfect, not too thin or thick, and it actually has flavor.

As my side I chose mashed potatoes — they have real mashed potatoes! But damn: Again I forgot to ask if they had chicken gravy. I love chicken gravy, but it’s rarely found. The meal is rounded out with Texas toast that is really tasty, toasted on the griddle and mildly garlicky.

The soup/salad bar is always sort of funny. But the soups are usually great. This visit they had chili, which I thought could’ve been spicier, and a chicken-tomato soup that was awesome. Basically a chicken vegetable soup, it had big noodles in it. I’ve experienced similar noodles elsewhere and they were gummy, poorly made crapoids — usually billed as “dumplings” — but these were delicious. The broth was sort of a chicken stock with hints of tomato. God, I wish I had a sophisticated enough palate to describe it because that broth was awesome: light, tomato-ish, homey, refreshing … and it had a generous amount of chunks of white meat chicken in it.

The salad bars on the other hand are always kind of small and minimal at the Sapp Bros Cafes, but yet there are always surprises. On this visit I made up a fruit salad plate. When I got back to my table I discovered that the cantaloupe had fresh, ripe pineapple in it. Fresh, ripe pineapple! It’s one of those fruits that we forget how good it is until we have it.

For dessert I ordered a giant piece of Carrot Cake ($3.59) to go. It too was great. A nice touch, I thought, was that the honey-cream cheese frosting was decorated with slivers of shaved carrot. It took me awhile to figure it out. It was a nice crunchy touch.

Not all of the Sapp Bros Travel Centers (all the truck stops are “travel centers” these days to upgrade their image) have restaurants, but the ones that do are worth a visit if you’re traveling. They’re good folks and they’ll take good care of you.

And so we roll.

Sapp Bros. Truck Stops, 15 locations scattered between Salt Lake City, Utah and Clearfield, Pennsylvania

Tio Wally pilots the 75-foot, 40-ton(max) land yacht SS Me So Hungry. He reports on road food from around the country whenever parking and InterTube connections permit.

 

Categories
tio wally travel

Tio Wally Eats America: Bear River Valley Country Store

I’m happy to have Tio Wally (long-time Me So Hungry reader) aboard to send in his eating adventures from across America. Here he is in Buford, WY and Corrine, UT.

Greetings from Corinne, Utah
N 41° 33.356’  W 112° 07.647’  Elev. 4207 ft.

I find myself today at the Bear River Valley Country Store (2780 N 4800 W), a Convenience store attached to a Farm and Ranch store, or vice-versa, attached to a gas station/truck stop. If the address seems sort of like a geographic position, it’s because it is, of sorts.

Here in Utah, there is a rather large religious *cult that’s very prolific at breeding and building things. When they laid out their towns, all the roads were laid out in a grid and numbered with Temple Square in Salt Lake City as the focal point. Thus, if you follow the addresses and streets in a descending order you’ll end up running right smack dab into it.

It certainly makes it easy to find places, especially for  my evil twin Skippy, crack lead navigator of the SS Me So Hungry. “It must be, uh, that way?” he’s wont to say. Often.

On the way here, I made a stop in Buford, Wyoming (I-80 Exit 325, Population 1, Elevation 8000). Billed as the Nation’s Smallest Town, I wanted to get a postcard and, hopefully, meet its sole resident.

I went into the Buford Trading Post and asked the only person in there, ominously, “Are you ‘The One’?” “No,” the guy says, obviously bored to death by this tiresome query, “he’ll be here in about an hour.” And so was my near-brush with “The One.”

Are you detecting a religious theme here yet? Well, so I bought this pastrami and pepper jack cheese sandwich ($5.25) at the Bear River Valley Country Store and “Oh. My. God.” It was huge! Being more loudmouth than big-mouthed, I was wondering how I was going to eat it. While not as intimidating as, say, one of those mile-high sandwiches they make at the Jewish delis, it was a pretty scary sandwich, especially considering it was made by a shiksa.

I hadn’t had pastrami in a long time and this stuff was really good. I suspect it was probably made by Boarshead or some other quality deli-meat maker. I got it on a Hoagie roll, with extra meat (which I discovered later she didn’t charge me the extra dollar for), mayo and deli mustard. Just to make it more awesome, it came with crisp green leaf lettuce, ripe(!) tomato, and crisp red onion. Good God, y’all!

Included in the price was a delightfully crunchy pickle spear and a choice of macaroni or potato salad, or chips. I got the potato salad, which tasted suspiciously, deliciously homemade.

Truly a quality pastrami sandwich, whether made in New York City or the wilds of Utah. And who’d of thought of finding one here? What a deal!

Meanwhile back at Temple Square stands a statue of the Angel Moroni holding a trumpet. Facing a hotel across the street, it is rumored that the statue will come to life and blow his horn, heralding the Second Coming. The joke hereabouts is that should a Second Coming ever occur it will be marked not so much by a heavenly trumpet herald but rather by Moroni blowing copius amounts of pigeon shit all over the Hotel Utah.

And so we roll.

*Being a Pastafarian, I think all religions are cults. For a succinct, accurate history of this one watch the South Park episode “All About Mormons”. If you want more song and dance with your history, go see “The Book Of Mormon”, now playing on Broadway. If you’d rather read it than see it get Jon Krakauer’s “Under The Banner Of Heaven”.

Tio Wally pilots the 75-foot, 40-ton(max) land yacht SS Me So Hungry. He reports on road food from around the country whenever parking and InterTube connections permit.