Perceptive readers might notice that my name is no longer listed on the masthead as a Staff Writer/Food Editor. That's because my whopping promotion has just kicked in. I'm the new Web Editor for Creative Loafing Media. I'm still going to write All You Can Eat, but I won't be editing the Food copy, overseeing the Dining Guide, or writing features anymore.
So what does a Web Editor do? Well, the first thing is to hop on a plane to our sister paper in Atlanta – and from there take a road trip to our other sister paper in Charlotte – to meet all the lovely new folks who will be yelling at me in a month when stuff's broken on the website and I can't figure out how to fix it.
Monday morning, I landed in the ATL, got to the Amerisuites on Peachtree and … oooh, did I feel special! Two women were standing ahead of me, trying to get a room, but I got to waltz right in. "Here is your VIP pack, Miss Fries," the desk clerk said, handing me a paper bag with a bag of Fritos popping out. "OOOh! VIPs get Fritos!!" went my internal monologue. "This is awesome!!"
I could barely contain my excitement, but I didn't want to seem like an neophyte, so I waited until I got to my hotel room to look at all my goodies: Fritos, cheese crackers, Twix, some white pastry-looking things, a bag of popcorn and a Coke. "Sweet!! Badass!!" I squealed, and did a little dance around the room. "Ha ha! VIPs get snacks! This rules!"
Little did I know that I would soon come to rely on the contents of that little brown bag. You see, VIPs may get snacks – but they don't get meals.
Sure, sure, my first day I got wined and dined some; munching a salmon burrito over talks of blogs, and stripping hunks of chicken from satays over a few Lambics. But then the home teams get sick of you, and that's when the fun meals end, and the desperate subsistence begins.
Tuesday was the big road trip to Charlotte, a four-hour drive in a pickup truck. There wasn't time for lunch, so Laura found herself in a convenience store in South Carolina, listening to all the thick-as-sweet-barbecue-sauce accents in a gas station in the middle of nowhere and rummaging desperately for something to eat that didn't have a Confederate flag on it.
Cheez-Its were the solution. No decent juices were to be found in that place; just energy drinks and light, light beer. Blech. I made do with a V-8 Splash Kiwi Strawberry – an odd concoction of carrot juice and artificial flavors. Looking out the window of the pickup, I watched the thick red earth pass by, where spindly trees grew in defiance of the poverty around them. There didn't look to be too many jobs around here, much less places to stop and eat. So I quit my bellyaching. I was still starving.
My first meal of the day was hotel fare. Sunset Cafe, Ramada Inn on Woodlawn Avenue, Charlotte, N.C.
DON'T EAT HERE.
"Passion-fruit butter topped salmon" was a hideous, flash-frozen concoction microwaved to a sawdust consistency. Coconut rice tasted more like coconut granules, and good lord, my seafood bisque was a torrid, tepid concoction with the texture of human thigh fat. Blech, blech, blech.
I finally made it back to Atlanta. Apparently I hadn't learned my lesson, because I attempted yet again to dine at a hotel. The Amerisuites "deluxe continental breakfast" has some problems, my friends. Why do hotels hate us? Why can they not give us decent food? If you feed us runny fake-egg substitute, do our stomachs not suffer indigestion? And WHAT is that strange raw-beef looking hash substance with tiny cubes of potato that sits uneaten in their chafing dish every morning?
I can't take it anymore! Tampa Bay may not be the capital of haute cuisine, but I at least know a few places to go so that I won't end up digging through that little VIP bag, trying to find that long-forgotten bag of Fritos.
Decent food, I miss you.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2005.