I know we have all either watched or heard of the show on the Food Network, “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” hosted by Guy Fieri (you know the guy that has the spiky blonde hair, sunglasses and drives the old car). We all watch that show and think, “Wow that looks really good, I’m going to ride to New Mexico and try that!!” There is something about seeing food on television that makes us think we have to have that, when in all honesty we will probably have gone 2,000 miles for something that was just okay. I realized it had to be the television effect this past spring when I decided to take a trip with my parents up to Charlotte to try out The Penguin, after seeing it on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. I had never been there before and thought, “I’m going to eat here so that I can go home and brag about how I have been there and how great it was.” If only it had played out the way I imagined it in my mind. When I got there I ordered the Penguin burger with fries and a coke, and just a few minutes later my order that I was going to brag about to my friends when I got home arrived at my table. While the burger wasn’t bad, it didn’t live up to what I had built it up to be in my mind. It was not that much longer when I started to daydream and started wishing instead of riding an hour away to eat this burger, I had just stayed in Spartanburg and went somewhere closer to home. It was on that way home that I started a discussion with my dad about what places we could have eaten at that day instead. It was at that point when I realized, why travel anywhere else when some of the greatest Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives are right here in my own town. The first place that came to my mind was the Beacon, I thought “If only I would have been walking and talking and ordered myself a chili cheeseburger a-plenty, I would have been more satisfied and an hour closer to home.” Then I started thinking “Or if only I had just called up Jed and Richard and we could have went to the NuWay and I could have ordered a Redneck cheeseburger. That would have been really good today.” My mind then started to think, “Had we not rode all the way up here today, I could have tried the Wall of Fame burger challenge at Ike’s Grill or got a couple of hot dogs from Holme’s Hot Dogs.” If I could do cardio at the pace that my mind was thinking of places to eat in Spartanburg, I would be writing this blog at 175 pounds right now. The discussion kept on going during the whole ride back home as we brought up Sugar and Spice, Boots and Sonny’s, The Skillet, Carolina Barbeque, Papa's Breakfast Nook and many, many more. As we got closer to home and approached the Highway 221 exit off of I-85, I began to realize that it is amazing how we take having so many great places to eat in our town for granted. We see so many of these places on television that we “have to try” that we forget that in our very own backyard we have so many restaurants that out of the area people consider destination restaurants. I know that when we watch Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and shows like it, we are still going to see places that we “have to try” but in the back of my mind I’ll be saying, “If you think that’s good food, you should come to Spartanburg.”
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JamesBoiling Springs native, lover of sports and food. 15x SC Press Association Award Winner. I do some sports writing and radio every now and then. Archives
April 2020
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