A nice warm spring evening, time on our hands, what to do? Drive to Nebraska!
My wife, Malissa, had moved here from Houston recently and was eager to explore her new territory. Plus, she had spent as little time in Great Plains states as I had spent in Texas. So with some time on our hands and gas money (way back when it was only $1.25/gallon) burning a hole in our collective pockets, we trundled off for a long drive to add Nebraska to the list of states that Malissa had visited. Little did we know what culinary adventures awaited us.
We headed west on I-70, and just past Topeka headed north to the Nebraska state line.
Let me tell you something about my wife: she marvels at the world around her and drinks in images and experiences the way a desert island castaway drinks ice water – with gusto. So all the farms, wildflowers, cows, row crops, silos, Indian casinos, little towns, hills and rusted signs fascinated her. I’d seen it all before, but seeing it new through her eyes was, well, eye-opening.
We were cruising along, nowhere to go, no timetable, beautiful sunset, life is good. At the Nebraska state line we stopped so I could take her picture under the “Welcome to Nebraska” sign. About 90 minutes into the road trip, we started getting a little hungry. No worries, we thought. We’ll stop at the next town, village, city, hamlet, wide bend in the road or metropolis and grab a bite.
Welcome to Nebraska City, Nebraska. The county seat of Otoe County, Nebraska City has a little more than 7,000 residents. Arbor Day was invented in Nebraska City. Lewis and Clark visited in 1804. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad. It has a Firefighting Museum. Nice little place.
The Nebraska City Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau lists 33 restaurants of various size. I’ll bet 32 of them are great. We chose number 33. To protect the innocent, I’ll call our dining location Balentino’s Pizza and Pasta. We figured, what can go wrong with pizza and pasta? Lots.
We weren’t expecting 5-star French cuisine, ostrich steaks with mango chutney, turducken or braised tips of lamb in port wine reduction with a glaze of wild mushrooms. A clean bathroom would have been nice. We didn’t get that either.
What do you generally want from restaurant personnel? Attention, prompt service, a smile. Sure, that’s why we leave tips. At Balentino’s that night, it took about five minutes for anyone to realize we wanted to pay them money in exchange for goods and services. OK, we can overcome this. We’ll just do the salad and pasta buffet. In the meantime, the iced tea tasted like river water.
The buffet had a small selection: something that looked like pasta, something that looked like lettuce and roughly seven salad toppings. I’m not usually a picky eater (despite what my mother will tell you about me and vegetables when I was a kid), but I generally like my marinara sauce to taste like something other than nothing. Pick a spice, pick an herb. Use them. Use something, anything. Salt doesn’t count. Red is a not a flavor.
Salad next. How can you screw up salad? Balantino’s found a way. To say that they kept the salad fixins’ chilled would be a gross understatement. The peas and the chopped hard-boiled eggs were frozen. Repeat, frozen. Solid. Eggs, frozen solid. The bright green frozen peas were better suited as projectiles than ingestibles. How delicious is that?
Despite the long drive behind us and the long drive ahead of us and the hunger in between, we got out of there as quickly as possible. We couldn’t take it anymore. It was that bad. Balantino’s everywhere are diminished because of this one restaurant.
I don’t want to paint the entire culinary industry of Nebraska City with such a broad brush, but there is nowhere to go but up. The good people of the Cornhusker State deserve better.
We continued our journey, crossing from Nebraska City into Iowa, stopping to take a picture under the “Welcome to Iowa” sign. Fifteen minutes later we entered Missouri – it was too dark now to take a picture under the Welcome sign – and began the two-hour drive home. A wonderful trip, albeit a non-nutritious one. I think we picked up some Cokes and chips at a truckstop during the last leg of the trip.
My wife got an eyeful of the countryside, we added two new states to her “states visited” list and have a great new anecdote. All in all, a great evening.
1 Comment
March 4, 2009 at 12:18 pm
“Red is not a flavor.” Hahahaha! Good one, Phil.