Food Trip
An Andalusian on the American road
Ahead of her first American road trip, Concha wondered what we intended to do about food. There are a lot of things she likes about the United States—the vast and varied landscapes, the world-class universities, the reasonably stable economy—but eating in a car, on the go, is not one of them. Concha says she prefers to enjoy her food, not just consume it. We are not rodents, she says. There may be a connection between having a reasonably stable economy and eating on the go, like rodents, but I’ve become too big a fan of the Andalusian way of life to look into it. Instead I’ve been working on a more relaxed, Andalusian approach to my food—a special challenge when the food in question is Andalusian. Grilled calamari, roasted eggplant, dry-cured Iberian ham…my instinct is not to savor such delights, but to shovel them down the chute. Watching me eat lunch, Concha might wonder—out loud—what my hurry is. Her tone is not critical, but concerned. It’s lunchtime in Andalusia. Everything is closed. I don’t have anywhere to be. Why am I eating like I do?
Visits home to the States may not justify my behavior, but they do help explain it. Poco by poco, Concha has learned that the logistics of life in the land of the free often preclude sitting down to a relaxed, civilized repast. On the road, for example. It’s an eight-hour drive from my parents’ house in Charleston to my sister’s place in Charlottesville, and while Concha and I may differ in the way we eat our food, we can agree that eight hours is too long to go without any. This means eating on the go—if not in the car, rather close to it; if not speedily, then not at our complete leisure.
In Spain this is never an issue, simply because in Spain we don’t take eight-hour road trips. Gas is pricey, and so long as the pertinent personnel aren’t on strike, the trains are dependable. Of Concha’s thirty some-odd siblings and cousins, nearly all live within a hundred miles of us. Weddings, funerals, and general family feasts are a short drive away, and can be made comfortably between meals. That’s fairly standard in Andalusia, and it may help explain why the inevitable Burger Kings and KFCs aren’t found on the highways but in the urban centers, where the appeal isn’t speed so much as novelty (it’s American!) and affordability. Eating in a car, or even in much of a hurry, just hasn’t caught on. It hasn’t had to.
“Eight hours in a car?” Concha said when we were packing for our first Charleston-to-Charlottesville run. “But…there is not a train or something?”
“That would be more like sixteen hours,” I said. “Have you seen my shaving kit?”
“It’s on the desk,” Concha said. “Sixteen hours? A train?”
“If we’re lucky.”
“Madre mía.”
Concha is a huge fan of the USA, almost unconditional in her admiration. A gaping lapse like Amtrak can’t help but mystify her. The country that had put a man on the moon couldn’t get us to Virginia?
Well, no, it couldn’t. Understanding this, recognizing that we would in fact be spending the better part of the day in a car, Concha promptly posed what was, to her, the obvious question: What did we plan to do for lunch?
“We’ll get something on the road,” I said.
“On the road?”
She hadn’t learned that expression yet. “Not on it,” I clarified. “Sort of—somewhere along the side of it. En ruta.”
Concha considered. “But where?”
“We’ll find somewhere, don’t worry,” I said, thinking, Flip-flops or tennis shoes? Maybe both, just in case?
Concha is not a difficult person. On trips to the land her husband still reflexively calls “home” she is usually up for anything—crabbing in the creek, canoeing in the swamp, even the occasional minor-league baseball game. But come lunchtime, wherever she may be, she does bring certain expectations to the table. There should actually be a table, for one thing—if squirrels want to eat from their laps, let them—and for another, there shouldn’t be a whole lot of deep frying involved. (Why anyone would fry an oyster, for example, is beyond her. She says it is an insult—to the oyster.) Today a smart-phone with a roaming plan can help with this sort of criteria, but back in 2010 we were at the mercy of the interstate, which is to say GAS-FOOD-LODGING zones. Assuming straight-up fast-food was out of the question—It is for children, Concha had once said—at lunchtime I pulled into one of those in-between places, where the food is not fast but not terribly slow, either. Food of average velocity, we might say, served in what is known as a family environment.
The fare may have been forgettable, but as an exercise in cultural immersion the meal proved useful. In what other context would Concha have learned that a “chicken finger” is a figurative notion? How else would she have come to understand that, in America, however many adjectival accoutrements a menu item may boast when it leaves the kitchen—Crispy Honey-Glazed Pork Tenders, e.g.—there is always room in the equation for your choice of dipping sauce?
Baffled as she was by the cuisine, Concha was delighted with the service. Our waitress, a kindly young redhead named Lauren, seemed to restore Concha’s faith in all things American. First came the free sweet-tea refills (“¡Increíble!”), then the easygoing chat. Lauren said she just loved Concha’s accent, Concha complimented Lauren on her necklace, and before I knew it they were discussing costume design in Mad Men.
This was all fine and well, but we still had two states to cross. To keep things moving, I might have pointed out that there would be a 15-20% surcharge for the conversation. (In Spain gratuity is included.) But watching Concha and Lauren interact with such ease and familiarity here in an interstate restaurant franchise—just the sort of place I liked to blame for leeching the soul out of America—that response seemed petty. It came from a novice expat, who still felt compelled to applaud unconditionally his adopted home at the expense of his native one. The fact is, for all Andalusia’s fame as a gregarious and fun-loving place, this sort of cheerful impromptu rapport with a stranger can be hard to come by. In certain corners of the States, if you just stop and linger for a spell—and, these days, put down your phone—it’s almost a given.
Anyway, what was the rush? It’s not as though their chat was adding miles to the trip. At the time my nieces and nephew in Charlottesville were between the sometimes difficult ages of two and six. It would be nice to see them, but there wasn’t any hurry to. If I was left sitting there with nothing much to do, well maybe I should have thought about that before wolfing down, in about four-and-a-half minutes, long before Lauren had even poured our first free refill, my chicken fingers.
In the years since, off the road, Concha has sat down to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, a Christmas feast, and a potluck Fourth of July picnic. She has enjoyed the hot pepper jelly, fig preserves, and green tomato pickles my mother makes with the fruits of my father’s garden. She has learned that Americans can in fact do food right when we put our minds to it and—crucially—make the time. It gives her some satisfaction to report this revelation to friends and family back in Spain. She’s eager to point out that American cuisine is more than hot dogs and hamburgers. Often enough, Andalusians are dubious. Homemade fig preserves? Seriously? I get the feeling some of her compatriots don’t want to be disabused of the notion that Americans are irremediably terrible at food. It feels like a point of pride: The United States may be more prosperous and powerful, but when it comes to eating, Andalusians do it better.
On balance, and my mother’s hot pepper jelly notwithstanding, I’m inclined to agree. An American Thanksgiving is extraordinary precisely because it’s such a dramatic departure from the norm. When I describe Thanksgiving to my Andalusian EFL students, they wonder what all the fuss is about. For them, a huge mid-afternoon meal with extended family is not a special, once-a-year occasion—it’s lunch.
If only we could work out a trade: a measure of American economy for a measure of Andalusian gastronomy. Here in a region where unemployment routinely reaches 15%, a dash of American enterprise might go a long way. But there is still a greengrocer in every neighborhood, where you can fill your bag with fresh local produce for the price of a Whopper, and come lunchtime, you will find Andalusians making good use of it. You will find Andalusians from across the economic spectrum sitting down to a big, unhurried meal with friends and/or family, making an art of a biological necessity. And why not? If eating is something we have to do, why not elevate it to an art? Why not turn it into something so pleasurable and rewarding that we might do it anyway, even if we didn’t have to?
I’m working on it. Poco a poco. No better place to learn than here, in Andalusia. If I race through the next plate of grilled calamari that lands in front of me, I’ll have no one to blame but myself. Across the region, two hours will have been set aside for the relaxed preparing, enjoying and digesting of the day’s big meal. There won’t be any hurry. I won’t have anywhere else to be. There will be no good reason, none whatsoever, to eat like I do.