Where's the cheese?


New Haven, Connecticut

The following morning, we all boarded the Truck of Justice to head north to the town of the University of Yale, New Haven, CT on New England coast.

Before leaving Washington however there was one more bit of sightseeing to be done; Arlington - the National cemetery and home of the burial place of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Some criticism has been levelled at this blog for perhaps going into too much detail around these things so we will simply say that Arlington does a tremendous job of honouring the many men and women who gave their life in the service of their country.

Besides this stop the drive up was uninspiring and largely uneventful. We did drive through some scenic country-side, the north-east gives off an amazing array of colour in the fall and the Don was given ample opportunity to use his word of the trip “deciduous”.

Meanwhile the Doctor had quietly decided to see how long he could hold a small poster of Obama against his car window. It wasn't until they finished that day's driving that anyone noticed this pointless exercise when the Doctor answered his own question with a sense of proud achievement: "Four and a half hours".

But the real story of the day was of American cuisine, particularly that of the fast food variety. On this day the Road Trippers experienced both ends of this cheese reliant industry that is clearly responsible for shaping, in a very real sense, Americans.

The first experience was Wendys. It was way back in Dallas that the group became aware of this “sandwich” chain which has the slogan “It’s not fast food, it’s Wendy’s”. They have outlets along every interstate highway in America and can lay claim to the signature burger the Baconator. The Baconator has either two or three beef patties, patrons presumably settle on a preference based on the level of health care insurance they have, and American size servings of melted cheese and bacon.

JT, since becoming aware of its existence, had been insisting that the group stop into a Wendys and having ticked the box for biscuits and gravy was now lobbying hard for the group to sample the Baconator and on the drive to New Haven he, unfortunately for him, got his way.

Two of the five simply flat out refused to participate. The Rabbit and the Doctor took what JT felt was the Shane Warne “baked beans” approach to touring and walked off to a Burger King being closer to their cultural understanding of fast food. Of the three remaining it was only the instigator of the experience that actually ordered the famous meal.

The whole experience was incredibly depressing. The store we settled on was in the backlots of Baltimore. Readers should picture a very empty store, very, very bad musac and staff who had clearly made a number of decisions based on a very, very, very high level of health care insurance.

As hard as it might be to accept, the Sheik of Tweak might have been on to something after all. The Baconator which incidentally has square patties, was awful. JT’s blood pressure went through the roof just opening the wrapper. It is the only time any of the trip resented our universal Health care system which had inspired the choice of the triple deck option. The group early on had instituted the rule that due to the size of US meals we should always aim to leave something on the plate and JT was more than happy to follow that rule than on this occasion.

The other end of the experience was dinner in New Haven. We had been given some good tips from a friend, and reader of this fine blog, who had studied at Yale and as soon as we arrived put our faith in his local info to try and erase the memory of the now cursed “sandwich”.

We ended up, eventually, at Frank Peppe’s. (The Rabbit is the worst person alive at giving directions and seemingly thought the restaurant was in Montreal.)

Our friend, like all our readers, knew his stuff. Frank Peppe made the best pizza any of us have eaten. From the photo’s on the wall, which included Bill Clinton and Ronald Regan, we got the impression we were not alone in this conclusion. Apparently Clinton actually prefers a place down the road that we had tried first but had been informed by the owner that our arrival at 9:15pm was too late and we had to go elsewhere. Our waitress at Peppe’s told us he was known for a gruff persona but his pizza was good. Amusingly they were cousins but hadn’t spoken for 15 years.

Once the Rabbit had been talked out of ordering spinach as a topping we were delivered up a classic pepperoni and sausage pizza and a chicken special (a choice the Rabbit had not been talked out of).

The chicken was great, the pepperoni and sausage amazing.

The food on this trip has not been the standout. The servings are huge, fries are ubiquitous and cheese, or in some circumstances clearly a synthetic recreation, often served in equal volume to the rest of the meal.

Frank Peppe’s signalled that New England was going to be more rewarding in a culinary sense than the south and Midwest had been.

The trip went to bed with our faith restored in America’s fast food.

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