The American Dine-O-Saur

Mom and Pop Restaurants Fall Prey to the Sysco Truck

One of the best things you can do for your soul is to find a locally owned and operated Mom and Pop restaurant and make yourself a regular there. This may not be easy.

Once you find the place, befriend the owners and wait staff. Learn their names and the names of their children. Show them pictures of your family and bring them in on occasion.

For the first month, order everything on the menu until you have your favorites. Sit at the same table each time if you can. Let this place be a refuge from the storms that some days can bring. I promise you'll feel better each time you leave, knowing that in this crazy world, some things do stay the same.

When you walk in from the cold air, and they welcome you with a knowing smile, asking if you'll have "The Usual," you will feel like you are home.

Sadly, in America, the Mom and Pop restaurant has largely been replaced by chain franchises. Whether you eat at Appleby's, O'Charleys – or even P.F. Changs – all the food is loaded off the same Sysco trucks, hauled in from the same corporate farms and cooked to precision using tried and true assembly line methods. Efficiency is a must with any business, but when dealing with such large numbers, it's understandably imperative.

The strength, they say, of the chain restaurant is that whether you're in Columbus, Ohio or Buffalo, New York, you'll know exactly what you're getting.

What a small reward for having given up so much.

Back in the old days, in the ancient times before we could hear the death-rattle gasps of the Mom and Pop restaurant, travelers relied on word of mouth to procure food. When you pulled off the highway to get gas, you'd ask a local and they'd give you directions to the best place in town. His friend might disagree and send you to his favorite place, and pretty soon, you had a decision to make. This is a practice I maintain today, as much as possible. When I travel with the family, the band or solo, my companions know that I'm always on the lookout for something with a little more local flavor. When checking into hotels, I make it a point to ask where the best locally-owned restaurants are. I never eat the bland continental breakfasts provided by hotels, and almost never eat in their Sysco-truck supplied restaurants, but make the extra effort to find the real deal, repeating my well-worn mantra, "Life is too short to eat bad food."

Most of the Mom and Pop restaurants in America aren't American anymore. If you want to eat in a local, family-owned establishment, you're going to have to eat Mexican or Chinese, for the most part. Just about everything else is food prepared in some faraway factory by people you will never meet.

Chinese food – and most all asian cuisine – has become my personal soul food. Nothing comforts me, feeds me in the same way. Having lived in Japan as a young man, I became very attached to the food. I get this from my mother, I guess. She had a favorite Chinese restaurant in town about 30 miles away, and it was a rare luxury when we could all go to dinner there. A good egg roll – fat and fluffy with the perfect blend of meat, vegetables and spice – was a spiritual thing to my mother. And The Peacock Kitchen was her Mecca.

I have my own favorite Chinese restaurant in Nashville where I have been a regular for 15 years or so. It's called "Emperor of China." (I've always thought if I ever moved to China, I'd open a restaurant called "President of the United States.")

Emperor of China is not easy to find. I'm not even sure how I found it. It's tucked in the corner of an old strip mall so far off the road, you'd think you're driving into an industrial park. It's surrounded by empty businesses and stores with signs in Spanish and Somali, selling cell phone plans and foreign videos. This section of town has been long labeled by the locals as "going down hill." Immigrants have taken over most of the area businesses, and English is definitely the second – or third – language. I'm often the "lone white guy" walking around, still going there to eat, get my haircut, buy gas, shop, etc. I'm not freaked out by the diversity, but am actually energized by it. And like I was saying, it's the only place where I can eat at a Mom and Pop restaurant, as long as I'm okay eating a gyro platter, an enchilada, or moo goo gai pan.

Times have been hard for The Emperor of China. They shut down their full buffet last year, and now focus mostly on lunch delivery to the local businesses. They raised their prices. Had to, I guess. Most days, I'm the only one there, being served quickly, with a familiar smile, the waiter/owner asking me how things are going in the music business. We'll compare notes. I'll ask him how business is going. His answer has been the same for awhile now: "Slow, but delivery has been okay."

I won't be going to Emperor of China today. They've cut back their hours. They're now closed on Mondays. I'll have to wait til tomorrow to get The Usual: my own personal combo platter of steamed rice, garlic vegetables, the best general's chicken you'll ever eat, and crab rangoon that melts in your mouth.

My mouth is watering just thinking about it. I hope they're open tomorrow. Every day I half-expect to see a CLOSED sign in the window. I'd hate to see another Mom and Pop go the way of the American Dine-o-saur.

And, well, I'd hate to think of what I'll lose.

Here's the song "Mom and Pop" Don't Work Here No More," from my recently released "The Beige Album." It's a perfect companion piece to today's blog. I hope you enjoy it.

www.unhitched.com/Mom_and_Pop.mp3