Originally Posted by
big john
When we toured cross country we started in the Pacific Northwest and found high quality food at lots of mom and pop type places. We would ask locals and they would share the good places.
As we got further east and south the quality suffered but the quantity increased. Eventually, everything became buffet. Breakfast buffet, lunch buffet, etc. When we asked locals that's what impressed them, quantity. There were exceptions, of course.
I went from Seattle to Bar Harbor, ME for the first leg. Once we crossed the Rockies, we learned to ask how large the pancakes were if we ate a second breakfast because some places would serve what one waitress called “horse blankets”. Ten inches in diameter. ND was hit or miss depending on the size of the town we stayed in/near.
It went downhill when we got to MN. Huge omelets and mountains of home fries. We ate out the second night at Lake Itasca, where the Mississippi River starts. The all-you-can eat fish special sounded healthy. Turned out to be deep fried perch served in baskets lined with grease-soaked paper towels. (The first night we had brats and beans because that’s all we could scrounge up at the small store near the HI Hostel.). IA and IN weren’t much better. Huge portions whenever we ate out, and so much fried food.
I actually gained weight in the Midwest. Finally decided to scale back consumption and lost it for the hills of NY and New England. My pants were really loose by the time I made it home to Philly.