Ever since we started RVing, people have told us about Lambert’s Cafe, a small restaurant chain that built a name for itself by serving huge portions of good food, and throwing dinner rolls at their customers.

Yes, you read that right. At Lambert’s, they don’t serve you rolls, they throw them at you! Company legend says the restaurant’s tradition of “throwed rolls” began in 1976, when founder Norman Lambert couldn’t get across the busy restaurant fast enough to deliver warm rolls to a table, and a customer asked him just to throw one. Norman threw the roll, the customer caught it, and history was made.

There are three Lambert’s locations – the original restaurant in Sikeston, Missouri; another in Ozark, Missouri; and the third is in Foley, Alabama. Yesterday afternoon our friends Tom and Karen Weigman came by to visit, and Tom suggested we have a late lunch/early dinner together. I mentioned that we had never been to Lambert’s and Tom said it was a favorite of theirs. So off we went to Lambert’s!

We knew that Lambert’s specializes in country cooking, that the food portions were substantial, and that besides your main course, somebody is always coming by offering free “pass-arounds,” which are down home fare like fried potatoes and onions, macaroni and tomatoes, black-eyed peas, fried okra, and hot rolls with sorghum. Many people we know have told us that they usually fill up on the pass-arounds, and end up taking much of their entrée home to finish the next day, giving them two meals for the price of one.

Karen and I ordered fried chicken, Miss Terry had chicken livers, and Tom opted for the meat loaf. And, of course, a nice young man came by and threw fresh hot rolls at us. Indeed, the portions were beyond generous, and even without the pass-arounds I don’t think any of us would have been able to clean up our plates. This photo was taken after we finished our meals, and there was more left on our plates than you get served in most restaurants.

So what did I think of Lambert’s? Well, you get a lot to eat, but it’s not the cheapest meal in town. My fried chicken was very good, but Miss Terry’s is better, and I don’t think it holds a candle to the broasted chicken at one of our favorite southern restaurants, Golden Girls, in Clinton, Tennessee. If we were having dinner with somebody else and they suggested Lambert’s, I wouldn’t hesitate to go again, but there are quite a few other nearby restaurants that I’d choose first.

Still, I’m glad we went. We had a wonderful time visiting with Tom and Karen, who are a fun couple we look forward to spending more time with. And, I caught a throwed roll, and how many times does a guy get to do that?

Terry and I will be on the road the next couple of days, headed for Elkhart, Indiana to meet the fellow who is buying our bus conversion and complete the sale. The weather forecasts are calling for nighttime temperatures in the 20s in northern Indiana, so you know that we won’t be spending one minute more there than we have to.  

Thought For The Day – You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day.

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All RVers love food, and one of the great things about the fulltime RV lifestyle is the opportunity to try the local fare at the restaurants wherever we are traveling. So I was surprised when a fulltiming couple I met a while back told me that they never eat anywhere except chain restaurants. “That way we always know what to expect,” they explained. “With those local joints, who knows what you’ll get?”

But isn’t that part of the fun? Sure, a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast or a Burger King Whopper is going to taste the same whether you eat it in Seattle or Paducah, but that gets boring after a while.

We love finding the local places, where the food has real taste and where our meal is not pre-planned by a dietician in some laboratory, who declares that we’ll get so many ounces of potatoes, the steak will be cut in such and such way, and the ranch dressing comes on the side, not on top of your salad.

One of our favorite books is Road Food, by Michael and Jane Stern. This gem has taken us to some great dining establishments that we might never have found before. We also get a lot of tips on good places to eat from other RVers. Here are some of our favorite places to chow down:

The Brick Pit, Mobile, Alabama – Located in an old 1950s style ranch house, the ambience is nothing to get excited about, but they serve a barbecue that you’ll never forget.

Hog Wild, Cottonwood, Arizona – This is another barbecue place you’ll want to return to after your first visit. It’s the best barbecue restaurant we have found in over 10 years on the road! The portions are huge and everything on the menu is delicious.

Sausage Shop Meat Market, Tucson, Arizona – Tucked away in the corner of a small strip mall, it’s easy to miss the Sausage Shop, but once you find it, you’ll save it’s location in your GPS! They serve some of the best sandwiches you’ll find anywhere.

El Rancho Restaurant, Pinetop, Arizona – When I owned the weekly newspaper here, El Rancho was everyone’s favorite Mexican restaurant, and it still is. El Rancho serves huge portions, it’s all delicious, and the atmosphere is comfortable.

El Siboney Restaurant, Key West, Florida – This is one of those places the locals all know about, but most tourists never find. Their Cuban sandwiches are the best this side of Havana!

Keys Fisheries, Market, and Marina, Marathon, Florida – We loved the fresh seafood at this open air restaurant so much that we drove 50 miles from Key West not once, not twice, but three times in eight days! Their blackened grouper is the best I’ve ever tasted.

Lunkers, Edwardsburg, Michigan – Lunkers is a smaller version of Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shop, with just the one location, in Edwardsburg. Their restaurant serves up some delicious food, including a Cobb salad that is so big that Terry only orders it when she has somebody else to share it with. Besides steaks, burgers, and other food, you can also have such exotic foods as elk, ostrich, and bear meat.

Don’s Drive-In, Traverse City, Michigan – Don’s is a popular restaurant for the burger and fries crowd, and they are very tasty. But what makes this place special is their strawberry milkshakes. Thick and loaded with real fruit, they are almost a meal in themselves.

Golden Girls, Clinton, Tennessee – You can’t beat the broasted chicken at Golden Girls, and Terry loves their collard greens. Southern cooking at it’s best!

The Boiling Pot, Rockport, Texas – We always order the Cajun Combo, a delicious blend of blue crab, shrimp, boudin sausage, red potatoes and corn, all boiled together in Cajun seasonings. Then they cover your table with sheets of paper and pour it all out for you to pick through.

So there are my top ten favorite places to eat across the country. Tell me about some of yours. You can find some of our other favorite restaurants on our website. Check them out.

And while you’re at it, check out Bad Nick’s latest post Religion Or Terrorist Organization?

Thought For The Day – The more time you spend caring, the less time you have to hate.

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I met a man at Elkhart Campground a few years ago who told me he was unhappy in the RV lifestyle because he was bored. I suggested several things he might do to keep himself busy, and he pooh poohed every one of them; visit the RV Museum? No thanks, he wasn’t interested in looking at a bunch of old junk. Play golf? Nope, that was a rich man’s sport, not for him. Go fishing? Why go to all that trouble when you can buy a nice fish dinner in a restaurant? Build houses for Habitat for Humanity? Nobody ever built him a house, so why should he build someone else one?

It didn’t take long before a light bulb went off in my head and I asked him if he had been bored before he became an RVer. He told me yes, that was why he bought the motorhome in the first place.

In talking to him, I learned that he spent part of the summer and early fall parked at his brother’s farm in Pennsylvania; then he went to the same site, which he had reserved, at the same RV park in Florida for the winter. Then in the spring he drove to Elkhart for a few days before continuing on to his niece’s home in Wisconsin, where he stayed until it was time to go to Pennsylvania again. “I tell you, I know every inch of Interstate 95 between Pennsylvania and Florida, and Interstate 65 back up to Indiana,” he told me.  

“How about just for the hell of it, you take I-75 north or south this year,” I suggested. “You could stop in Clinton, Tennessee and check out the Museum of Appalachia. It’s really cool.”

He was shaking his head before I was halfway through my sentence. “Nope, that’s not on my route,” he said stubbornly. If I go off on a different route then what I’m used to, who knows what could happen?”

I wanted to tell him that one thing that might happen was he’d see some new country. Heck, he might even make a new memory or two! But I knew I was defeated, so I just gave up, told him to have a good life, and went on about my business, leaving him to his misery.

I’ve met a lot of RVers who, while they may not be as extreme as this fellow, are still stuck in a rut. They spend their summers in the same place and their winters at the same RV park in Florida, Texas, or Arizona. They tell me they have friends in their favorite campground in the Rio Grande Valley, or wherever they hang out, and they want to get back and spend time with them. I guess that’s okay if it works for them, but that’s just too much of the same old thing for me!

It’s an easy rut to fall into. We have our favorite places we enjoy returning to again and again, but we also go out of our way to visit new places too. Or at least to take a different route to wherever we’re going. And when a place gets too comfortable, we start asking ourselves if we need to look elsewhere.

We absolutely love the area around Aransas Pass and Rockport, on the Texas Gulf Coast, and last year we came across a good deal on a couple of RV lots down there that we seriously considered. But then we realized that buying them would be the first string that would tie us down. Why have the lots if we were not going to go there? But if we went there, what were we missing someplace else?

We didn’t get into the fulltime RV lifestyle to remain static. We wanted to see and do different things, new things. The familiar is comfortable, but it can also become suffocating if you allow it to be. We’re always looking for that new route we haven’t traveled yet, that new place we haven’t seen yet, and that new adventure we haven’t experienced yet.

Remember that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the length and depth.

Thought For The Day – Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark. Professionals built the Titanic.

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