People Who Can’t Understand a Biscuit by Chris Bray

BY CHRIS BRAY | “Tell Me How This Ends” | on Substack

The Cracker Barrel problem had solutions, and it’s interesting what they didn’t think to do.

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Twenty-five years ago, when I was a young infantry dork and spending a couple of years at Fort Benning, Georgia, we were warned one day to not make plans for an evening later in the week. The “you will attend” warning was for dinnertime, because a local civic group was coming out to feed the battalion. It was a military appreciation gesture, and you will communicate that you have received that appreciation with an abundant display of gratitude, is that clear? Yes, sergeant major. People always complain when I use profanity, but click the footnote for authentic sergeant major language. 1

On the day of, pick-up trucks started to arrive, clustering around the parade ground across from the barracks. They were all towing some version of this:

Out of those trucks came old men in cargo shorts and dad sneakers.

That dinner was laughably good, and we knew it would be from smelling it as it cooked, bullshitting with the old guys who were sweating over their grills. I sat on a curb at the edge of the parking lot and ate a plate of chicken that I still remember. Paper plate, fistful of paper towels. Old guys, trucks, towed smoker grills, cargo shorts. They clicked their tongs a lot. Beverage options included sweet tea and sweet tea.

Because Fort Benning was quite dull on weekends, we tended to take off — especially if we didn’t have to be back for a while, with three-day weekends in the army usually turning into four-day weekends by some act of government magic. We piled into somebody’s car and drove to Savannah, or Athens, or Asheville, or the MWR lodging in Destin. As we drove around, if we saw one of these in a church parking lot or at the periphery of a gas station….

….somebody in the car said “oh hell yeah,” and we stopped and ate there. Old guys, cargo shorts, dad sneakers. Sitting on a curb with a paper plate.

This is what immediately comes to mind if you mention “country-style comfort food” to me. You see it, it’s cooked in front of you, there’s smoke everywhere, and you smell meat and smoke five minutes before you get there. It’s abundant, it’s shared, it’s open, it probably happens in a parking lot. Somebody makes you take a second plate.

This isn’t only a Southern phenomenon. In the Eastern Sierra, Copper Top BBQ — Big Pine, California, right next to Highway 395 — tends to look like this:

They cook next to the highway, which is also next to the picnic tables, and it beats me how they got a picture without giant clouds of smoke in it:

To me, all other food on earth is one full step below the brisket at Kreuz Market, in Lockhart, Texas, where you order meat and watch them carve it a few steps away from the pits:

Country-style comfort food: immediately present, simply but carefully cooked, social, experiential, the sight of someone cooking something right in front of you while you smell the smoke and the meat. So, from the comment thread for my last post, if I was a CEO of a restaurant that served food in this category and I had this problem….

….my first thoughts would all be about cooking, and the way customers experienced it. Throw the microwaves away, knock down a wall and open up the kitchen, park a smoker grill next to the street. Show the cooking, marrying up the dining room and the kitchen. Make the parking lot smell like smoke and meat. As people walk up to the front door, do they see and smell that good food is waiting for them inside?

LOL:

You can feel the deeply human sense of pleasure and social connection that animates the plan.

See also, and really slow down to savor this language:

1. We want to delight guests
2. So we have engaged a leading branding agency to refine positioning

You kind of feel that tickle of delight, starting down low and rising up your spine? The technocratic managerial class makes plans to market a thing that’s supposed to offer pleasure, to nourish other human beings in a way that they enjoy.

Have they ever met any humans? Do they ever plan to?