Vittles

One of the nice things about staying in a condo is that it does have a kitchen, which means you don’t have to eat out all the time. We got down about 3:30 Saturday, checked in, then went out to eat. (We got groceries later.) I just drove along toward the east looking for a likely spot, turned around at the Flora-Bama, and started back. I don’t know exactly what I was looking for other than some seafood and a place to placate the kids and on a whim decided to visit a place called Zeke’s Landing.

Now, from the street, it’s impossible to tell what Zeke’s looked like—it was back in behind a strip shopping center, and even after getting into the parking lot, it didn’t look like much. Heh. So, all six of us, rumpled and smelling like the road traipsed upstairs where we were greeted by a courteous young man in a tie and tuxedo vest with a towel over his arm. Oh. My.

Yes, we had run slap dab into a fancy place—within two hours of our arrival, we were going to have our most expensive meal. ::sigh:: Oh well.

It’s a real swanky place, but, this being the Gulf Coast, we were not the least bit underdressed, so I didn’t feel too much like a rube. And we did get to sit right in a corner table looking out to the marina and down to the place where Zeke’s fleet of charter deep sea fishing boats come in and clean the stuff folks have caught. This might sound really gross, but it was actually fascinating. And clean. No slimy guts and stuff, just great huge fish sliced neatly into little bits and quickly wrapped in plastic for the guys who caught it. Every few minutes, another group of guys would come in and the boat crews would bring their catch over in big wheelbarrows where it would be flopped onto big stainless tables and washed down and cut up.

Jonathan and I were the closest to the window, so we got the best show. Like when one group of about eight college-aged guys milled around with the ONE girl who had gone out with them. As if being the lone female didn’t guarantee enough attention, she looked a bit like those Anderson girls—Gillian from the neck up, and Pamela from the neck down. How the guys ever managed to concentrate on fishing I’ll never know, but they brought in a stack of amberjack that were the size of Volkswagens. “Look how HUGE they are, son! Have you ever SEEN such big ones?!” “No, Daddy!” (One day about five years from now, he’ll get the joke.)

Anyway, I had the fried snapper, and Reba and the older two girls got the fried shrimp, and Jonathan and Catherine got what all kids want from a fancy seafood place, the cheese pizza. Good food, but I still think the tab was a bit steep. So we left and went to Bruno’s and stocked up on normal stuff.

Sunday after church we finally got to eat at the Original Oyster House in Gulf Shores. Mmmm. Good food, good prices. And wonderful family entertainment in the form of an oaf making balloon animals. ::sigh:: Who just happened to set up his little table and tip jar right next to me, and directly across from a set of wiggly little children who belonged to me. ::sigh::

“Hi, would one of you kids like a balloon animal?!”

Catherine got a devilish look in her eye—“Cat, would you like this nice man to make you a balloon,” I asked.

Vigorous head nodding. “Okay, what would you like, young lady?” said he.

“A CAT!!”

He paused for a second, “Oh. Well. I don’t know how to do a cat, but I can do a dog or an elephant or a giraffe or a cow or a dog or a bird or a hat or a flower…” He rattled off a laundry list of non-cat items he could magically produce, but the flower is the one that stuck out in her mind, so a flower it was. She eagerly watched him blow it up and twist—all the time while he kept up his patented line of patter…”Where are you folks from?”

“Birmingham,” I said.

“Did you drive down?”

“No,” I said quietly. I stared up at him blankly. “We had to walk.”

Heh. That’s apparently not a response they teach them about in the Baldwin County Institute of Applied Inflatable Avatar Construction. I smiled to let him know I just playing, and he recovered fully. Then Jonathan had to get something, and decided he wanted a dog, which was efficiently folded and squeaked into being before his eyes and then we were paged to go to our table. Thank goodness. (And yes, I did drop a couple of bucks in the tip jar for the pneumoartiste.)

Got inside, and found someone ELSE from home, a young couple we go to church with and their family. Small world. Exact same thing happened last year, too, with a different set of folks. Anyway, sat down and ordered and was rewarded with a gigantic shrimp po-boy. Mmmm. I don’t even remember what anyone else got, except for Catherine who ordered a cheese pizza, and Jonathan, who got a pepperoni pizza. ::sigh:: Lead ‘em to water and all. Oh well.

On the way out, Rebecca decided she needed a balloon animal, so she was rewarded with a fiendishly complex yellow rabbit. And another dollar went into the tip jar.

Monday was mostly spent in the suite, as it alternately drizzled and flooded all day. It did let up a bit toward suppertime, so me, being rather oafish and dull, decided to go get some food for us so we wouldn’t have to get all the kids out in the rain. By the time Reba figured out a place for me to go, the weather had turned again, and I drove into Gulf Shores in the middle of a driving storm. Just the tail end of Bill, but a hefty and wet tail it was. I ran inside DeSoto’s Restaurant (sorry, no link) and nearly drowned. But I didn’t.

I should have called ahead, too, just to work out the kinks in their food prep and sales procedures. It bills itself as one of Gulf Shores’ landmark dining experiences, and most of the folks who care to leave a review of it on various forums speak highly of it, but it looks and feels a little worn down. And part of being a landmark is apparently that poor service must be overlooked—I swam in and there were two hostesses at the checkout playing cards and trying to ignore me.

“Y’all do have takeout, don’t you?”

“Uh, we do right now, but we might not later.”

Huh?

“Pardon?”

“Well, it’s not that busy right now, but later on if it gets more busy, we won’t have time to do it. When did you want it?”

“Ahhh, well, right now.”

“’K.”

::sigh::

After it finally arrived and I floated back down the coast to the house, it turned out to be pretty good food, despite the loving care it was presented with. I got Reba the grilled grouper, and I got a plate full of scrimps and ersters and flounder and crab claws and crawdad tails, and Ashley got a big salad. The younger kids had already eaten their fill of grocery store food, so they left us alone until later. Having to go out to sea and catch it like that made it taste all better.

Let’s see—we had a couple of fast food meals, and a nice meal at Jake’s Steakhouse which was just fine and benefitted by being dead across the street. Sadly, we did not get a chance to check out new Possumblog reader Dougal Campbell’s suggestion of Lulu’s Sunset Grille—it sounds great, it’s owned by Jimmy Buffet and his sister Lulu, and Dougal’s mom is the kitchen manager there. Maybe we can get by there next time.

::sigh::

So many fish, so little time…

Anyway, on to our next topic…Activities!
posted by Terry at 3:34:00 PM