entrée vous

One thing that has caught us off guard over here is the naming system for courses in restaurants. We were in a nice restaurant in Blue Hill, Maine, and had some trouble deciphering the menu. it offered both appetizers and entrées, with no sign of main courses.

The dishes listed in the entrées sounded rather large… but everything over here is rather large. Everything. And almost everyone, but hey… I’ll probably be part of that slur before we’re done here.

I asked our incredibly friendly, cheery and personal space invading host to explain, and to her credit she did explain, with no sign of indignation, what must be the equivalent of asking whether “dessert” is meant to be the “pudding course.” We were told that we could choose to have the appetizers as well, or just the entrées. We nodded like we understood and later there was food.

We’ve seen the same thing many times since then, and so it led to some research. Wikipedia tells us that, indeed, North America is unique in its interpretation of the word. However, I’m coming to appreciate that North America is just unique. Full stop. Or should that be “period”?

Ironically, the "entrées" here are enormous – far bigger than normal main sizes in the rest of the world.

culinary adventures

A big part of America is the food (which is definitely big.) So to start our trip off, here's a quick culinary summary of our first day.

Breakfast

What: Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food
Location: Heathrow Terminal 5
Summary: Restaurant space is really nice and open, with big windows facing the planes outside. The male waiters wear suits (big plus). Food reasonably tasty, but overpriced and the portions aren't big enough. Service is a bit patchy - Gordon evidently hasn't done enough yelling in this restaurant, because I frequently observed people delivering meals to the wrong table. Epic Fail.





Lunch

What: McDonalds
Location: On a highway somewhere just past the state border of Connecticut
Summary: Chicken McNuggets seem a bit more 'faux' than their British and Australian counterparts but are reassuringly "made with white meat". Drink sizes are huge. The paper bags are written in Spanish on one side, and English on the other.





Dinner
What: Domino's
Location: Lexington, Massachusetts
Summary: Pleasantly surprised that Dominoes deliver to motels. Familiar greasy stomach sensation experienced after consumption. Thorough examination of pizza box reveals that Americans are wackier than we thought.

I think it sums up the level of quality we're probably going to eat for the next couple of months. Let's hope you still recognise us when we return to Sydney...

greetings from the US

Hello and welcome to our new blog! We’re currently a few days into our trip through the US, and just sitting around in our room in Conway, New Hampshire. So it seemed like a good time to get the ball rolling on this thing.

We’ve just come from Maine, where lobster and fog were the maine-stays. Get it? I made a funny. But I’m not the only one to pull this pun. It’s all over the place, usually as the name of some business, such as ‘Mainely Used Cars’, ‘Mainely Antiques’, etc. There are a lot of antique shops around, but at least one of them had the honesty to call itself ‘Antiques and Junque.’

Anyway, I hope you tune in for the ride. It should be an interesting journey, as long as daph doesn’t kill me before it’s over.

Niall