Southern Eating

Every year Scott and I go on vacation down to Myrtle Beach. (Potential robbers: We have a security system and friends in police and fire!)

In any case, we are here… in the land of fried chicken, fried pork chops, vegetables like fried okra and that heavenly concoction of liquid sugar flavored with tea (aka sweet tea).

It's not at all good for my diet.

On the other hand, I do an awful lot of walking down here: walks along the beach, walks through Brookgreen Gardens (looking for hidden gates to Faerie), and walking around the shopping stops. Oh – and horseback riding. :)

But Southern food is definitely a great cuisine. While I see lots of "Southern style" cooking up North, there is very little that actually resembles what I eat down here. We hit the "cheap" buffet restaurants, yet the food is still good quality. Also unlike the "affordable" restaurants back home, the servers are also all extremely polite, so eating out is always a pleasant experience.

(Except for the aforementioned diet guilt, of course.)

As a food reviewer, the overall flavor, quality, and service down here is always high. On the other hand, while these buffets have plenty of selection, they are all very similar… it's clearly Southern and American cuisine. There was some "teriyaki" chicken, and nachos, and tacos… but they were still "American." There are more Japanese restaurants around here now, and some Italian-American restaurants, but there is not a lot of ethnic restaurants nor any restaurants that cater to "healthy" or organic eating. There aren’t a lot of bistros or coffee houses – and that I miss.

Now, Myrtle Beach is also a "tourist" town, so there would be a lot of conformity and touristy places – those familiar restaurants that families can all go to because they know their picky-eating family members will eat something. It's not a real college town, and it's not urban… so I'm sure that has a lot to do with the lack of diversity.

The question is, what do you think is more important: Have a few things that are ALWAYS good? Or have a wide diversity where a cuisine or restaurant could be excellent – or just "different"?