I’ve been thinking about opening a restaurant.
It’s not because I have any particular talent for cooking, and certainly not because Richland Parish needs another place to eat. Food trucks seem to be giving churches a run for their money on who can pack the most into one block.
That being said, I’ve recently realized there may be an untapped market right here in Richland Parish.
Midwestern food. Now, I’ll admit up front, I don’t actually know what that is.
My working theory, based almost entirely on television, is casseroles. Maybe something called a hot pot. Possibly something involving cream of mushroom soup and a level of cheese that would make a cardiologist wince. In my mind, it’s the kind of food that shows up in a glass pan and feeds about 14 people.
Which means, if I’m being honest my biggest competition wouldn’t be another restaurant.
It would be church fellowship halls.
That’s a tough field to break into. Those ladies are fierce, and they’ve been stacking dishes on tables like troops on a battlefield since before I was born. It’s a generational talent that goes back to their grandmothers, and they are not to be trifled with.
I probably shouldn’t be building a menu based on television in the first place.
I’ve seen how Southerners are portrayed on TV, and Hollywood isn’t a reliable source of information about anything involving reality. Most of us are not banjo-playing psychopaths hunting college kids in the swamp for fun. Contrary to what Jim Brown might tell you, squirrel and possum are not the backbone of Louisiana’s daily diet.
Which brings me back to Midwesterners.
If you’ve been paying attention lately, you’ve noticed them too — trucks and cars with tags from Kansas, Ohio, Nebraska, Oklahoma and points in between. Folks who have come here to work, many of them tied to the activity out at Meta or driving in to haul off dead limbs.
Some of them are probably already reaching for their phones to school me on what is and isn’t considered the Midwest. I imagine it vaguely as anything between Texas and the Rocky Mountains, which I’m sure has a few geography teachers reaching for their phones, too.
At first glance, it’s easy to think of these guys as different. Different places, different teams, different ways of doing things. The longer they’re here, the harder it is to maintain that illusion.
They get up early. They put in long days. They stand around at gas stations and talk about work, weather and whatever game happened the night before. They look for a decent meal at the end of the day and a place to sit down for a minute before doing it all again tomorrow.
They’re not that different from the rest of us, which makes me think that if I did open that restaurant, I might find out Midwestern food isn’t some exotic, unfamiliar thing after all.
It might just be what we already eat, with a different name — and probably less seasoning.
Darryl Riser is editor of the Richland Beacon-News.
