Ramblings, and a Few Words About Nashville Noshing

Trout, City House
Originally uploaded by whatstepheats

First off, let's talk about this pic. As I mentioned in a previous post, while the Dinnerman and I were in Nashville a couple of weeks ago we had the pleasure of dining at 3 of the city's best restaurants, kindly recommended to me by the lovely Claudia of cookeatfret.

We ate at Ombi first, and had the best sweetbreads of our lives, among other wonders. Even though we were a party 7 we were treated like royalty. Sure, it was a Monday night - the Monday after the Superbowl, to boot - and sure, we had the place pretty much to ourselves. But make no mistake - Ombi has great people involved. We got a little tipsy on the unique cocktails and delicious wine, and the Dinnerman made the error of double tipping, but the gentleman who took care of us was kind enough to call our hotel and alert us to that fact. As I've said before, in Rhode Island they'd celebrate with their fingers in the air. Kudos to Ombi.

In fact, I will go out on a limb here and declare that Nashville has amazingly kind and accomodating people involved in the preparation and serving of food and drink. This extends beyond the 3 fine establishments on which I've taken details and menus. I ate alone at many a meal and without fail was treated like Buddy Cianci at the Capital Grille here in PVD.

I don't know how much of my observation is tainted by my Rhode Island upbringing. I am who I am. I was born with a sensitive soul and raised in one of the most harsh and nasty places on the planet. Until I was 19 and visited relatives in California as an adult I thought that the entire world's population was as obnoxious, ignorant, and self-entitled as the people that surround me here on all sides in this tiny, isolated, and disgustingly out-of-touch state. To this day displays of kindness take me aback.

In fact, yesterday I managed to start fights with not one but two groups of elderly people with silver spoons up their East Side noses and sticks up their asses. I'm sorry if this sounds evil - I didn't instigate these encounters, I promise you. More about those to come. For now I will conclude the Rhode Island bashing with notes on today's early morning coffee-in-bed conversation between the Dinnerman and I.
He often says that RI is truly an Isle of Misfits and should secede from the union and just become a sovereign nation unto itself. (He's from Revere, MA - just outside Boston, where he was educated - and has spent a decade in Cleveland, where there actually are societal rules that people follow.)

I have always responded that the people here could never get it together well enough to make that happen, even if they wanted to. Heads in the asses, out of touch, yada yada yada. Hell, people won't even drive from Warwick or Woonsocket to Providence (a 20 minute trip) without packing a suitcase. Think I'm kidding? Seriously and unfortunately, I'm not.

Anyhoo, I had a bright idea this morning. I believe mere secession would not be enough. I wish we were on a tectonic plate here because it might make what I propose easier - a mere act of nature: Rhode Island should just be physically shaved off of the continental United States and set adrift in the Atlantic Ocean. That would provoke some Darwinian weeding out! We could do it next February on Darwin's birthday. What do you think? Of course, we'd have to do some intelligence screenings beforehand, so that those who are actually worthy can get their asses to Massachusetts or something...

Wow. I guess I am all wound up. This is going in a direction I hadn't intended. Maybe I've seen too many promos for 'The Reader'; maybe I've gotten into too many fights with the natives lately. I believe RI is a physically beautiful place, infiltrated with much corruption and too many isolated idiots. But that's just me.

The intended Nashville ramblings will have to wait, as the man just got home and I've got some steaks to cook.