The Daytripper

[telophase]

Well. Just caught an episode of a Texas travel show called The Daytripper, which has that local-cable feel and lots of cornball humor. This episode was College Station, which is where I grew up. So if you want to go experience a bit of where I grew up, head over to their website where you can watch that episode and others in this season.

Aggies on my f-list: he features Layne's. Non-Aggies on my f-list: Layne's is an Aggieland staple. It sells chicken fingers. That's the only entree you'll get. They're accompanied by a brown sauce that people swear has crack in it. The secret to Layne's is, I believe, that you have to have gone there while you were in school at Texas A&M and be filled with nostalgia while eating their chicken fingers. Because their chicken fingers are, basically, decent chicken fingers but nothing special. And their brown sauce is your generic brown gravy with a fuckton of pepper in it which, to my mind, overwhelms any other flavors that might be in it. Feel free to argue otherwise in the comments, but you're not changing my mind. I've eaten there. More than once. :)

ANYWAY, there are a couple of recently-moved-here people on the f-list who, I suspect, will be interested in the other episodes that The Daytripper has to offer, for the purposes of making, well, daytrips around the state.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

See, you're working from some kind of Texas chicken finger culture advantage, because I can tell you, I have never, ever had chicken fingers remotely as good as Layne's anywhere outside the state. I mean there's real chicken in them, which is basically illegal in the Midwest, one of those unspoken codes; somebody at Layne's cut these bits off an actual chicken and no food processor was involved in any way. If that's standard for the area, so much the better, but while I was in CS I ate at Layne's once a week.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I should never order chicken fingers out of state then, huh? Everyone and their dog serves chicken fingers around here and I can say that Layne's are ... typical chicken fingers.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Layne's are the best I've ever had by a factor of about a thousand.

Chicken fingers most places... okay, so you know how Chicken McNuggets are a bunch of unspeakable parts of the chicken ground into paste, shaped into a nugget, breaded, and fried? That's pretty standard most places I've had chicken fingers, and the ones which didn't do that used formerly-frozen white-meat-only chicken with no taste whatsoever, because chicken fingers are considered to be food for people who don't like flavor. The mere fact that Layne's uses dark meat for some of their fingers makes them unique in my experience. So yeah, maybe don't order that out of state.

[longshot14.livejournal.com]

There's lots of stuff you should never order out of state ;) - I was in Toronto several years ago and went to this place called "Tortilla Flats Authentic Texas Cafe".

This "Authentic Texas Cafe" had NO white bread, NO iced tea, and the "bbq sauce" that came with the (apparently unmarinated) ribs would have been more at home on mashed potatoes. As far as I could tell, the only things authentically Texan in the restaurant were my ass in a chair and the license plates on the walls.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Years ago I spent a semester in Wales, primarily eating 1980s school British cafeteria food. I was desperate for something familiar by the end of the semester, when I spent 10 days traveling around England and Scotland.

When I got to York, I found a Mexican food restaurant. I remember ordering the frijoles con queso as an appetizer and discovering that they must have thought that "con queso" was just flavor text, as what I received was a bowl of frijoles.* I haven't the slightest idea how anything tasted, though, as I took the precaution of downing two margaritas beforehand.




* Turned out for the best: although I didn't realize it at the time, I was in the midst of developing lactose intolerance.

[awamiba.livejournal.com]

I have to admit, I spent 15 years in College Station and never ate at Laynes. I did eat at Wings N Things and loved their chicken, but then they became Wings N More and became less good (though much closer to home). Hmm.