The Old Grove

The Old Grove

No body is worried a lick about calories at the Old Grove Market at seven a.m. on a Wednesday.  No body is in a hurry either.  Good ol’ boys plop their butts down on the red, fake leather couch that surrounds the big coffee table and they consume their coffee by the quart while reading the morning papers.  The players are constantly changing as one fella gets up to get his breakfast and another sets down with a plate of food.  Regarding the caloric content of the heaping platters, it is not posted anywhere on the wall, there are no menus, and, as noted, no one is keeping track anyway.  Typical selections include scrambled eggs by the ladleful, grits, piles of bacon, sausage, or a soft, warm biscuit topped up with white, pork gravy.  The coffee is hot and strong and nobody is putting skim milk in it.  Just sugar and some half and half.  It is a breakfast once peculiar to the South.  You could get it in Tallahassee or Atlanta or Asheville or any other town, city or village south of Washington D.C. and as of late items from the menu seems to have begun to evidenced themselves in the North as the country becomes more homogenized and much less regional.  The Old Grove is a throw-back to days when lawyers and farmers, garage mechanics and town clerks met early in the day in the town café to exchange news and rumors in the deep south. 

I look for these types of places when I travel.  Though I try to be careful about what I eat I relish mom and pop cafes like the Old Grove and when I find one I take what they have to offer and, in an effort to strike a nutritional balance, cut back on one of my other gastrointestinal indulgences.  The grits are real, not instant.  The bacon is smoky and salty and crisp.  The eggs over easy are flavorful and made in an oily frying pan before my eyes by a guy who has been flipping eggs for twenty-five years.  The yokes will be bright yellow and runny and the edges of the whites will be slightly crisp.  The biscuits will melt in your mouth and coat your fingers with lard but you will never taste a wedding cake with such delicate, yeasty flavor. 

As for the good ol’ boys (and girls) I know that the same fellow who will cut me off in traffic or issue me a summons for speeding or pump my gas with surly disdain (seeing my New York license plates) will greet me with a smile while waiting for a helping of biscuits and gravy.  “How Y’all doin’ today?”  “Mighty purty out there today, but I hear it’s gonna git hot in the afternoon!”  I will answer them right back with a “Yep! Great day to be alive!”  Having spent my youth being the secret Jew in public school in South Dade and college in Tallahassee it comes natural to me-blending in in the South.  So long as my last name remains a secret and no body asks me to drop my drawers to check the head of my dick I can pass.  I noticed that when I travel back ‘home’ I slide into a slight drawl.  Like an otter down a muddy river bank, it just happens the first time I hear the twang of a southern accent and the menu has grits on it.  I just blend.

Breakfast in the Old Grove Market takes a little while longer to eat.  You can’t order from your car.   You will never shed a single pound if you make a habit of eating there.  But you will see a bunch of happy people-happy polite people-chowing down in a manner that is fast disappearing in our sprawling, big-boxed country.  Catch it while you can.