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SurvivorArctic wrote:

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When I was a kid, my brother and I would search for the blue roofs on long ass road trips.
You could see the ones in South Dakota and Nebraska for hours before actually arriving at them.

^^ Great theme for this thread!

jessica has spoken wrote:

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Don't mess with Texas

here's one from Texas.

On I-40

castratos the glorious wrote:

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Ahh... Stuckey's! A fine establishment right up there with the likes of Howard Johnson's. Just look at this classic brochure. You have dad in the back looking to his side confidently as he sips his morning cup of Joe and holds a box of some type of pecan product. Mom (as always) is squarely in the middle with her glass of OJ and a delicious triangle of wholesome whitebread samwich with just a hint of processed meat and lettuce sticking out. Little Johnny is in front holding his boxes of Pralines and a huge Pecan Log Roll... just in time to sit down and watch an episode of The Andy Griffith Show in their cheap motel room located somewhere between North Carolina and Florida.

I know this brochure well, because it was my own life back in the early 60's

In the '60s and '70s it was almost impossible to travel any distance without spotting a bright orange roof and that Simple Simon weathervane. There were close to 1,000 Howard Johnson's restaurants back then, each of them serving 28 flavors of ice cream and platefuls of fried clams.

The clams were small yet meaty, with a thick and crinkly veil of batter fried to a beautiful golden brown. A menu staple since the first Howard Johnson restaurant opened, they had been revamped by one Jacques Pepin--so despite being frozen in some corporate kitchen and trucked around the country, they had some culinary cachet.

Yeah, the menu did list other items--but to what purpose? As far as I was concerned at the time, HoJo's clam strips represented the peak of fried shellfish perfection.

Diners in New England debate the validity of strips versus whole clams, bellies and all. Advocates of the latter point out--correctly--that whole clams are not only more delicate, but also present more pronounced flavors. Strips can be tougher, akin to overcooked calamari.

On the other hand, Howard Johnson's strips carried enough of the sweet-briny flavor of clam to convince you of its seafood pedigree. And that chewy texture made a nice contrast to the rich, reassuring crunch of their crust.