Sundown Restaurant, Meat & Three, and the Meaning of Life

Comfort Food

Nothing will ever beat your mom's chicken, or meat loaf or whatever it was. No food can ever mean as much to you as that food once did. That is why most of all the cooking in the world is comfort food. It is food designed to remind us of familar things, to connect us with our personal histories and our communities and our families. That has always been true and it always will be true. --John Lanchester

Nothing is more comfortable than a Southern meat & three restaurant. Like a diner in the Northeast, there's nothing on the menu you don't like, unless they try to slip in liver & onions. The only question is: do I want fried chicken or meat loaf? hamburger steak or pork chops? okra or butter beans.

When I wrote the eulogy for my step-mother of 45 years, I said she was always made me fried chicken when I came home. Her chicken was over-cooked and dry, but that never slowed me down. She also had a go-to church supper dish called "tallerine."¹ As a casserole, there was no finer combination of grease and salt. That, too, is comfort food.

Montgomery has several Meat & Threes, each slightly different, but all good, and I eat at the competition regularly. I won't try to be a restaurant reviewer, but Sundown does some things better than the others, and vice versa. After all, you don't have to eat at Sundown every day, although some folks do--a few times a week is sufficient.

Of course, good comfort food starts with the recipies and the cooks. One of our best vegetables is mac 'n cheese. (Ok, technically, pasta with cheese is not a vegetable, except at Meat & Threes.) Our mac 'n cheese always reminds me of Roy Blount, Jr.'s ode to the dish: "I wish that I were up to my knees/In my mother's macaroni and cheese."

And, like every good Meat & Three, our vegetables are not vegetarian. There's meat--mostly ham or bacon--in a lot of them. Otherwise, what's the point? And, for those without meat, we're likely to put gravy on them. Gravy turns almost anything into comfort food.  To paraphrase Danny DeVito's character in "Heist:" "Of course everyone wants gravy.  That's why they call it gravy."  In fact, the greatest workplace danger around here, if you stand still too long, is that the cooks will put gravy on you.  

Sundown offers 8-10 entrees and 12-15 vegetables every day. There's a math major out there who can figure out how many possible meat & three combinations that permits. But, we'll never try to feed you liver & onions.

Come see us soon! Thanks.

Richard

1. This recipe will work as well as any: https://cookeatshare.com/recipes/tallerine-casserole-731857 Make sure the church has a defibrillator.