Off the Beaten Path - Ruby Tuesday, Colonial Heights VA

Many moons ago, when the weather wasn't so godawfully hot, I found myself in the Richmond area, with no trailer attached, and 2 days off with nothing to do. 2 days off with nothing to do? Liz, you're bobtail, there's plenty to do! (assuming the truck can get there)

So I fired up Google Maps to scout out a plan for the day, and lo' and behold, I found ways to get my truck to each place I had in mind.

First up, well, I am a girl, so I scouted out a nail salon that had high ratings on Yelp and was close by. Turns out I was about 1-2 exits away from one and the way to get there was super-easy! So off I went to go get my nails done!

Afterwards I really wanted to go to a bookstore, and at that very same exit I found a Books-A-Million that was in a nice large mall area and, again luckily for me, I had no trouble getting the truck there, so yay books! (I also came upon a Starship Enterprise pizza cutter but I'm not a Star Trek fan but I know people who would love it! and also KISS Pez dispensers that my brother would love and in hindsight I should have bought them) But I digress...

Lunch time was quickly approaching and I wanted something decent. I wanted to treat myself to something I haven't done in awhile or to a place I normally couldn't get to. Then I saw a sign and thought, you know what, we haven't been to Ruby Tuesday in a very long time...let's go check it out!

My first impression was that it felt kind of modern. Much different than the last Ruby Tuesday I had been into years ago that felt kind of dated and that they were trying to be cool. This one had style of it's own and I liked it. After looking at the menu, several things popped out at me that I felt I really had to try.

First up, the limited time lobster dip.

Now, I wasn't too sure about this but for the price I figured I should really give it a try. When I took the first bite I had a stark realization...I think this is real lobster. So I tried it again. Yeah, I'm pretty sure this isn't fake. Then I said to heck with this, let's just get some by itself so I grabbed my fork and began fishing around...lol..get it? lobster? fish..nevermind that was stupid... so I went fis...searching around for a big hunk o' lobster, took a bite and...yeah, I'm almost positive this is the real deal. Yummy!

Then lunch came. I haven't had steak in awhile. I'm not one to pass up a good steak but I've been burned (get it? steak? burned? nevermind that was stupid) I've been burned before by places where I thought I would get a good steak and it turned out to be rubbish. However, the choices of side items really caught my attention. Potatoes, yeah...vegetables, yeah. Wait...spaghetti squash? Omg, they have spaghetti squash?! I'm getting it! And get it I did....

The steak was wonderful, cooked just the way I had requested. The broccoli was nice, as well. However what blew me away was the spaghetti squash, which I had never tried before. It was like you were eating mashed potatoes but it was a vegetable! It was good for you! It had a stringy consistency that seemed to feel like mashed potatoes and it had a buttery flavor that was incredible! I thoroughly loved it! I think spaghetti squash might be my new addiction, it was delightful!

...and then dessert. Tiramisu. My weakness. My kryptonite. My reason for being this.....size. 

Oh heavens this looked amazing and I couldn't wait to dive into it. Coffee and creamy and not very heavy and not loaded up with cinnamon on top that spells out "Tiramisu" in case you don't know what you're eating... it was heavenly! I told friends about it! I told my mom! It was the perfect ending to a fantastic meal and afterwards as I was laying in bed my thoughts bounced between "omg I'm so full" and "omg that was fantastic"

So where the heck was I and how can you re-create this day yourself? Well loyal 18-wheelers (and equally loyal 4-wheeled friends), the Ruby Tuesday I was at is located at 431 Southpark Circle in Colonial Heights, VA. That's I-95, exit 54. Luckily for you (and me in writing) the exit coming from both directions puts you at the same stop light and intersection, so if you're coming north or south, when you take the exit, turn right at the light. Go under the highway and the mall and a variety of different places to shop and eat are on your right-hand side. Now I went bobtail which made coming and going super easy, but I did see a few trucks with trailers in there as well. 

Ruby Tuesday is a stand-alone restaurant on the perimeter circle drive so you can easily park in the mall parking lot and walk over. Books-A-Million is also located in here as well, just a little further down Southpark Circle. As for the nail salon...I'm keeping that one a secret. :p

Florida represent!

Isn't it nice when a chicken tender reminds you of home?

Poutine!

Oh, Canada. Why do you keep being awesome?

I don't know about you, but when I think of Canada the first thing that comes to my mind is...Rob Ford. Wait, bad example. Okay let's try this again. Um...Justin Bieber! Shoot, okay, one more time. Um..beer! Hockey! Maple syrup!

Poutine!

Ah yes, poutine. That gluttonous concoction of french fries, cheese curds and brown gravy. So good and yet so bad for you. The poutine variations are endless but the classic never gets tiresome.

But no! Leaving well enough alone wasn't good enough for Canada. Oh no. They got together collectively and thought "How can we make poutine even better?"

..and then it happened. "Why don't we use McDonald's french fries?" The country gasped in shock and awe. McDonald's french fries are spectacular. If you use them for poutine, the world might implode from the awesomeness!

Some daring food lab scientists (and probably some R&D number crunchers) got together, probably in Toronto because...why not everything else happens there..and created a food masterpiece known as:

(just for the record, it's not McPoutine, okay snarky people?!)

What mastery could be concealed in this smartly designed box that includes a wax-like lining and a well manufactured container that doesn't result in leaking gravy to get on your clothes?!

THIS!

(if you need a moment to yourself, I completely understand. I needed one myself to be honest)

My only complaint with poutine until now was that the fries would get soggy and mushy and blah, but now you can have the crisp, golden, yummy goodness of McDonald's fries in poutine! 

So how did it taste? Wonderful! I devoured it. I threw all lady-like manners to the side and relished in how great this was. I would have gone back for another but...I kind of had a border to cross and a delivery deadline to make. Such is life.

I experienced this joy at the Duty Free in Fort Erie, Ontario, so if you're crossing back into the US here, you'll pass by it on the way to the bridge. If you can find truck parking, stop in and get'cha some. I'm pretty sure this is available nation-wide. What I am curious to find out is if it's better or worse in Quebec, since, you know, what's where it started. We'll see how the poutine masters can compare to the french fry masters! It could be quite the epic showdown, you know?

So anyway. Poutine just got better because McDonald's had a brilliant idea. It's worth trying, no doubt. Don't pass this up, even just for the novelty of trying something Canadian.

Long time, no read, eh?

Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to take a look at my blogger page to see whatever happened to my Truck Stop Food Blog, only to find out that not only are people still reading it, but some of the reviews I've done have received A LOT of page views. I honestly had no idea that my write up about the newly opened restaurant at a truck stop in Newcomerstown Ohio would be this popular. Seriously!

Also, apparently, people have been looking around for some reviews about Ugalde's Family Restaurant in Indiana (where I wrote about their amazing wet burrito).

So I thank google for sending traffic to my site.

As a result, I've decided to do some writing again. I may not be back on board like I was when I first started, but I do have a number of pictures that I haven't written about so look forward to those in future.

Speaking of which, I'm about to write one right now...

Yes I know it's been awhile

Sorry for the lack of blog postings for..goodness I have no idea how long it's been. I'm kind of taking a hiatus from writing, lack of motivation being the reason. I have pictures...I just have no motivation to write anything right now.

I apologize for that.

If you follow me on twitter, just keep following and when the urge strikes again, I'll post links and whatnot on Twitter. Same with Facebook, I'll post it there, too.

Travel Center of America's Homestyle Meals

First, let me apologize for the blog delay. I just haven't been in the mood to write lately. I've had a lot going on in my personal life. Anyway, let's not dwell on that.

Travel Centers of America recently started a menu insert of homestyle comfort foods. A small array of entrees to choose from that comes with a side of corn bread and the soup and salad bar. The price seems a little steep for the portion size but hey, maybe it doesn't come out of a can for once and it's actually decent quality.

Well....yes and no. I've tried two entrees thus far and while the entree itself was not bad, the side of cornbread, each time, was horrible. Usually cold (cold corn bread is the worst!), dry, falling apart. Basically a train wreck of an accompaniment. (side note, first time I've ever used that word)

The first dish I tried was the goulash. I really wasn't sure what goulash is or what it's supposed to look like. I mean heck, she set it down on my plate and my first thought was "oh. chili mac."

It looks like chili mac to me! Frankly, it tastes like it too. Okay so I guess it's chili mac with a fancy name. Unsatisfied with my own conclusion, I took to the almighty Google for some clarification. Turns out goulash is, at least from what I found, pretty much exactly as what was in front of me. It might be missing some herbs and spices but overall it looks...just like this. So I guess they nailed it in that regard.

The cornbread however, while it looks great in the picture, was horrible. I think I had two bites (one to try it, the second to see if it really was as bad as I thought during the first bite) and then I was done with it.

Would I order it again? Probably...not, and the main reason was the price. I think it was $9.99 and for the same price I could get a huge bowl of chicken fettuccine alfredo instead.

NEXT!

Next up, (well not in the same day I mean these are spaced out) I tried the chicken and dumplings. You know who has really good chicken and dumplings? Cracker Barrell! You know who has mediocre chicken and dumplings? This place...

...it almost looks appetizing.

...it almost looks like chicken helper, too.

I'll give it to T/A. They tried. They really tried. It almost hit the mark. 

That deceptively enticing cornbread is just sitting back there just calling out for you to try it. Don't do it! The cornbread is supposed to have bits of bacon mixed in with it which, you know, cornbread really is fine on it's own. Adding to it to try and make it better usually ends up making it worse. I'm sure when Jiffy was coming up with the recipe they tried variations and finally realized, "you know, people just really like our plain cornbread" so they left it alone.

At one location it was a bacon cornbread, at another location they were out of bacon (*gasp* out of bacon?!) and the chef took the liberty of mixing in green onion which...I don't know why. It wasn't very good either. That begs the question, do these cooks even try what they're making? I doubt it. 

So yeah, that's two of the homestyle comfort foods T/A is offering lately. The other choices really haven't appealed to me in the slightest (ham and beans? ugh, no thanks) so I've pretty much shyed away from trying anything else.

Hidden Gem: Indian food at the Napoleon Ohio T/A!

This is going to be a slightly biased blog entry, I guess. I don't have anything bad to say about this place. None, zero, zilch, nada. I LOVE THIS PLACE! I stop here every chance I get just for the Indian food.

Alright, so where is Napoleon, Ohio? That's a really good question, actually, because it's not on one of the major interstates in Ohio. It's actually on US-24/US-6, between Fort Wayne Indiana and Toledo Ohio. Don't be fooled though, US-24 is a major thoroughfare with an interstate feel to it. On this heavily traveled-by-trucks road is Napoleon, home to a few major truck stops and..Campbell's Soup. (among a few other places but last time I was there, this is where I had to go).

This is not your typical T/A. It's a little older, yes, but it did have some remodeling done which has made a difference. They have a Chester's Fried Chicken and a Blimpie's..or was it Quizno's?...no I'm pretty sure it's Blimpie's. They have the usual Country Pride menu but they also have their own special Indian menu, and this alone is worth stopping for. Also worth noting is the Indian menu is part of their all you can eat menu, and you can reorder the same thing but a little more spicy if you want to turn it up a notch.

I began my introduction into Indian food with a simple mild chicken curry with basmati rice and naan. What's naan, you ask? It's a type of flat bread. There, now you have a new word you can throw around and sound pompous and arrogant "Oh, I could really go for some naan right now!" and people around you will be like "wtf are you talking about, Willis?" Yeah okay I know that's not what Gary Coleman's character said exactly but I changed it with the times.

Can we just get back to the food, please? So, right, the chicken curry was really good. It was surprisingly good. I had never had Indian food before so I wasn't sure what to expect. The one thing that did seem unusual was...the color. Bright colors because of the spices that go into it. Green, yellow, orange..such an interesting departure from what I'm used to.

After a great first time experience (and filling, too, by the way), I made a note to always stop here if I had the time. Believe me, I try to make time to stop here. While I don't have pictures of chicken curry, or the other chicken dish I tried the second time I was there, I do have a picture of my third visit and what I tried that time.

Haag chicken..or chicken haag? It's one or the other.

Liz, what is that green unappetizing mush I see before me? Well let me tell you, it's delicious green mush! Haag chicken is...chicken (shocker), with spices and spinach. It's amazing. It's wonderful. It's tasty. It's worth trying. Like every other time I've ordered Indian food, I ordered it with basmati (long grain) rice with naan on the side. I tried the plain naan and that was fine, but then I tried the garlic naan and that's what I've ordered on the side ever since.

Naan! You better get some now before there's...naan left. (the puns just write themselves here)

See? Nothing fancy, just an oven-baked flatbread that you can eat along with your tasty Indian cuisine or you can break it off into bite sizes (well you should do that anyway because you, my loyal blog readers, are sophisticated individuals and not hulking neanderthals). Where was I again? Oh right, you can break the naan off into smaller pieces and put some of your delicious Indian cuisine on top and eat it that way. Both ways are perfectly acceptable and you're not going to offend someone if you don't eat it a particular way.

So how was that Haag chicken, Liz? IT WAS FANTASTIC! It was delicious, it was great, it was worth ordering a second time. It was also filling. I never leave that restaurant hungry, not by a long shot. Usually by the time I'm done, I don't want to look at food for the next hour. It's a little bit more expensive than the normal truck stop menu, which I attribute to higher cost of imported spices, the extra effort involved in making it and the extra training involved by the cooks who actually make it. Rumor has it (and this is coming from one of the cooks), this food is so good that a few Indian patrons were convinced that it was made by a man from India and the men were surprised it was prepared by a Caucasian lady from the US. That's just the rumor I heard! Don't go spreading that around.

I guess it goes without saying that I highly recommend stopping here. How often do you get to find Indian food at a truck stop? Well there's that one place in Tennessee that I haven't tried yet. Okay, where else can you find Indian food at a truck stop? Exactly! 

Don't be intimated by the odd colors or the weird names. Try something new, try something different. Another thing worth nothing about the Indian food here is that you can get it in 3 levels of spiciness: mild, medium or hot. If you're new, get the mild just for starters. You can always reorder and try the medium. Funny thing about those Indian spices: the burn stops shortly after you finish eating. Unlike spicy American food where the heat lingers long after, shortly after you've stopped eating, the spicy burn stops. I didn't believe it myself until I tried it myself and the lady was right! Now in my defense, I've only tried mild and medium. I'm tempted to try hot next time but I usually just play it safe and go with medium.

Next time you're in Napoleon, don't stay at the Pilot or the Petro, try this place instead for a break from the norm. :)