Entries about 82 queen

Having a husband who likes to fly other people around for money in his off-work hours is proving to have distinct advantages. Not only has the airplane started to pay its own way instead of simply being a large sucking sound in my bank account, every once in a while, I get to tag along somewhere cool.

Usually, Matt finds himself flying to not-so-exciting places like Dothan, AL or Willoughby, OH. No offense to Dothanites, but I am not yet dying to visit the Peanut Capital of the World.

To this point, I got the following text from Matt a few weeks ago:

“You know you are in Pine Bluff, Arkansas when you’re sitting in the airport lobby and a snake crawls past you and you tell the airport manager and he shrugs his shoulders and says, ‘That’s the eighth one we’ve caught in here this year.’”

Yeah, charter flying isn’t always exciting.

But every once in a while, he gets to fly somewhere cool, like the Hamptons.

Or Charleston.

And when you only get to spend a few hours in a place, there is really nothing to do but eat. It’s kind of obligatory.

I remember reading an article a couple of years ago called, “101 Things to Savor, Slurp, and Suck Down in Charleston.” I decided to see how many I could consume in 5 hours.

Just how many meals can you eat in less than half a day, you ask?

More than you think.

We started off the morning at Hominy Grill.

Do you see this? This is the Big Nasty Biscuit. A fluffy buttermilk biscuit topped with sausage gravy. And if that wasn’t enough, they throw a juicy hunk of fried chicken on there. Oh, but wait. They are done yet. They finish it off with some cheddar cheese.

Typically, after eating a breakfast like that, I wouldn’t be hungry again for about 3 days, but I was on an eating mission here, people. I only had a few hours. So I did the only thing I could do. I ordered another breakfast. Matt had gotten some kind of egg hash, but we both had a hankering for the blueberry pancake special.

So we ordered some blueberry pancakes.

Does that count as 2 meals?

Our plan was to walk it off until lunch, so we parked downtown and hit the sidewalks.

Unfortunately, in less than an hour, it started raining. The closest thing to us happened to be a chocolate shop.

I couldn’t make this up if I TRIED.

So, here we are, trapped inside Christophe Chocolatier for over an hour, surrounded by all manner of artisan chocolates and pastries. We did the only thing we could.

We ordered some chocolates and pastries.

I mean, they weren’t going to let us sit in there and wait out the rain without ordering SOMETHING. Right?

Not willing to be deterred by something as silly as a severely distended abdomen, indigestion, or the fear of spontaneous stomach rupture, we powered on toward lunch, determined to get in another meal before we had to leave.

On the recommendation of our passenger, we headed to 82 Queen for some of their famous She Crab Soup.

Apparently, this was my day for stacked up food topped with impossibly rich gravy, so I dove fearlessly into the chicken breast and lowcountry crab cake with fried green tomatoes, cheddar grits, and she crab gravy while Matt tried to tackle the jambalaya.

Christmas on a cracker.

We were done.

It finally happened. We couldn’t finish our meal.

Which, apparently is totally humanly possible.

I really had no idea.