Diner, Drive-in and Dive Manci's Antique Club

That's right time for another post, this time we are in Fairhope, Alabama at yet another DINER, DRIVE-IN AND DIVES, Manci's Antique Club. 

Just down on a short weekend get away, we stopped by... first thought of the place, Dive Bar! Let me start off by saying we got there at an odd time around 3:30 p.m.,  so we had the place to our selves. 

This turned out not to be a good thing, here's why, when we walked in the door we walked right in a very dim lit bar. The bartender was a grumpy old man that seemed to be annoyed by us walking in, eventually we did get a seat in the lunch area. 

Only to be greeted again by the same grumpy bartender, it appeared he was the only one there. He took our order and let us know that the server did not show up; but he had called someone in on her day off. Soon our waitress showed up and told us how bad she hated coming in today. 

The place itself, well it was dirty, very dirty, the kind of place it seems everyone had just given up on. They had nic-nacs hanging everywhere, this was cool BUT everyone of them was cover with an inch of dust, spider webs everywhere. 

Took a couple of quick photos of ourselves 

The wife put on a pretty fake smile

Me on the other hand, well I was not happy and it showed.

The menu looked good and had reasonable prices and to our surprise the food came right out... well SURPRISE was right (kind of like the new guy dropping the soap in the shower at prison)

The shrimp were raw and the fries were more grease than potato. Wow, what a disappointment. 

Before ending this I would like to say, everyone has a bad day, except for the dust, maybe it was just that... A BAD DAY!!!

Till next time
Big Al

The Quest for Maine Lobster

Long way from home this time, in the great state of Maine, yep time for another Dinner, Drive-in and Dive.

Well what can I say; when in Maine you eat lobster and it just so happen that was our quest. My wife Signe

had her heart set on a great big Maine lobster, and was not taking NO for an answer. That how we ended up at The Porthole Restaurant located in Portland Harbor on the picturesque Casco Bay.



Extreme dive comes to mind but again in a good way, as you walk down alley/ road/ delivery entrance

to the front door that is on the side of the building.

Once in, things start to change as you are hit with unbelievable smells coming from the kitchen;

I was hungry already before I got to the table. Once at the table we were greeted by our waiter, super talkative young fellow, told us his whole life story while we were eating.


Inside is what you would imagine kind of a nautical theme with lots of old signs with prices from the long ago past,

I might mention. Ha-ha.

Anyway the tables were cool

and the service was great…TIME TO ORDER…Houston we have a problem!!! No lobster, well I should say no whole lobster, come to find out the Porthole does not sell a whole lobster, trust me you could get it a million other ways there but not a whole one. Guys I bet you know what that means if you have been married as long as I have and your wife wants a whole lobster…that's right you settle for an appetizer and move on to the next place.

We ended up getting some crab patties before moving on for our quest for lobster.

I got to admit most likely the best patties I have ever put in my mouth…my wife thought the same…but our quest for the whole lobster must go on and it did.


I would give the Porthole Restaurant a double thumbs up, great food, great atmosphere and fresh, fresh seafood. Wish I would have been in town another day to try some more things on the menu…maybe next time.

Biker friendly, I would say yes but maybe for a different reason than you might think…THE PARKING!!! To be honest parking anywhere at the harbor sucks, big time and it appears to me parking a bike near the door would save you a whole lot of walking.


Till next time


Big Al

Diners, Drive-in’s and Dives…Oh MY!!! ... Hillbilly Hotdog

Saturday June 11, 2011

That’s right I said June, running a little late on my post. Ok I’ll get on with it; this is diner # 5 in my quest to visit all the diners from the TV show Diners, Drive-in’s and Dives. The location and the name you ask? West Virginia,

 Hillbilly Hot Dog. Now I know you’re asking yourself how in the world you ended up there since you live in Mississippi. Well I’m going to tell you, the wife and I had taken a road trip to Maine in June and driving about 150 miles out of the way to get to this dive just seemed like the thing to do. Ha-ha.

Well let me tell you my friends, the extra 150 miles proved to be worth every mile, it was to be one of the highlights of the trip. My first thought was it’s around 3:00pm in the afternoon; we were going to miss the lunch crowd, should have the place to ourselves.

WRONG!!!
Found the place with no problem, parking on the other hand…there is a slash gravel driveway, slash parking lot, slash picnic area that runs in front of the place,

after dodging a few parked cars we found a spot all the way at the end of the property. This sounds bad but its not, as you walk towards the place your eyes scan the property looking at all the stuff laid out everywhere…its almost like Hillbilly’s live there. As they say one man's junk is another man's treasure. I could have spent hours looking at the old stuff like….

Then comes your next challenge, trying to open their front door..

That’s all I’m going to say about that…but BEWARE!!!

Once inside the door of the what could only be called a shack, your eyes and mind go into overload mode…trying to take in all the stuff on the wall, ceiling, floors and anywhere else you could think of. Next you stand in line to give your order, and then you are greeted by the owner lady…great girl!

We placed our order…with a name like Hillbilly Hotdog…take a guess at what we ordered…yep a HOTDOG!!! But not just any hotdog…If you can think it, you can get it on a dog…

  I got a pizza hotdog

My wife got a dog with Cole slaw and onions…snore, snore

We split chilly cheese fries and onion rings.

The shack has attached school buses for extra seating…

We ended up at one of the school bus table

Only the finest of entertainment, check out the boom box, with duel cassette…now that’s class

What can I say about hillbilly’s hot dog? It one of those places that you become family with everyone in you bus real fast…ha-ha. The food, great for what it is…it’s a dressed up hotdog people but a good one. we loved the place and you will too, also a great place for bikers…bikers welcome and what a great ride to get to the place…can you say country.

 
Till next time

Big Al

Diners, Drive-in’s and Dives…Oh MY!!! ...Singleton’s Seafood Shack…Jacksonville FL

Well as you read in my last post, we were in Daytona for bike week and decided to try out another Dive, so off to Jacksonville we went. We took hwy 1A instead of the interstate due to hwy 1A runs right along side the beach (must ride for bikers…beautiful). Now I know we were in beautiful, Sunny Florida BUT it was cold this morning and the ride was somewhere around 80 miles, so needless to say we had quite the chill by the time we pulled into... 
Singleton's Seafood Shack

We were a little early somewhere around 11:00am so there were only a few cars in the parking lot, we had the only motorcycles.

The Shack was just like I had imagined, right on the water,

with the smell of salt in the air, my kind of place. As you walked up on the small front deck it had an old wooden cable reel turned on it side for a table with old boats in the background.

Once in the door we were greeted as we walked by a table covered in ice with the fresh catch of the day laid out for all to see…fresh seafood, you can’t get much fresher than that.

We were seated  by a large windows right on the water, the outside deck was being remodeled but I have to admit I was happy to be inside where it was warm, we had a bad case of the chills. Soon we were greeted by our waitress, what a sweetheart…we order our food with a side order of coffee;

she even went to the trouble to make my buddy Dave a pot of decaff. Service, service…we were expecting a couple of small cups, but to our surprise out came to extra large cups,

a welcome site to cold bikers.

Now that the coffee had done its job and warmed us up I had a chance to look around a little while waiting on lunch. The place was decorated in a nautical theme, fitting since the shack is sitting only feet from the water.

Then out came the food, it was lunch so we had both decided on po-boys…the waitress suggested that we split an order of fries the po-boys came dressed with shoe-string onion rings that were so deep on top of the po-boy that honestly you could not even see the sandwich.

Once I ate my way through the rings there it was in all it glory, lightly batter fresh, fresh shrimp on top of most excellent bread. Once I was able to squeeze the sandwich together, I had my first bite…heaven, true heaven. Man, that po-boy was good bite after bite, it’s the kind of food that truly makes you shed a tear once it gone…sniff, sniff.


Well the meal was over, we left a generous tip (well dissevered tip I might add) and headed to the counter to pay our bill, they sold many different kinds of hot sauce; I snapped a photo of my favorite.

Disturbing...Ha-ha.

Normally this would be the end of my story but once in the parking lot we noticed our two motorcycles had multiplied into four and a new story begins.

We as I was saying it was a little cold that day so we were unpacking our bags to get our warm gear on and this guy came out of the shack and walked over to us. He started tell us a story of how he and his buddy had just ridden from Daytona to eat at the shack, here comes the cool part, he reaches into his saddle bag and pulls out the book “Diners, Drive-in’s and Dives”

and starts telling me how he plans on going around to all the TV shows Dives and writing about them. I could tell he almost fell out when I told him I had been doing the same thing. Ha-ha. Small world.


Well we said our farewell to our new friends and off we went on our 500 mile ride back home, we did catch a ferry

(no not that kind of ferry. Ha-ha) an automotive ferry

about a block from the shack, a perfect ended to a perfect meal. Three cheers for Singleton’s Seafood Shack!!!


I got to say this place gave my # 1 Diner pick "Darwell’s of LongBeach Ms"
DARWELL'S
A run for the money, I give The Shack five stars all the way around, so if you are looking for a place to eat on the water, with great seafood, service, and just a great laid back atmosphere, then Singleton’s Seafood Shack is the place for you!!! Tell them Big Al sent you…they want have a clue who I am…but tell them anyway. Ha-ha.


Till next time


Big Al