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

Boiled eggs

Well you may have read my last post,
Bodybuilding
my return to the world of bodybuilding (ha-HA) and what goes with bodybuilding…Eggs!!! A great source of protein, I guess since I have been walking around with bags of boiled eggs lately people have been asking how do you boil a perfect egg.


I found an article years ago on how to boil a perfect egg and what do you know, it works great and is very easy to do.


First; this works on any amount of eggs at a time as long as you have a big enough pot and water.

Second; just put your raw eggs into a pot and fill with water just covering the eggs.


Third; put the pot on the stove turn the stove on high and bring the water to a rapid boil, uncovered.

Fourth; soon as the water boils cover the pot with a lid and cut off the stove.


Fifth; let the eggs sit covered for 12 minutes.


Sixth; carefully pour the hot water out replacing it with cold water from the tap.


Seventh; give the eggs a few minutes to cool down. That’s it your done, peal and eat.

Hope this helps you “BOIL THE PERFECT EGG”!


Big Al

Well everyone… I’M BACK!!!

Well everyone… I’M BACK!!! Sorry to have been gone so long, between my job, my health, and lot of other things, my computer included. Just too many things to get into right now, maybe later I’ll get into them in detail.

Missed everyone and am glad to be back at BlogSpot.

Now on to my thoughts…that’s what this blog is all about anyway…RIGHT.

Here is a quick catch up on what's been going on in the last few months…I have been spending a lot of my vacation time in Port Saint Joe, Florida. My mom and dad have been doing work in Florida and have rented a great beach house and yea I use the free room and food as much as I can.

Ha-ha.

The sunsets off the front pouch are amazing.

My son and a co-worker David (you might remember him from my Natchez Trace blog) http://bigalscompound.blogspot.com/2010/03/natchez-trace-parkway.html

took a few days off and made a long motorcycle ride out to the Port (about an 8 hour run),

we had a great time, first long motorcycle ride for my son. SHARK fishing

and long rides on the beach added to our daily adventures…Did I mention the free meals at mom’s house….mmm, mmm good. Many other trips (in cars or trucks) have followed. The wife and I even drug my boat to the port for another long weekend leaving the kids at home ALONE…I’m sure they were well behaved while we were gone.

Pop managed to get off a couple of days while we were there and we did some damage to the fish population in the Bay in front of the house.

Almost forgot my wife, son and his friend Tanner took a trip there too, my Pop rented a pontoon boat so we could go scallop diving,

we only found a few but had a great time trying…next day we had a great meal at Margaretville.

MORE TO COME…
Big Al