The day after parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme..
As you know, MFO is the archivist for the St. Mary’s County Historical
Society, and as such she is quite familiar with the history of St. Mary’s
County (brilliant, eh?). Anyway, during
the late 18th and early 19th century, a lot of the
citizens of the county migrated to Eastern Kentucky and eventually to the area around
Cape Girardeau, Missouri. With a little
research she determined that in Cape there was a regional office of the State
Historical Society of Missouri, concentrating on the local area. She decided she would like to see what sort
of documents and archives they had in relation to St. Mary's County.
So with the “kids” going off to their day jobs, we set out
to locate the office. It housed in
Pacific Hall on (the SEMO) campus, and shared spaces with the English
department. We went in, and couldn’t immediately
find the office and most of the students we asked gave us blank stares. Eventually we found what appeared to be a
professor and she kindly took us personally to the office. The receptionist (an obvious volunteer) kind
of looked askance at us, and said she would ask the director if he had a moment
to speak to MFO, as he currently was on the phone (office assistant speak for….
Good luck).
Anyway after a few minutes he came out and started what was
about an hour of fascinating talk between he and MFO (I smiled and nodded)
about the local history, who settled there, and the various enclaves of nationalities. Besides the transplanted Marylanders there
was a sizable contingent of French, who held on to their customs (and cuisine
he specifically pointed out), the various (Catholic) religious orders moving
around, and so forth. The Jesuits who
were so prominent here, kind of pushed on into Texas and points west, and the Vincentians
moved in. County names were discussed,
and various families role in the area.
Of course the Limbaugh’s are prominent in the area, and we kind of got
some inside dope on the outlier of the family, Rush. The rest of the family is very community
oriented, and that one is not. He gave
us a little vignette that Rush was asked to speak at a local High School
graduation and his message to the graduates was that college was not all that
important. Nice.
Anyway, Dr. Nickell was thrilled to have a like minded and knowledgeable
person to spend time with. After that, it
was about lunch time, and on the recommendation of FOJTY we headed downtown to
find Cup and Cork, and after little thrashing around we found it, and also
found it was dark. Web site (thank you
smart phone) was still active, and so I dialed the phone number expecting the
same message we got in Lexington for Jonathon's (no longer a working number), but instead we
got a very nice lady who said they had recently moved to the corner of Spanish and
Independence, just about a block from the old location where we were. So we hiked up a block to the designated intersection,
to find a closed business, an antique shop, and a couple of other
non-restaurant places. No
restaurant. So out comes the cell phone,
another call was placed, and within a few seconds a lady emerged from a
building down the street a little and waved her arms. Whew.
As she ushered us into what was an obvious old historic
river town building, she explained that they had just moved the previous week
and were just getting settled. There was
a bar and next to it was the dining space, at this point kind of Spartan (and
maybe it will stay that way)
And along the opposite side was a “wall o’wine”
Which did have some interesting labels. Well than, okay! life is getting better. A young man approached the table and said “I’ll
bet you’d like something to drink!” (I think he knew our struggles to find the
place) Yes sir, may we see the wine
list? Well, um, we haven’t yet received
our liquor license, but we hope to any day now.
Great. Many nice bottles within
an arms length, but all out of reach. Our choices
consisted of lemonade, iced tea, and water.
Our choices of the latter two were brought in those kind of opaque
plastic cups. Not quite the refreshing glass of wine i had envisioned.
In looking into the place on foodie sites, the cheese plate was recommended
by some people, and we were told the soup of the day was a creamy white bean
and chorizo. So after lingering over our
drinks – not… we ordered the cheese plate (the one with four cheeses and three
salumi’s) and a bowl each of the soup.
Once again we were informed that currently the only cheese plate available was the one
without the meats. Fine. Fortunately he reappeared from the kitchen
with the news that indeed it WAS available and that would be what we got. It turned out to be a fairly nice board
I suspected that the cheese at six and nine were
the same, but hey, when you just open in a new space, what the hell. They all were tasty, as was the soup
Which was just on the acceptable side of the “heat line” for
the Feeder
It was a great day, from the history to the kind of fun saga of the food.
The next time we’re there I think we would be glad to return to Cup and Cork- after verifying the liquor license is in
place!
For our last dinner in Cape with the Y’s, he cooked a pork
roast
In his Big Green Egg…
Lovely dinner, and mercifully the liquor license was in place!. Thus ended our first leg of the trip, and
next day we journeyed north to the big city of St. Louis and neighboring St.
Charles, home of the “E” branch of the FOJ’s. and yes, Mr. M, I will get to our ultimate
dining experience there! Where we were very much
DFD
PS.. you know how you go into some places and they have special sales of wine and liquor they're trying to ditch? Well,
we stopped at a local Schnuck’s (Grocery store) in Cape where they are allowed to sell liquor
(hear that Marylanders??) and here was their cut outs..
Recognize those labels?
Not your Annie Green Springs…
No comments:
Post a Comment