WV Gourmet

Much as I dislike the constant, nigh-insufferable mockney banter of my compatriot Jamie Oliver, I have immense respect for the man in a way that I don’t have for any other celebrity chef.

He’s a fine and (broadly) well-respected chef, proven by a successful set of restaurants, a clutch of TV shows that offer a real sense of delight in good ingredients and an appealingly slapdash approach to prep, and a decent collection of books. He makes Real Food.

But folks like that are ten a penny nowadays. Even just taking the Brit pack, there’s Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, and Rick Stein, all of whom boast comparable credentials and are less insufferable (to varying degrees). No, that’s not why Jamie Oliver has a special place in my affections.

It’s because of a TV series he made for the Beeb called Jamie’s School Dinners. Oliver, disgusted by the appalling crap that is shoveled into the waiting maws of British schoolchildren day after day, set out to reform the way school meals were supplied in Britain. He introduced local produce, fresh vegetables, ditched the pre-processed shit, retrained the school staff — and retrained the kids, too, when they turned their noses up at the vegetables he tried to feed them. Watch him take a boy of maybe twelve from point-blank refusing anything that’s not chips (that’s fries to you) to happily chowing down on greenery, and you’ll understand: he’s a great communicator, really cares about food, and has an infectious commitment to health and wellness that’s clearly genuine.

When I finished watching Jamie’s School Dinners, I moaned to my family for weeks. “Why can’t he come and do that here?” I said, wringing my hands at my stepdaughter’s tales of her struggles to find anything remotely healthy at school. Now, in a twist of fate that I’m still having trouble believing, he is.

Most of the folks I’ve been talking to about this show are worried that it’ll just be a flimsy attempt to laugh at all the great fat Huntingtonians, wobbling like great blancmanges from Hillbilly Hot Dogs to Fat Pattys, randomly shedding forgotten cheeseburgers from between their immense rolls of flab. Perhaps I’m naive, but I don’t think that’s his style.

School Dinners ultimately convinced Tony Blair to pour almost a third of a billion pounds into improving the quality of the horrific slop that’s served up in British schools. If Oliver can put together something even remotely like that here, it’ll be the best thing to happen to cuisine and health in the area (the state?) for years.

And if he can do that, I don’t care how much of his twaddle I have to sit through.

Suzi’s Hamburgers is THE place to go for biscuits.  Compared to a Suzi’s biscuit, Tudors just plain doesn’t cut it.  Suzi’s biscuits are huge cathead biscuits - kind of like Mom made but only better.  You can get the standard array of biscuit fillers: scrambled eggs, sausage, steak, bacon, etc.  The eggs are really wonderful and fluffy and all of the meats are delicous too.  The coffee kind of sucks, but what do you expect from a fast food joint in South Charleston? 

Check out the size of that big beautiful biscuit.

Although the place is called Suzi’s Hamburgers, the hamburgers are really only sort of okay.  Nothing exceptional, just a typical fast food hamburger.  This is probably because they’ve spent so much effort on making the greatest biscuits in the known world that they don’t have the time, energy, or resources to focus on the burgers. 

If you go, make sure to take an appetite and don’t plan on eating again for several hours.