Bloomington/Normal Day 3: JJ's

One of my favorite movies of all time is "The Blues Brothers".  In that movie, the part when the brothers go to recruit Matt Guitar Murphy from his verbally abusive wife, played by Aretha Franklin, they go to a really run-down restaurant, resembling a hole in the wall. What I like about that scene, is that Aretha's character refers to their fried chicken as the "best fried chicken in the whole state."  So, very similar, there is this awesome place in Bloomington called Super JJ's.

 
The place is small, has old ceiling tiles, has some old carpet and floor tiles, looks like this:

But there is the kicker: the food is freakin' amazing.  The fried fish is so fresh and clean.  The fries are delicious.  I have ordered their wings before and they are so good they make me and anyone else want to take some "to go" and make the 2 hour drive back home with it.  I ordered something new, which is on that sign in the middle of the counter, near the hot sauce squeeze bottle.  I ordered a chicken sandwich.

It may not look like much, but that fried chicken sandwich was the best chicken sandwich I have ever eaten.  This is a big deal considering that during my teenage years I had lived on a mix of the chicken sandwich from Burger King and Mcnuggets from McDonalds.  It is amazing and perfectly cooked.  An easy 3 out of 5 stars.  Please look them up and go there. 

• 1510 W Market
  Bloomington, IL 61701

Shady Gators

Over the 4th of July weekend, my in-laws took my family to the Ozarks.  We drove separately but we all stayed in their condo, which is cool, because there are no expenses really, on our part.  While there, on Friday afternoon, we took their boat out and went for a ride up and down the lake and finally settles at Shady Gators for lunch.  This place is huge.  It has its own dock to park your boat as well as parking lot for those taking cars.  It looks like a three story deck, sticking on posts out of the lake.  This was the view from our table:

On Friday, it was sunny, warm (not hot) and a nice day to sit back, wait for food and take in the view of the boats and the lake.  The area that we sat near, was across from a bar, with people there, but everything looked rough, unclean, and very lazy, which is part of the theme.

So, we order some fried fish, for the table to snack on as we wait for food and I ordered the chicken gumbo.  The fish comes out first.  It is a sweet white fish, covered in corn flakes, and served hot, dripping in honey.  I ate more than I normally do, of fish.  It didn't taste of fish.  It tasted of honey and corn flakes.  It was good and I'd give it a 4 out of 5 stars, because I would go back and order it and eat it all.

My dish, was the chicken gumbo.  They had some alligator items on the menu, and I think they thought they should also stick with a Cajun style because most people associate alligator with Cajun food.  I didn't order any of that.  But I did order the chicken gumbo and it came with a small salad and a piece of cornbread.  Now, I'm thinking to myself that I should have no problem eating the appetizer fish and my course, because for the prices, it can't be that big.  My dish was huge.

I know it looks small, because it is just a picture, but I would say that the center area where the gumbo was, was actually about 8 inches across and an inch down.  This was just filled with perfectly cooked rice, big chunks of chicken, a piece or two of sausage and a rich and flavorful tomato broth.  It was shocking both how large this entree was and how tasty it was.  It also received a 4 out of 5 from me. 

http://www.shadygators.com/
(573) 365-6464
Located on the Lucky 7MM
at Lazy Gator Point!

Parents, don't your kids grow up to me anti seafood

When I was young and my parents were not poor but not rich either, they tried to ingrain some simple healthy food patterns.  We had meat almost every night and fish on Fridays. Now it was the style at the time, to have meat as much as you could and I do remember that some nights didn't have large amounts of meat and there was nothing wrong with that, as long as we got the protein some other way.

Friday nights brought fish in only one form and I can hear Super Chef Rick Moonen screaming, if he does read this: fish sticks. Fish sticks are made the same way that chicken nuggets are, in that it is the less quality pieces of meat, chopped up, bleached, added with preservatives and other chemicals and finally breaded and frozen.  You then get these fabulous sticks and cook them in your oven for a quick and healthy meal, right?  I wouldn't doubt that less than 50% of fish sticks is actually made of fish.  And it was this fish product that was my first experience with fish.  Fish sticks taste horrible and tasted so bad for me that I would do anything to hide their taste.  My parents used that parenting attitude that you can't get up out of your chair until you eat all of your food.  Well, I have 3 fish sticks on my plate that I find disgusting and I can't go outside and play or do anything till I eat them.  What do I do?

To this day, my mom brings this up still: I poured chocolate sauce on them.  It did a great job hiding any fish smell or taste and I ate them all.  The thing is, it wasn't until on my honeymoon that my wife pushed me to try some fish and I liked it.  That salmon cooked on a cedar plank at Emeril's restaurant tasted so good and so not what I thought fish would be like.  Thank God for that experience and my wife doing that because if she had not, it would have been a while longer till I had re-tried fish or any seafood.  Now, everywhere I go, I try some new seafood item and while I honestly didn't like everything (steamed mussels), there were some things I did like (steamed crab legs). 

So, parents, please don't give your kids fish sticks or stifle their food flavors by giving them artificial things.  I only wish that in hindsight that my parents had given me different forms of seafood and not the artificial ones. 

(Chef Rick Moonen, if you are reading this, the next time I am in Vegas, I will let you know as I want to try some fish dishes at your restaurant.)