Surviving on Chubby Trouts and Self Righteous Beers

Chubby Trout
2730B Cassopolis
Elkhart, IN

Beer selection: Best of the best!

Food: Fresh and local Great Lakes seafood.

They say “Boy, you ain’t a poet -- just a drunk with a pen”
All over and over, again and again

Lord they don’t know about the places I’ve been
It gets hard out here

I know I don’t look it
I used to have heart, but the highway took it
-- Hayes Carll from his brand new song, “Hard Out Here”

Whether a poet or just a drunk with a pen, as always, Texas song writer Hayes Carll hits the nail on the head. It is “hard out here”.

But one thing I’ve learned is that surviving on the road is a lot less difficult if you follow a few rules.

Such as, you don’t order seafood when you’re in Indiana.

Common sense stuff like that.

But, of course there are exceptions to all rules. Like if you are within an hour’s drive of Lake Michigan.

Then, you definitely want seafood. Specifically perch, walleye, blue fin or trout – as long as it comes fresh out of the Great Lake, not some aquaculture farm in Thailand.

Living two blocks from the Atlantic Ocean, I get a little spoiled when it comes to good seafood. Shrimp, oysters, crab, grouper, snapper -- all fresh from the ocean.

But maybe that’s why the distinct taste of fresh water fish gets me so excited. It’s something different.

Or maybe it’s the high mercury content.

Whatever it is, it tastes good.

It’s little things like a pile of fried lake perch in the Flats that can make a trip to Cleveland tolerable. Or like how an appetizer of walleye cheeks can warm up a mid-winter trip to Minnesota.

Here in Elkhart, Indiana, in the frigid darkness of winter, the only thing that is going to cheer me up is a visit to the wonderfully named Chubby Trout.

And while you can order any of the aforementioned Great Lakes specialties here, if you are only here one time, you have to get the namesake dish – the Chubby Trout.

A generous filet of fresh caught Lake Michigan trout, lightly fried to a nice crisp flaky exterior and smothered with a lobster basil stuffing and decadent cream sauce, this dish reminded me why they call this fishy’s former home the GREAT lakes.

Trout can be known to be a bit dry and dull in the wrong hands – but not buried under all this goodness.

The Chubby Trout definitely knows how to make a Chubby Trout.

My appetizer of calamari was also delicious – and unique. No chewy rings or squidly tentacles here. This is Grade A squid. Long thick strips of the most tender, succulent seafood, breaded and fried to perfection and served with a distinct spicy thick remoulade that would make any New Orleans chef jealous.

Amid the hell of corporate chain restaurants that is Cassopolis Street in Elkhart, the Chubby Trout is a family-owned oasis of good taste and local specialties done right.

But did I mention the beer?

Oh yeah, I’m saving the best for last.

The Chubby Trout just happens to have the best beer selection in the entire state of Indiana.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like they hand you a six page beer menu when you sit down. Remember, this is Elkhart – not Asheville or Portland.

But the page long list is nothing but solid quality. Like a year end “Best Of” list. Or your “Highest Rated” playlist on your I-Pod.

I chose two twenty ouncers on draft – Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale and Schlafly Winter ESB.

Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale is brewed by the same California folks who make Arrogant Bastard Ale and a kick butt Smoked Porter.

I jumped at the chance to try this black IPA.

I like dark beers and I like hoppy beers. This is the rare beer that is both. And the 8.7% alcohol made me feel like I got my six bucks worth. Bargain!

The Schlafly Winter ESB was a much lighter copper color and thinner in taste and alcohol content. It reflects its Midwest roots. Tasty as it was with mild wintery spices like lemon and vanilla, it was a hard act to follow such a Sublimely Self-Righteous Beer.

The excellent beer selection and quality of the food reflects the good taste of the owner of this place. You can tell that a lot of care goes into the preparation of each dish. And a lot of thought and beer drinking went into the selection of high-quality, hard-to-find beers – especially for Elkhart.

This guy didn’t just say okay to whatever the local beer distributor was pushing, like too many restaurant owners do.

I can just imagine this guy’s home fridge stocked with six-packs from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, in a constant search for that next cool, unique offering to put on tap at his bar.

That’s a job I want.

And this is the kind of place I want to patronize.

Local trout and good beer. I can survive on that.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

A Liberal-Hater’s Confession

Early Girl Eatery
8 Wall Street
Asheville, NC

Beer selection: Exciting variety of local brews for lunch or breakfast!

Food: Delicious, down-home, sustainable, natural, cage-free, hormone-free, hand-scooped, grass-fed, free-range, organic, personally-blessed-by-Pope-Benedict Southern cooking.

I hate liberals.

I’ve dedicated my entire life to defeating everything they stand for.

I especially hate that they see every problem, vice and inconvenience of everyday life as an opportunity to use the levers of government to take more money and liberty from me.

Why don’t you just leave me the #@$% alone!?!

But after a visit to the Early Girl Eatery in liberal heaven Asheville, North Carolina, even I have to confess they get a few things right.

Like food. And beer.

I mean, think about it. Think about your city.

Where do “conservatives” live...and eat…and drink?

Right. On a cul-de-sac amid some cookie-cutter soulless expanse of suburban hell.

They hop in their minivan with “W” sticker attached and drive exactly 2.7 miles (which takes 15 minutes due to all the traffic lights) to the nearest strip shopping center where they dine at some corporate chain outparcel restaurant and order the “2 for 20” and a 22oz. draft of Bud Light.

Where do liberals in your city live?

Right. In the cool part of town.

With the cobblestone streets lined with a canopy of century old oak trees, 100 year old Victorian mansions and interesting, eclectic shops, bistros and bars. And the old timey movie theater that plays the obscure “edgy” (a favorite word of liberals) flicks the cineplex won’t run.

Think Germantown in Columbus. Georgetown in DC. Ghent in Norfolk. Riverside in Jacksonville. Every city’s got one.

Granted, the weirdo dope-smoking, forehead-pierced cross-dressers creep the crap out of me too, but that’s the price you have to pay for a good local craft beer and gourmet pizza.

Of course most of my friends who describe themselves as “paleo-libertarians” (think, conservatives who like to have fun) aren’t familiar with either of these living arrangements.

No. Paleo-libertarians live deep in the swamp, out in the woods or up on the mountain where they can kill their own meat, collect their own rainwater (before Obama banned it) and sit on a tinder box of ammo in anticipation of the “conservatives” and liberals screwing the whole thing up.

These are the guys who will be prepared when America is reduced to a rubble-strewn landscape patrolled by marauding flesh-eating zombies.

Okay, so these guys have probably watched “Red Dawn” and “Zombieland” a few too many times, but you get the idea. I’m headed to their house the first sign of trouble.

Which somehow gets me back to the liberal, organic, free-range downtown of Asheville, North Carolina, the quintessential liberal neighborhood.

And my confession.

Organic, free-range, all-natural just tastes better than frozen, processed, boxed, nitrated.

There. I said it.

Here’s the problem.

Unfortunately, liberals think all six billion people on the planet should be force-fed this way by government fiat.

As far as I’m concerned, if George W. Bush supporters want to live off a steady diet of Chicken McNuggets, Bud Light and high fructose corn syrup, they should be free to do so.

Me? Given the choice, I’ll take the all-natural fare served at the Early Girl Eatery.

Every day.

Everything I ordered – from the locally brewed Ninja Porter to the fried green tomatoes to the North Carolina Smoky Mountain stream trout to the candied yams to the ham-studded collard greens to the buttermilk biscuit – was made fresh, organic, all-natural and local.

And absolutely delicious.

The local organic fried green tomatoes just tasted more tomatoey. The collards tasted greener. The yams tasted yammier.

You get the idea.

And it makes sense when you think about it. The less you molest your food between seedling and plate, the better it will taste when it gets there.

That’s a concept even an avowed enemy like me of liberal dope-smoking weirdoes can appreciate.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.