HEY DALE, WHAT'S FOR DINNER?
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12/09/2015 |
With the holiday season upon us and folks partaking of huge Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, my mind has been wandering to food. Of course, our Race Fans Forever editors will tell you in a heartbeat that food is never far from my thought process! [Editor’s note: Food is never out of his thought process. It’s always priority #1!]
Having always enjoyed eating, traveling the NASCAR Cup auto racing circuit from 1980-1999 added many new dishes and restaurants to my list of favorites. It also added additional inches to my waistline.
That’s not to say that I hadn’t already developed a taste for racetrack food back in the 1960s. That love affair began in 1964, the first time I tasted one of the Pronto Pups prepared by the incomparable Little Eddie at both of Richmond, Virginia’s NASCAR venues. I ate the Pups at the special events Fairgrounds Raceway, as well as the cross town weekly Southside Speedway.
If you’ve ever eaten a corn dog, you kinda know what a Pronto Pup is… or at least how it looks. The Pup, however, is made from a local hotdog pierced with a stick and dipped in a wheat batter, preferably Dipsy Dog mix. Nobody ever fixed them better than Little Eddie. While managing auto racing programs for the 7-Eleven folks in Dallas, I took my family to the Texas State Fair and sampled an original corn dog there. That soggy thing wasn’t even in the same league with Little Eddie’s Pronto Pups at Southside Speedway.
The proper way to eat Pronto Pups that I taught folks was first to arrive at Southside Speedway before sunset. Once through the gate, head straight to Little Eddie’s stand between the turn 1-2 grandstands. Order two Pronto Pups – one for each hand – and coat them with mustard, while protecting your thumb and index finger from being coated in mustard by positioning the wax paper wrap just so.
Back in those days, fans didn’t need a hand to carry smart phones and scanners. The tricky part was trying to get from the Pronto Pup stand to a seat without dropping the Pups or getting mustard all over your shirt. First you had to walk right by the wall as Ray Hendrick, Sonny Hutchins, Runt Harris and Ted Hairfield breezed by in their ground shaking NASCAR fuel injected, nitro methane and alcohol powered modifieds. If that experience didn’t scare the Pronto Pups out of your hands, the walk up the ancient Southside Speedway grandstand might do the trick. Although freshly painted every year, you needed to carefully navigate those wooden steps, bleacher seats and floorboards, never knowing when one would bend and throw you off balance. Once seated, the ordeal was worth it. The Pronto Pup remains my favorite racetrack food to this day.
As my Richmond buddy and fellow Race Fans Forever contributor, Frank Buhrman and I expanded our racing venues, we discovered the fried chicken at Virginia’s South Boston Speedway. You could smell it as you drove through the massive parking lot. Though famed for its bologna burger, for which driver Elliott Sadler is claimed to hold the eating record, it was always the chicken that got our attention. It was hard to resist ordering one of those big breasts on a piece of white bread, even if we’d just come from eating an early dinner at Ernie’s Restaurant and cafeteria just down the road.
When I moved to Wilson, North Carolina in 1970, I eventually became involved with a local Limited Sportsman ’55 Chevy at the Wilson County Speedway. The speedway was located on the American Legion Fairgrounds on U.S. 301. Just down and across from the track was the world famous Parker’s Barbecue. This was the purveyor of eastern North Carolina style “cue” that after the completion of I-95, caused busloads of Yankee tourists traveling from Maine to Florida to detour into Wilson for food.
Our final two stops on Saturday afternoon before arriving at the Wilson track with our car were for racing gas at a Sunoco station on Ward Boulevard and at Parker’s for big, white, greasy bags of fried chicken and corn sticks and containers of barbecue, Brunswick Stew, boiled potatoes and Cole slaw. The track concessions didn’t do much business with the racers at Wilson.
After the final event of Saturday night (or Sunday morning) at Wilson, the racers headed north a few miles to Elm City and the Southern 500 truck stop or south a few miles to Lucama and Honeycutt’s truck stop. Both served up all the wonderful southern fried food you could name. Sausage, bacon, grits, home fries or shredded potatoes and fresh biscuits accompanied our eggs and French Toast, all washed down with steaming cups of black coffee and tall glasses of chilled tomato juice.
In 1981 I made my first trip to Riverside, California with our Wrangler racing team. Our first dinner out was at Dale Earnhardt’s favorite Riverside restaurant, the Cask & Cleaver. Dale, himself drove us from the Riverside Holiday Inn that initial Riverside night. As fate would have it, we spotted one empty parking space near the restaurant and that one had a car headed toward it. If you guessed that Earnhardt gunned the rental car and beat the opposing eaters to the parking spot, you’d be correct.
In those days, Dale still went out to eat and we usually went where he wanted to go. By 1982, Dale ordered room service and seldom went out to eat.
At the Cask & Cleaver in Riverside, I first discovered fresh spinach salad. I piled so much on my plate at the salad bar I could hardly eat my succulent T-bone yet to come. Next day, at a little stand like a mini burger joint just outside the garage gate at the old Riverside road course, I saw my first taco and ate my first burrito. I’m still not convinced that traveling coast to coast and eating burritos at a strange little stand was a smart thing to do.
That first Riverside trip in 1981 provided a real bundle of firsts. After a night of socializing at the Holiday Inn bar, I wandered down the street and saw my first Denny’s. It was in that Denny’s in the wee hours that I ate my first patty melt. It would prove to be the first of many to come.
My “firsts” in Riverside weren’t my only west coast firsts. After one Riverside race we decided to drive up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco and fly back to Greensboro, North Carolina from the land of the Golden Gate. Making a quick trip to Fisherman’s Wharf, I tasted my first authentic sourdough bread, accompanied by fresh crab and a chilled longneck of some variety.
One time on another Pacific Coast Highway journey around a Sears Point race, I stopped in Mendocino where they were filming “Murder She Wrote.” It was there that I first tasted fresh wild salmon. Sure didn’t look or taste anything like that stuff we got in the can back in Richmond.
Furthering my taste buds, our 7-Eleven Winston West driver, Derrike Cope introduced me in 1984 to seasoned curly fries at a little concession trailer on the grounds of Seattle International Raceway, the road course near Kent, Washington. After that near heaven experience, it became a tough choice for me at Arby’s, debating whether to get a baked potato covered in everything or scrumptious curly fries.
I’ve been to so many racetracks in so many places that I’d never be able to list all the great meals I’ve had, both at the track or nearby.
In Charlotte, our favorite place used to be a 1940s roadhouse on Wilkinson Boulevard, near where the first NASCAR Strictly Stock race was staged. The Ranch House offered up huge, juicy steaks and was famous for its homemade horseradish sauce. A building behind the restaurant stored the fresh horseradish. The sauce came on your shrimp cocktail and made your eyes water, your nasal passages open and your throat burn.
My Wrangler Racing assistant program manager brought Miss Pontiac with him to the Ranch House one night and failed to warn her of the hot horseradish sauce. As we laughed in our seats in a private dining room off the kitchen, she threw the shrimp cocktail at him and bolted through the restaurant to her official Pontiac Pace Car! She never spoke to my assistant again.
Undoubtedly the best food I ever encountered at any racetrack was in the infield cafeteria at Rockingham’s North Carolina Motor Speedway. The worst was at a track built by the same guy, Harold Brasington’s Darlington Raceway infield concession building.
Some tracks offered up pleasant surprises. Every year at the August Michigan Cup race, in the Cup garage, local farmers served up fresh corn on the cob from their Irish Hills farms. This corn was piled in large galvanized steel tubs and the ears were slathered in butter and served up on a Popsicle stick.
Driving to the Michigan track early in the morning on backroads known to the racing fraternity, once you passed a landmark known to us as “the 3 silos,” you came upon a little rural restaurant known simply as the Farm House. It opened well before dawn and served up heaping plates of pork products from the farm, accompanied by everything you can imagine.
When I made my first trip to Phoenix in 1984 to negotiate a Winston West race sponsorship with the late Dennis Wood, I was taken up South Mountain to an old timey western roadhouse operate by an aged woman wearing a six shooter in a holster on her hip. There we were served huge cowboy cut steaks grilled out front on Mesquite. They were juicy and delicious. Nobody ever gave the woman with the six shooter any trouble.
I think my favorite eating stops on the old Winston Cup tour were the Pocono races. Alas, the first place Dale Earnhardt took me to eat for a Pocono race was a place on highway 115 north of Blakeslee, Pennsylvania called Iorio’s Fireside Inn. Not only did they serve outstanding food, they had their own bakery on the premises. Dale always made sure they rolled a dessert cart our way after dinner.
There were way too many great eating places around Pocono to name. Robert Christian’s was another of my favorites and there was a terrific seafood restaurant in Scranton.
It was behind pit road at Pocono that I had my first pierogi, a fried mashed potato delicacy that I adore. Pocono always had great food vendors, especially if you like Italian sausage sandwiches. If you didn’t like the food around the Pocono garage, you could walk under a tunnel at the start finish line from pit road and come up under the main grandstand at the food trailers. I made more of those trips than I should.
My most memorable Pocono meal was an early morning race day breakfast with Tim Richmond and Dale Earnhardt at the Holiday Inn in White Haven. Dale ate normal breakfast food, while Tim ate nothing but bananas. He wanted to fortify his potassium level. Later, at the track, the two crashed and Tim helped Dale out of car owner, Bud Moore’s crumpled Ford #15.
Along the racing circuit, I encountered numerous Italian restaurants. Dale Earnhardt’s favorite was a little place in Daytona named Toni & Jerry’s, a block off the ocean. You won’t find it today. The city of Daytona Beach in their infinite wisdom tore down Earnhardt’s favorite Daytona Italian joint and converted the property to parking for the Ocean Center arena.
The owners at Toni & Jerry’s stapled a huge Wrangler racing banner to the ceiling over the table where Dale sat. In the back room, Jerry played old Italian tunes on scratchy 78RPM records. The place, with its red and white checked tablecloths, had atmosphere. They later opened a new place with a son across from the Speedway, but it just wasn’t the same.
Another wonderful Italian restaurant was in Petaluma, California, where we stayed for Sears Point races. It had been built in the late 1800s and had secret entrances to bring in liquor during prohibition.
When Cup racing returned to Watkins Glen in the 80s, Bobby Allison’s crew chief, Jimmy Fennig introduced me to the best open faced roast beef sandwich on the circuit at a place near the bridge going into Corning and Painted Post. It was served with mashed potatoes and gravy and was located just down and across from a Wegman’s supermarket, always a popular place with the racers. Just outside Corning was a great breakfast spot named the Gang Mills Diner. Homemade sausage topped the morning menu.
The Talladega racetrack was literally out in the middle of nowhere. During race weeks, Bill France would set up caterer Jane Hogan in a little house near the track. There she prepared home cooked lunches for the France family and invited guests and we (Wrangler/Earnhardt) were always invited. Dale loved her hush puppies with onions and peppers. Jane’s late husband had been a part owner of the Rockingham track. She also catered all of my Wrangler V.I.P. suites, as well as the UNOCAL and International Speedway suites.
Thinking again of Rockingham, retired racer Raymond “Captain America” Williams for a while operated a wildly popular seafood place with a raw oyster bar in Southern Pines named the Silver Bucket. The beverages there were always super cold and the oysters juicy.
There was great seafood to be had, also around Dover, New Hampshire and Richmond. Dover had some fancy seafood places and also places like Sambo’s, a crab shack where the tables were covered in newspaper and everyone given a wooden mallet and a pick to draw out succulent meat from the cracked crab shells.
Perhaps because of its proximity to Philadelphia, we also found great Philly cheesesteak sandwiches around Dover. There was a terrific place in a strip center near the track. Back in the day, there was no way to cross the Dover track when cars were running. On practice and qualifying days, teams sent a crew member to the Philly cheesesteak joint during a break and then waited for the crew member to cross back to the pits and garage during a lull. By then the white paper sacks were seeping grease.
Out on U.S. 13 near the Dover track was the Hollywood Diner. It was an early morning crew favorite. The last time I ever went to Dover, sometime in the mid-90s, they still had what might have been the last Shakey’s Pizza Palaces in the country. That was the chain with the long picnic style tables, player pianos and pitchers of beer.
Lobster was always high on everyone’s list around New Hampshire, but my favorite place was a little unpretentious family spot near Lake Winnipesaukee named Sawyer’s Dairy Bar. They served up delicious clam bellies followed by homemade ice cream. It was a nice change of pace.
At one time, Dale Earnhardt’s favorite restaurant on the entire race circuit was a seafood restaurant in Richmond named Skilligallee. There, in a downstairs bar area, while I devoured my mushroom caps stuffed with crab appetizer, Dale would order something that really surprised me – Escargot! SNAILS! Can you picture that One Tough Customer, that Intimidator carefully picking snails from their shells? Dale never missed a trip to Skilligallee and he always ordered Escargot.
For the Atlanta races we stayed south of the airport near Riverside at a Ramada Renaissance hotel. It was at a restaurant in Riverside, Georgia that I had my first blackened fish – a hugely popular dish in the early 80s.
Once when handling some drag racing activities for 7-Eleven I had to meet with a drag racing promoter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to negotiate sponsorship of the Cajun Nationals. That night I was taken out into the bayou wilderness to dine on crawfish and cold beer. I would have never found my way back alone.
In December 1981, we started traveling to New York for the Winston Cup Awards Banquet. Those were elegant affairs with wonderful meals. We were often treated by NASCAR and International Speedway Corporation to outstanding dining in various Manhattan restaurants. I remember one night catching a cab from the Waldorf to Central Park where we dined with an ad agency rep atop the Gulf & Western building overlooking the park. With snow falling, it was a magical holiday sight.
I have also been known to make a late night run down the street from the Waldorf in New York to the Star Deli for a hot pastrami and Swiss, dribbled with brown mustard, on rye bread. Many places call that combo the “New York Yankee.”
Not to be discounted in those heady racing days before teams had personal chefs were the food stocks found around most transporters in the garage. We’re talking about loaves of fresh Sunbeam white bread, boxes of Zesta saltines, packs of bologna, cans of Vienna sausage and sardines, along with jars of mustard, Duke’s mayonnaise and Miracle Whip.
Because of racing, my menu has greatly expanded, along with my waist. It wasn’t all work on the road. There was a lot of fun to be had. There was a lot of great food to be tested.
Not to be discounted in those heady racing days before teams had personal chefs were the food stocks found around most transporters in the garage. We’re talking about loaves of fresh Sunbeam white bread, boxes of Zesta saltines, packs of bologna, cans of Vienna sausage and sardines, along with jars of mustard, Duke’s mayonnaise and Miracle Whip.
Because of racing, my menu has greatly expanded, along with my waist. It wasn’t all work on the road. There was a lot of fun to be had. There was a lot of great food to be tested.