Longbeards Restaurant review

Longbeards Bar & Grill

After hearing from several people with reddish neck regions about this restaurant, I decided to let it slip completely from my mind. Then my husband heard about it from someone at work and he was all gung-ho about trying it out. His eyes twinkled as he told me about the buffalo, elk, alligator, etc. that filled the menu. Fine, I thought, I’ll go.

We looked at the menu online and read some reviews. They were mixed but that didn’t put us off because we sometime love what others hate and vice versa.

We headed out for our Sunday evening date. On the way to the restaurant we passed a pond where someone was fishing, we made a joke that maybe it was the chef catching dinner. After we were done eating, we wished that had been the case.

As we walked in we were greeted by country music (bleh) and apparently the guy who had been power washing the dumpster all day. He was dressed in a ratty, stained Longbeards’ tee and dirty khaki shorts and dirty sneakers. He sat us at on of the many rock-hard booths (I have a hip problem and I wanted to cry when I saw the plywood seat). We began perusing the menu. An equally grubby looking guy came to our table this time to act as our waiter. We ordered a sweet and unsweetened tea. And away he went.

Back to the menu. We saw alligator bites and decided on those for an appetizer. I went with the quail and grits with sausage and tasso gravy (a take on a Southern dish: shrimp and grits, which I make on of the best and am usually disappointed with others) $14.95. Hubby went with the Buffalo steak with blue cheese sauce AT Market Price which was around $30. I chose a salad and mixed vegetables for my side and hubby chose sweet potato fires and green beans. 

Our drinks took awhile to be served. My tea was a bit rancid or fruity, as we like to call lettuce going bad or tea that was brewed 5 days ago. My husband couldn’t get any sweetener, the waiter disappeared and didn’t come back. We took in the décor, which was dead animals, bad paintings, and Pittsburgh Steeler signs. We surveyed the other staff and saw they were all men and all wore grubby, sloppy clothes. Finally the waiter came back to tell us that they were out of alligator. “What?” I laughed. He said, yea he was surprised too. I said, “What about that guy fishing out there, can’t you buy one off him?” The waiter looked like he didn’t get the joke. We decided not to get an appetizer. We asked for water and explained about the tea being rancid. He seemed clueless about how that coulda happened but apologized.

30 minutes later, as my hips were crying in pain and my stomach was growling, our food arrived. We had to ask for silverware, you know, to eat the food with. My salad was served with my meal (it would have been nice to have a snack 15 minutes ago). My dish lacked the cornbread that was listed in the menu description and my husband’s lacked the blue cheese sauce. My quail dish looked pretty good. It was served in an oblong ramekin and for some reason someone had decided to dress it up with chopped, raw tomatoes. Why? A hot dish of fried quail and grits served with barely pink, chopped tomato? I scooted them off my dish in disgust. The first bite was rich (not flavorless), the texture was good. Someone had been heavy handed with the salt even though the sausage was salty already. The grits were creamy. The tasso gravy/sauce was more like chicken fried gravy, not the traditional light, creamy roux with tasso ham to season it. Not great, but okay. My husband was suspiciously eyeballing his steak. I asked what the matter was. He said didn’t have a steak knife and the waiter had disappeared again. Hubby got up, walked into the kitchen to ask for one. He said someone started yelling and freaking out on the waiter about why he didn’t put a knife with the dish. Now armed with a steak knife my husband dug in. He said it was a little “wild” tasting but good. I tried it and it tasted like a steak. Nothing special. He said his green beans were good but the sweet potato fries, which were drowned in honey, were cold. My mixed vegetables were surprising good, cooked well, seasoned lightly. The salad was okay. There was no cornbread. We had a hard time getting refills on our water.

The place was nearly empty when we came in. When we left it was maybe 1/8 full in the dining room. It was not a slammed night; there was no excuse for such bad service and mediocre food. Husband, in his very kind way, complained to the waiter about the poor service/food. The waiter apologized and used the old “I’m new” excuse. I give this place a 3 out of 10. We won’t go back even though we were excited about this being a really cool, new thing with exotic meats.

My conclusion is you need to be drunk to enjoy this place. It is a Northern Guy trying to do Southern, good-ole-boy food and doing it badly. The service is terrible, the décor unimaginative, and it’s not worth the price (over $50 for our dinner).

Just My Average Thursday

Text Conversation with my husband from just moments ago.

Him: Have you seen Kirk Douglas in "lust for life"?
Me: Uh...I don't know. How are you feeling? (He's been a little sicky.)
Him: Ok for now
Me: My love of you will heal your aches and pains.
Him: I wish
Me: (thinking of some Michael Scott comeback and failing) But it helps, right?
Him: That movie is the story of Van Gogh.
Me: What?
Me: Speaking of being an incubus of plague let's see Contagion this weekend. 
(We have thought for the last 3 weekends that we would go see it only to be disappointed that it wasn't out yet, I am already sick of Contagion (get it?)).
Him: Ok
Him: I could sneeze a lot in the movie and make everyone freak out.
Me: Perfect. It will be like a Project Mayhem thing!
Him: Lust for Life
    It won some awards. I put it in our Q
    Disk only
Me: Oh the Kirk Douglas one from the 70's. Yeah, I want to see that. Good job.

If this convo was hard to follow then you don't belong in my life. Because this is the rambling thought process multiplied by text-speak-lag that is my life.

Reading Update Ya'll

Some of you read my post about summer reading a few weeks back (or a month, I can't remember). I have been a reading maniac this summer...found some great books.

The Help was amazing, as most of you know. And the movie did not disappoint like some made-from-my-favorite-books-into-movies movies do (I'm not pointing finger Time Traveler's Wife). Which isn't easy to do. It is amazing!

Room...holy shit. I read it in less than 24 hours. I read it while folding laundry, do you know how hard that is?

The City of Ember, People of Sparks, Prophet of Yonwood...a young adult series that I really enjoyed, one left to read.

Just read Rant by Palanuik...crazy, mind-vlowing!

What are you reading?

Laundry Soap

Boo Yow!

For $.71 I made two gallons of laundry soap. That's right, SEVENTY-ONE CENTS!!!

Here's how I did it. It is easy. Takes about 20 minutes to make.

1 c Washing Soda (Arm and Hammer, NOT baking soda, find it in the laundry supply aisle) $3.00 appx.
1 c Borax $3.00 appx.
1/2 bar of soap (I like Ivory, also can use Fels Naptha- use 1/3 of a bar for this one) $1.00 for three
Lotsa water
1 container with a lid that will hold 2 gallons(I use a square catfood bucket sans catfood)

Add 6 cups water to a pot, grate your soap into the pot. Bring to a low boil, until soap is melted. Stir with a wooden spoon.

Add borax and washing soda. Stir until dissolved. Turn off heat. Add 4 cups of hot water to the container. Pour your dissolved mixture into your container. Then add 1 gallon + 6 cups of cold water. Stir until combined.

Put lid on and leave for 24 hours. The mixture is not solid but not liquid. A little weird. I use 1/2-1 cup per large load.

To add a scent: use only essential oils. I haven't come up with the exact measurement for this. I have tried lavender and also eucalyptus. They both smell good in the container but don't seem to add any scent to the clothes out of the dryer.

You can thank me by sending your savings to Funds-for-Mostly-Flummoxed-to-Quit-Her-Day-Job.

Wednesday

Wearing a shirt as a scarf today. I think it works. I needed something to hide my tattoos, the tank top with a shrug wasn't cutting it. It is a see thru, blowsy shirt meant to be worn with a cami...but wearing it that way is kinda 2008.

Painting by the light of my phone

Just kidding, we didn't lose power here, just a lot of wind and rain. But I did get a few paintings done in between storing water and canned foods.

Black-shouldered kite

Crow eggs

Robin's egg in nest

For more see my etsy shop or my art blog (the design in under construction, don't judge)

Of course, these images are copyrighted by me and my team of Burly Lawyers.

Hurricane's a coming

We, in SC, are lucky this time, seems like Irene will pass us by. My girls and I just filled our 10 gallon water jugs, the pantry is stocked, I don't think too much will happen here. But each time a hurricane brews in the Atlantic my mind flies back to the Hurricane that destroyed everything I knew. Here is the article I wrote for The Sun News on the 20th anniversary of Hugo.

"It was September 1989, I had just started my junior year at Myrtle Beach High School. My life was full: I was on the dance squad, a member of various clubs, in the chorus, and excited about my new-to-me used car.  My parents owned a little motel on the beach in Surfside, we lived in an apartment behind the office. On September 25th my family and I turned all eyes to the television to watch a tropical development in the Atlantic. We had been through storms before, we thought we knew what to expect and how to prepare for whatever the ocean brought our way. Everything about our lives would soon change.

On September 28th we evacuated our beach front property in preparation from Hurricane Hugo. We knocked on the motel room doors to tell the few guests we had that we were leaving and they would need to as well. We began packing our belongings in our vehicles. I distinctly remember packing a bag with a few of my clothes, tucking in the dust ruffle on my bed and putting my beloved box of childhood mementos on top of my bed. I was sure the box would be safe there in case a little water came in. It was unsettling to leave our home running from a storm but we thought life would resume the next day.

My family and I drove to 2nd Avenue in Myrtle Beach, my mom thought being a few miles north and inland would be safer. My parents, brother, grandfather, our pets, and I would be staying with my oldest sister in her little house. The same house that had weathered numerous hurricanes without a scratch, all the way back to Hurricane Hazel in 1954.

At my sister’s house, we settled in with extra batteries, flashlights and candles and waited for landfall. We talked about the legend of my grandmother riding out Hazel in that house. She had watched through the windows, with her two young children, when Hazel hit during the day in 1954. When the eye of the hurricane passed over, she grabbed her children and raced to the beach. She stood at the dunes to watch the ocean violently roll and knead itself. She watched as 2nd Avenue pier broke apart. As the hurricane picked back up she returned to the safety of her home.

My only knowledge of disaster was what I had heard or read in my short life.  I had recently read ‘Alas, Babylon‘. As my family prepared the for the storm, remembering disaster preparations from the book, I filled up the tubs, sinks and all the containers I could find with water. As it happened, the water I saved ended up being worth it’s weight in gold. For days after Hugo it was all the water we had.

As night began to fall around us and Hugo swirled closer to Charleston, we heard a knock on the door. It was the police, they were making sure people in the neighborhood had evacuated. My mom told the officer that we were staying. The policeman had her sign a form, listing everyone in the house and their ages. He also had her write down our next of kin’s contact information in the event of our deaths. I think that is when I broke down. The fear and stress of the afternoon came tumbling through an internal dam, I leaned over on my sister and cried.

My sister at college in North Carolina, begged on the phone for us to leave, but it was too late to leave even if we wanted to.

During the night the phones and lights went out. WKZQ stayed on the air giving us updates after law enforcement and emergency services left. I remember how eerie it was as the radio played “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors and the wind made the house whine and creak around us. My parents and older sister talked about what we would do if the house flooded. The attic, someone said, we could all get up there if the water rises. They worried about my grandfather, who couldn’t swim, as if anyone would be able to swim out of what was coming.

We eventually blew out the candles and went to bed with Hugo growling around us. When we woke in the morning, the sun was out and birds were chirping. It was like waking from a bad dream. Did that really happen last night?

My brother and dad had left at the crack of dawn to get down to the motel before law enforcement was out to stop them. When they came back hours later their faces were solemn as they prepared my mom for the bad news. The motel was indescribable. Destroyed. My mom wanted to leave then to see for herself but the roads were blocked by debris and the National Guard. We would have to wait to until tomorrow for them to take us all back down there.

The next day we headed to Surfside. We rode along Business 17, looking absolute destruction. When we finally made it to Surfside, my parents went to city hall to get a permit to go see our ocean front property. We drove down Ocean Boulevard, around newly formed sand dunes and fallen Palmetto trees in the road. We stopped in the street in front of where the motel had stood. Our two story, L-shaped hotel was missing half of the first floor rooms. The ground beneath it was gone, only a huge hole, broken asphalt and concrete remained. The second story was dangling in midair as if waving goodbye to the storm that had destroyed it.

Part of the motel, that had been our downstairs apartment, was filled with sand, broken furniture, dead fish, and trash. Only the furniture that was too big to wash out a door or window had stayed. Nearly everything we had was gone or destroyed and there wasn’t any flood insurance on the motel.

The clean-up began. We salvaged what we could, taking it upstairs to a mostly undamaged part of the motel. All our tools, wheel barrow, ladders, everything we needed to clean and repair had been washed away. We did what we could that day and returned to our new home. We went to bed dirty and got up in the morning, put on dirty clothes and went back to work. We drank, bathed, and made food with the reserved water I had saved (in the tub).

One long, hot day while we were working, thirsty and hungry (they hadn’t invented 20 oz. bottled water to take everywhere, yet), my brother and I dug the motel’s vending machine out of the dirt. He pried the door off and found several unbroken glass sodas bottles. We popped the top on one and passed around the hot, sticky, orange drink. My mother looks back in embarrassment because that happened to be the moment a journalist decided to interview her holding the dirty, hot drink, dug out of the sand.

When the phones came back on we began hearing from motel guests, who had stayed at our motel since I was a little girl. They were calling to see if we were okay. My mom had a hard time breaking the news to the guests. Days later, these guests, some of them retirement-age, began showing up with hammers, saws, and tool belts. They asked what we needed, they were ready to work.

They helped us rebuild our home and our livelihood. Friends of friends came unannounced and showed us how to frame doors and walls, how to build a new staircase. People helped us haul out hundreds of pounds of water soaked, sand weighted carpet. My sister’s service fraternity showed up en masse to haul away cinder blocks, trash and wood. My dance squad brought food and clothes and cleaned out the rotting food in our the buried kitchen. There was no end to the kindness, to the love we felt.

I learned more about myself, my family, and humanity in those months of rebuilding than I have in my life since. I had never been challenged so much or for so long. Before that year, I had rarely held a hammer, never sanded or swept until I had blisters on my hands, never lost everything and had to rebuild it myself.

Twenty-five years later it is still hard to believe all the destruction and sorrow that happened because of Hugo. My family, when asked about that time, remembers the pain and fear of the not knowing what would come next. But then a pride comes into our voices, we shift our shoulders back and talk about our strength and endurance through that disaster. We rebuilt our lives, with the help of friends, motel guests, neighbors, strangers. As hard as it was, it made our backbones stronger and our skin tougher. Hugo stands for more than a ravaging storm, for us it stands for Help Us Go On."



written by Neva Campbell and published in The Sun News September 2009