The road to Branson, Missouri was interesting.
This time I didn’t do the driving. We invited Sharon’s mother to join us and she wanted to drive her van. No problem!
On our way there we saw and stopped at an unexpected place in Vineta, Oklahoma. Now this was real Roadfood as it spanned across I44. It was huge!
At one time it was the largest McDonalds in the world. I didn’t know anything about it.
Here is the view from inside looking out while standing over I44.
Because we drove back to Texas a different way, I never got to drive under it.
From there we drove through Joplin, Missouri. I can’t begin to tell you the destruction caused by the tornado. My heart goes out to the people of Joplin. The tornado destroyed most of the downtown residential area. Horrendous and very sad.
Next stop:
Can you tell I like water towers?
Branson is not an eating town but it’s filled with restaurants.
Our first dinner was a chuck wagon style meal served when we saw the Sons of the Pioneers.
This is the theater where we ate and saw the show.
We never had to get out of our seats. The dinner was served from carts at the end of our aisle.
It was done assembly line style with each person being in charge of a different food item.
The meal was a carb lovers dream. Besides the brisket there was grilled corn, pinto beans, sliced some sort of potatoes and one roll. We did have a choice when it came to our drinks… lemonade and iced tea, sweetened or not. To keep it healthy there were cinnamon apples for dessert.
I figured it was a free meal with the price of the show ticket so it wasn’t bad considering.
There isn’t much to do in Branson during the day. We did a lot of shopping and one day we drove to the fish hatchery which was near a dam. It was quite interesting.
Our meals so far were mediocre so we decided to leave Branson for lunch and drove to
One of the homes of…
http://www.throwedrolls.com/shopcontent.asp?type=Ozark The home of the throwed roll.
The wait was an hour and thirty minutes! What else did we have to do? We waited.
There were people everywhere, inside and out.
We were called after one hour and twenty minutes of waiting. That’s a plus, isn’t it?
It was a zoo inside with employees walking around everywhere.
I didn’t know this but Lambert’s is known for passing around Norm’s Goodies. Employees walk around with buckets of food and hand it out using tongs. I knew that they threw rolls, but this? There were four or five different food items being passed out. They all came with your meal. They also let you know that they have sorghum for your rolls, something I’ve never had.
First up…fried okra while we waited for our waiter.
There were rolls of paper towels on the table and the okra was served on top of the paper. Not my style!
The roll man was busy walking around tossing the rolls to the diners. He did not toss to women. He obviously didn’t know that I lettered in softball.
On the table was a basket with individual servings of margarine and one serving of real butter. I’m a real butter person and I wanted more. I also wanted some hot sauce for the fried okra. I didn’t butter my roll because I wanted to try the sorghum that was being served by one of those walk around employees. I waited. My roll got cold.
We ordered and our meals arrived. They were brought by servers, not our waiter.
I had chicken salad and Sharon ordered the ham steak. Her mother ordered a vegetable plate.
Even though I don’t like eating off of metal plates, I liked the idea of serving in a skillet.
The rest of the pass around food was placed on to our plates which is a much better idea.
I still didn’t have butter for my now cold roll and I still didn’t have hot sauce or sorghum.
I asked the roll guy and he told me to ask my waiter. I asked the okra girl and she said to ask my waiter. It seemed like they belonged to a union and could not do another’s job. I waited.
I asked some of the other walk around servers and they told me the same thing… ask my waiter. I hadn’t seen my waiter since the ordering of our meals.
I got up out of my seat. There was my waiter in the back of the room, propping himself up against the wall doing nothing. He saw me and made his way to our table. He asked if he could help me and I gave him a list of the things that I wanted. He told me that they didn’t serve real butter and I said that they did. He said that they didn't and I showed him the now empty container. (Did he call me a liar?) Took awhile, but I finally got everything and another hot roll. I don’t like sorghum.
The roll guy was fun. Here he is posing for me.
The food was good for food prepared in mass quantities. It was more of an eating there place than an eating of their food place. It was an experience for sure. I guess it’s one of those places you do once.
On our way back in to Branson we stopped here for some wine tasting.
Stone Hill is what the Steinbergs who left Germany and Poland changed their name to when they relocated to England. They sell Steinberg Red and Steinberg White wines. I am a Steinberg which made it sort of special.
That was my first and last wine tasting. We were served a dozen teaspoon sized servings of different wines in real wine glasses. It seemed to me that they were getting progressively worse and then they served us a cream sherry. That did it. The brandy aroma and taste was so strong that I left there woozy. Guess I’m a light weight or should always stick to one wine.
Ice cream was what we did for dinner. We went to the old Branson area and had ice cream at
It was a cute 50s style ice cream parlor. I don’t remember the name or what flavors I had as they were not memorable.
Our next meal was lunch here due to the slim pickens: (We were also going to see his show)
It was a Tex-Mex themed restaurant but I ordered the special of the day.
I ordered the chicken fried steak special which was delicious, but small. The chicken was the size of a small hamburger patty. I guess I shouldn't ask for more at $5.00 in a resort town.
Sharon had the Mexican combo which looked sort of like a TV dinner. She said it was good.
We had dessert at another Fifty’s themed ice cream parlor on the main boulevard. Instead of having ice cream, I had a root beer float. It was served in one of those paper cups so it wasn’t photo worthy. I really think that if having a root beer float while at a table inside of a restaurant a glass mug should be used. They also did not let the foam subside to fill the paper cup with more root beer. Minus points for that.
Somewhere during those three days we also had ice cream at Dairy Queen. I don’t have them near where I live so I was interested in what they served. Not bad at all for soft serve.
Branson was fun. It’s like a Country Music Las Vegas without the gambling.
