Bow Tie o’ the Day sat with us for our first meal on Dauphin Island, at an appropriately named restaurant called ISLANDERS.
After a half-day of flying from Utah to the bottom of Alabama, it was high time to sit by the bigly restaurant window and gaze out at the ocean while eating seafood, right? Not quite, for Suzanne. No! Suzanne, the landlubber, wanted fettuccine alfredo, so she ordered fettuccine alfredo while I sat in my chair wondering who in the world I came on a beach vacation with. “Hello! Can you hear me now, Suzanne? We’re sitting down to dinner, looking out at the Gulf of Mexico– and you’re not ordering seafood? WTFlip?”
We did decide to split a couple of seafood appetizers before our meals showed up at the table. I ate most of the calamari, and Suzanne ate most of the chips and crab-and-spinach dip.
Oh, and what seafood did I order myself for dinner, after having such a big ol’ cow about Suzanne ordering the non-seafood dish– fettuccine?
Er, um, well, uh, so, er… I ordered up the roasted pork loin, covered in a tomato and raisin chutney. I know, I know– pork loin is not generally considered seafood. But it sounded like something I’d like to try, because of the interesting-sounding chutney combination of flavors I had never tasted together. I wasn’t disappointed one bit. The chutney and pork pairing was tasty. Also, the dinner came with cole slaw, which is a common seafood side dish. And I got thinking: pigs drink liquids, including water. That makes them sorta seafood-y. You can’t say that about fettuccine noodles.
And so I’m a hypocrite. I truly felt kinda guilty– like I was doing something wrong by not matching my meal to the environment I inhabited at that moment. And then I thought: “What is this “matching” thing of which you think, Helen? Blasphemy on yourself!” But I ate seafood at meals for the rest of our vacation. For most meals. Sometimes. Occasionally.
