Spend local

I have a theory about people who eat at Olive Garden and think it’s Italian food. I believe they are the same people who get a hickey and think they’ve received oral sex.

The most interesting things within a half mile of Greenville, South Carolina’s Tito’s Pizzeria are a gas station and a former convent. The little white structure is about as inviting its previous neighbors. To the casual passer-by, Tito’s looks like it could’ve once been a porn shop, or at best, a tattoo parlor. That is, if you’re an average careful American, you’re going to drive right by Tito’s and drive the extra two miles down to the ever-familiar Olive Garden for soup and bread sticks. It’s all you can eat!

A couple of months ago, the family was tired and hungry. We didn’t feel like cooking for ourselves. We wanted food that would make us happy. We wanted good food. We had a choice to make.

Here’s a short list of places within a five-minute drive of our home (not including fast food):

The closest of all those places is Tito’s. So we went and we found the best Italian food in the city. Fresh food, made on-site, never frozen, and an off-the-menu ziti bolognese that is out of this world. Meanwhile, a bunch of people lined up at the Olive Garden for their hickeys.

It’s not hard to understand how the McWendy Kings of the world have ruined eating so successfully. The ability to open a location on every street corner gives them mass produce food such that it can be sold for less than a dollar. The fast food places turned into the Mass Food places and Americans forgot how to eat well. For coming from place that has so easily co-opted the cultures of food rich countries, mass produced American food outlets have done a poor job of teaching average Americans how to eat.

Yesterday afternoon, I took the family to one of the older Indian joints in town. India Palace is one of the first places I ate in Greenville. It’s a friendly place with good food. Just across the street sits the Open Book, the biggest independent book store in Greenville. We spent more than hour inside. I picked up a book by local author Ron Rash. In the span of three hours, I’d contributed more than $100 to the local economy. It felt good.

Inside the book store sat a photocopied magazine article that suggested out of every $100 spent at a chain or franchise store or restaurant, $15 stays in the local economy. However, the article said, if you spend at a local place, $45 of the $100 stays local. I can’t vouch for the veracity of it, but it sounds nice enough for me to feel good about spending local.

I have no great motive for telling you all of this except that I really wonder why–other than sheer convenience or fear–people choose to frequent the Red Lobsters and Oliver Gardens of America. Sure, my family is guilty of it, too, but we’re making every effort to spend as locally as possible.

So, why, when you could put a dollar in your neighbor’s pocket do you choose to give it to somebody you’ve never met? Why when you could eat something fresh do you choose to eat something that comes frozen, in a bag, off a truck?

Why do you want a damned hickey?