what I ate last: BBQ ribs, fries and slaw from Mustang Oil
What is it about the ribs from Mustang Oil that is so much more glorious than the ribs from any other heart-stopping artery-clogging Southern diner? How soft and melting yet crisp and chewy, not too much sauce, those melt-in-your-mouth layers of fat around the knuckles...And accompanied by the best slaw - fresh, crunchy, easy on the mayo, green with flecks of orange carrot and red cabbage, and those inimitable cajun fries. This is how dream-food tastes.
Today we hit Mustang Oil at just the right moment, early on, when the fries have just been cooked in preparation for the lunchtime rush and only a scattering of folk sit at the formica tables. Just after we sat down and started to eat, the place filled up with redneck men in grubby jeans, steel-toed boots and baseball caps, from the local metal fabricating company, the John Deere tractor centre, and a few farms and building sites. This place lives at the edge of glorious and worrying in its perpetuation of the stereotypes of Southern life. Grunts of acknowledgement are exchanged, the odd joke, the women behind the counter get to work shovelling chicken, ribs, cheeseburgers, the daily special (today: pork chop and gravy) onto plastic plates. We munch on through our ribs acknowledging the one or two men who we recognise (a local dairy farmer, the man who fixed the lights where we live) and chat to the tiny, wrinkled, slightly crazy old lady who cleans the dishes in a grease-stained Mustang Oil t-shirt and a pink hairnet, and a passion for the Auburn football team.
This gas station diner could not exist anywhere else - its name, its food, the severed stag heads adorning the walls, the battered pick-up trucks pulled up outside. If any of y'all are lost in West Alabama, head to Greensboro and eat the best ribs, fries and slaw ever at Mustang Oil.
Today we hit Mustang Oil at just the right moment, early on, when the fries have just been cooked in preparation for the lunchtime rush and only a scattering of folk sit at the formica tables. Just after we sat down and started to eat, the place filled up with redneck men in grubby jeans, steel-toed boots and baseball caps, from the local metal fabricating company, the John Deere tractor centre, and a few farms and building sites. This place lives at the edge of glorious and worrying in its perpetuation of the stereotypes of Southern life. Grunts of acknowledgement are exchanged, the odd joke, the women behind the counter get to work shovelling chicken, ribs, cheeseburgers, the daily special (today: pork chop and gravy) onto plastic plates. We munch on through our ribs acknowledging the one or two men who we recognise (a local dairy farmer, the man who fixed the lights where we live) and chat to the tiny, wrinkled, slightly crazy old lady who cleans the dishes in a grease-stained Mustang Oil t-shirt and a pink hairnet, and a passion for the Auburn football team.
This gas station diner could not exist anywhere else - its name, its food, the severed stag heads adorning the walls, the battered pick-up trucks pulled up outside. If any of y'all are lost in West Alabama, head to Greensboro and eat the best ribs, fries and slaw ever at Mustang Oil.
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