Farmville is home to many wonderful restaurants; I honestly have no legitimate complaints about the food at D-Hall, and I haven't once gone hungry while I've been a student at Longwood. But no matter what anyone says, no place has better food than my hometown.
This seems to be a common opinion among college students. Not that King George County (my hometown) and its surrounding areas have excellent food but that their own hometown has better food than anyone else's and that it definitely has better food than Farmville.
I once talked to a girl from Lynchburg who proclaimed that a restaurant there had the best Japanese food in the world — I'm pretty sure Japan would have something to say about that. This sounded ridiculous to me, until I caught myself thinking about how I probably knew of a better place in Fredericksburg. Then I realized I was just as guilty of hometown food bias as anyone else.
Recently, I've caught myself in the act of bragging about food from home. I'm pretty sure everything I believe about my favorite restaurants is shaded with the most intense brand of hometown pride. And sometimes I think this love of food from home comes off as ridiculous.
Here are some of the statements that I have recently made that I think are good examples:
"The Fasmart next to my old high school has the world's best fried chicken."
"Aries, the owner of my favorite Italian Restaurant, is the Greek god of pizza!"
"I won't eat seafood if I'm not within driving distance of a major waterway —it just tastes so much better straight out of the Potomac."
"If you haven't been to Carl's Ice Cream in Fredericksburg, you haven't lived."
"Don't even get me started on my mom's macaroni and cheese!"
Really? I've been bragging about fried chicken from a gas station! To anyone who's not from the same town as me, I'm sure this sounds ridiculous. No one is going to drive to King George to sample the cuisine. Honestly, they probably shouldn't because I'm sure they'd be disappointed. I think there's another reason we all obsess about our favorite foods from home.
I've tried to look at my favorite food with a little more perspective lately. And I've found that taste is almost second to memory in my preference. Maybe the reason I love King George House of Pizza so much is because my family has been following its owner to various restaurant locations around the area for longer than I've been alive. He knows everyone in my family by name. I remember eating at his restaurant at some time or another with nearly every member of my family at every stage of my life. I think it's those memories that make the crust so flaky and delicious, the cheese so melty and the toppings so full of flavor. I mean, it's still great pizza, but my personal attachment to it is what makes me think it's the best thing in the world.
The same thing goes for my seafood snobbery. I grew up watching the men in my family pull crabs right out of the river and cook them. That's what made them good. But to someone who's not used to that, just thinking that their food came out of the Potomac River could make them want to throw up.
Carl's Ice Cream has been awarded many titles in magazines and newspapers for its delicious frozen treats. I'm a fan and so is the entire city of Fredericksburg. But when I took my friend from Northern Virginia, she was unimpressed. I was taken aback. How could someone not be obsessed with Carl's? I've realized now that the same basic principle applies. Her mom didn't take her there after all of her doctor's appointments when she was little. She can't appreciate the fact that Fredericksburg has been getting ice cream from this same spot since the mid-‘40s. Now, I can respect that.
The taste of your hometown food is all in your history with it. If familiarity was a seasoning, I'm pretty sure every restaurant would use it. This is why so many restaurants claim to be as good as or better than homemade —everyone has some food from home that they're obsessed with, be it their grandma's sweet potato casserole or chocolate from a local candy shop.
So the next time you go to brag about your favorite hometown food, consider what you're doing and realize that no one else will get it. It's important to you, and it's probably delicious, but the person you're talking to already has a favorite restaurant, and you're not going to change their mind because the one in their hometown is the best in the world.
