Eating on vacation

Since I am not, for the most part, cooking on our virtual vacation, I thought I would write a little about what we are eating while I'm taking a vacation from the kitchen.

I packed snacks and cereal (the individual boxes that I remember from my childhood trips to the beach) to eat in our hotel room Friday through Sunday in the Outer Banks, but we ate most of our meals out. The last time we were in the Outer Banks of North Carolina (two years ago) we found a restaurant we enjoyed so much that we've been talking about driving down there just to eat at the Rundown Cafe (MP .5 on the beach road) ever since.

They serve a fabulous fried coconut shrimp that you can get either as an appetizer or meal with French fries. And if you ask, they'll even serve the shrimp over salad greens ($15). Fried shrimp of any kind is a balance between coating and shrimp. Too much coating, you can't taste the delicate shrimp. Too little and it's a wasted effort. Too soggy and the whole dish is awful. But the Rundown Cafe gets it just right, with a crunchy coating laced with coconut. But what really makes the dish is the coconut sweet cury dipping sauce/dressing.

Over the years I've tried to replicate the recipe. I've tried recipes for coconut shrimp from scratch. I've tried several different brands of frozen. And I've tried making my own coconut dipping sauce. But none compare to the coconut shrimp at the Rundown.


Otherwise, our meals at the beach we nothing to write home about:
An egg/potato breakfast at the restaurant at the Nags Head Pier (MP 12 on the beach road) that were a bit greasier than necessary but good, although the atmosphere couldn't have been better -- a table on the screened porch overlooking the pier and the surf.
Cheese pizza at American Pie (MP 9.5 on the beach road). I've had better and I've had worse.
LT sandwich (a vegetarian BLT) and fries at Bob's Grill (MP 9 on the bypass road). I'm picky about my tomatoes, and these were mealy and had clearly been refrigerated. And while I love French fries of all kinds, my least favorite are the kind that are batter dipped and seasoned, like these were.