The Flying Roll Chicken House

Last night was the big night before my hardcore diet starts. I wanted some homemade, Southern fried food and I got some... Sean and I went to The Flying Roll Chicken House for dinner. We got around 7:00 Sunday night. We walked up to this cute little red barn looking place with a picket fence and a windmill in the front. We were greeted as soon as we walked in the door. It looked better on the outside than it did on the inside, but I think that was the point. There were funny signs everywhere with roll sayings on them and they were playing honky tonk music that I wanted to sing along to. They sat us in the back room, it wasn't very busy for a Sunday evening.

I looked over the menu and they had your basic Southern grub - chicken fried steak, pot roast, fried catfish, smoked chicken, chicken fingers, and of course - their signature fried chicken. I had been craving pot roast all day long so that's what I chose. Sean was brave and went with the fried chicken (neither of us eat stuff with bones in it). Our waitress was either a) really tired or b) really lazy. The poor thing could not multitask, she had this really empty look on her face, and she sounded like a robot. I let it slide since it had probably been a long day for her, Sunday diners are the worst.

She brought our salad, er, shall I say ranch with lettuce bits, out when she took our drink order. It was just regular iceberg mix drenched in ranch dressing. I had a few bites just to test the dressing but I already knew this wasn't a "get full on salad" kind of night so I didn't waste any belly space on the green stuff. About 6 minutes after we got our drinks, the food arrived. Now that is one thing that never happens. Seriously. It was that fast. Robot-girl handed me a plate of steaming hot pot roast that was about the size of my head and Sean got a huge portion of fried chicken. She then sat our sides down - green beans, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, and gravy - all in bowls with enough for 2 people. See, the cool thing about The Flying Roll, the sides are bottomless. I scooped some of the sides onto plate #2 because #1 was covered with the pot roast. *make oinking noise here* The green beans were perfect, you can't really mess those up. The creamed corn was real creamed corn, not that stuff that comes out of the can with pieces of kernels and really sweet goo. It had this familiar taste that I couldn't figure out but finally decided it tastes like oatmeal, pretty yummy. The mashed potatoes and gravy were average but that didn't stop me from having two helpings. The Roll-boy came by and chunked two rolls at us, I had already designated Sean as the catcher, I was sitting at a bad angle. The pot roast was wonderful and really hit the spot, it wasn't too fatty or greasy and the gravy was perfect, not too salty, not too thick. Sean's chicken looked good, I'm not a fan but I did take a piece of the skin to see how it tasted. It was good, not better than my Mama's, but very good. Oh, they did come around with scoops of freshly fried okra and homemade apple butter. I tried both and they were both pretty tasty.

I think I ate about 4 pounds of food. It was a great way to kick start my diet today and remind me why I'm dieting in the first place. I had a stomachache for about 4 hours after that but it was well worth it. I will most certainly be going back because Toddles wants to try the chicken fried steak, I just won't be cleaning both plates this time...