ALL AMERICAN WALES

I knew it wasn’t going to be a big foodie weekend in Swansea, there were others commitments.  I didn’t think it would be all laverbread and crempogs; and that was just as well.  We were staying in a chain hotel with pretensions to being a boutique hotel, and since it was in the middle of nowhere, and since the weather was dodgy, it made sense to eat Friday night dinner in the hotel bar.

Now, I’m sure that people more sophisticated than me know all about Trash Can Nachos, but I had no idea.  It isn’t really a very special or inventive notion – you stick a lot of nachos in a topless and bottomless tin can, add grated cheese, sour cream, jalapenos, some tomato glop, and then the waiter drops it all out at your table into a big bowl. Who knew? 

 

Trash can pics by Caroline Gannon

Only subsequently did I discover this was a ‘thing.’ It appears to be devise by Guy Fieri, which isn’t much of a recommendation in itself, but why stop at Nachos?  It would surely work just as well with refried beans or Irish stew, or even, at a pinch, laverbread.

 

On the way to the hotel from the station we’d seen there was a Denny’s in a nearby retail park - the only one in the UK as far as I can tell. And the fact is I do love Denny’s – I think it’s a high point of American culture, so on Monday morning on the way back to the station in we went, if nothing else to see how it compared with the American original.  And the answer was, so-so.   

 

The menu was similar but there was no chicken fried steak.  Below is the Chicken Fried Steak I had last year at Denny’s on the Twentynine Palms Highway.

 

But I can imagine they wouldn’t sell a lot of that in Swansea so I ordered the American Slam – scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage, bacon.  What came was this.

 

The shrewd observer will note the eggs are fried; I’d been given the wrong, and possibly someone else’s, breakfast. But the lad who was serving (and being run ragged by lack of other staff) was apologetic and happy enough to replace it.

I think it was a bit greasier than its American cousin would have been, but it was fine.  The lighting was a bit fancier than I think they’d have in an American Denny’s – but I’ll need to go back and check that.