In our travels in North Carolina today, we experienced some southern cooking and southern hospitality.

We stopped in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, for lunch at Gardner’s BBQ buffet. It wasn’t exactly what everyone had in mind, but it proved an amazing experience.

Am I using that phrase in every blog post this trip?

The food was good. Not gourmet or incredible but all the southern classics were represented. New Brunswick stew, collard greens, chicken necks, black eyed peas, barbecue, liver, hush puppies, fried chicken, ribs, good old American Mac and Cheese…

The teenagers both had some liver. That impressed me.

Service was phenomenal. The waitress was very patient with my talkative daughter who thought she could be grown up and have unsweetened iced tea instead of southern sweet tea.

She even gave us beverages for the car ride.

And the girls? Can’t get used to Southern accents.