let's eat!

today, i ran over to taylorville (20 miles)to get my tb injection. life in a small town. you can do nothing without driving somewhere else. :).
tomorrow, i will drive to decatur to get the brakes on the van changed and the belts looked at. (35 miles).
if you want to go out to eat, you go to vandalia, decatur, springfield, litchfield, or somewhere else even. you can plan on driving for an hour before you get to a decent restaurant. there are some restaurants in pana, don't get me wrong, but they are just "edible" food.
we have mickey d's. real name: mc donalds. um hmmm. even little pana has a mc donalds. we also have dairy queen. a little diner place that is only open until around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. and the greasy spoon truck stop, the rosebud. it has been there forever. some days their food is quite palatable. others...well, be glad they serve beer too. lol. pana bowl serves some fairly good sandwiches, but the buns always fall apart. they are too dry or something. but they have breaded ravioli. i don't know if it is baked or fried, but i really like it.
a wanna be buffet bar is out there next to the pana bowl. dang, i am old. i cannot remember the name. it has a bar in the back. they tried to be a family restaurant once before, but did not do too well. if you get there when the food is set out, it is an all right meal, but then it sits there for a bit and isn't so all right.
pana family restaurant is owned by a guy from somewhere else. not india, or iraq. palestinian?? i don't think so. but he is foreign. the food used to be REALLY good, but it certainly has changed.
they serve food at the bars uptown, but i have not eaten it. bob's steak house just changed hands, but i have never eaten there. and the chinese restaurant used to be pretty good until they went buffet. the flavor of the food went totally downhill.
when a restaurant opens here, and the food is really good, for some reason they don't get the business they need to stay open. and it can't be the cost, because most of them have been fairly reasonable.
oh, i forgot the mexican restaurant. their food is on the pretty good list, but if you go to decatur for theirs, it is much better.
we used to have a taco bell, in the gas station, but they closed a long time ago. we don't have a chicken or a fish place. we do have three pizza parlors. pizza hut, pizza man and maustell"s. they have some fairly decent pizza too. especially maustells crispy crust. yum.
life in a small town. if you want to go out to eat, don't wait until you are hungry to decide. it's going to be at least an hour if you want something good.