BREEZY RIDERS
SI KING AND DAVE MYERS HIT THE ICONIC ROAD…
As American road trips go, they don’t come much bigger than Route 66 – more than 2,000 miles and covering eight states from Illinois to California. And there are plenty of new tastes to enjoy along the way, as Si King and Dave Myers found when they hopped on a pair of Harleys and headed west. We had a chat to find out more…
What was it that appealed to you about doing this trip?
Dave As motorcyclists and best mates who were fans of Westerns as children, I think it was long overdue, really! It’s something Si and I had talked about doing if we got time, but it seemed to formulate really well into a TV series. A lot of the food clichés in America are true – there’s a lot of chicken wings, burgers and tater tots! – but we did find some gems.
Did you find the food quite a diverse experience, then?
Si I think there are two layers of US cuisine – corporate American food, which is just there for maximum profit and not much else, then, below the surface of that, you get true American food, which is defined by the multicultural people who’ve settled there, delivering that food with pride, love and attention to detail. But we did have to wade through some rubbish to get to that!
Dave We visited the Bosnian community in St Louis. There’s a big family restaurant there, and they cooked us Bosnian food with a US slant – that was really good. And there’s a burger joint just outside of Amarillo called Angelo’s – it’s well worth saving your burger action until you get there, I say!
You must have met some fascinating characters, too…
Si People were very willing to tell us their stories, which was great. When we do Bikers, we’re just conduits for other people’s stories – and that’s
what we want to put across: it’s not about us, it’s about them.
Dave One lady who stood out was Dorothy – the matriarch of a Navajo family. She kept her distance at first, but after she saw we were happy to muck in, at the end she gave us a big hug. “I’m adopting you,” she said. “You can tell people you are part of the Salt Clan Navajo Nation!” That’s magic – how many people get to say that?!