Charleston restaurants: there are duds among the gems

I like to tell you about good restaurants in my global travels. Now let me tell you about a bad one, or at least one to be careful with.

Vickerys in Mt. Pleasant has a lot going for it. A great view of the marsh through floor to ceiling glass windows. You look out on working shrimp boats, mixed with a few tourism boats. There’s a lot happening here, and it’s one of the better restaurant views you’ll see.

It has excellent service, too, and a nice ,coastal ambience. There are a lot of young people here, and they seem thrilled to be alive.

Unfortunately, Vickerys also has pork chops the consistency of vulcanized horse hide.

I’m sitting here gnawing on one now, for breakfast, because I’m too lazy to get up and go out. It wasn’t any better last night. I had the waiter bring me some gravy in the hopes of making it palatable. That helped, but I still had to saw through it like a reef shark to get it off the bone.

I understand pork chops are sometimes difficult to tenderize, but this one was advertised as a juicy, center-cut piece, and I jumped on it. Now, I’m sitting here in bed with it, me and my pork chop, dipping it in cold, congealed gravy out of a styrofoam, to-go box.

This sort of breakfast isn’t unusual for me, but this one is real work. My head shakes with the effort of tearing the meat off the bone, and the veins stand out in my neck. If humans were to eat pork chops like this on a regular basis, we’d have hinged jaws like hyenas, and the raw biting power of polar ears.

I’m thinking of stepping out on the balcony and flinging it at one of the shrimp boats passing by.

This particular piece of meat will be around when insects rule the earth. I don’t think I’ll eat the rest of it, even if I could. I think I’ll keep it to show people, so that they may know the power of the Lord. Maybe I’ll sell it to NASA. This is a tough piece of meat.