A Feverish Ending

The World Cup mania is all but forgotten, except on IG, where some of us who have excessively enjoyed the Euro visitors still relish their posts. However, it was these posts that sparked even the little interest I had in the actual competition, engaging me enough to watch it. Sort of.

After all the love they showed us, it behooved me, I thought, to at least try to watch some soccer. I picked the final. After dropping in on four places on the Northshore, looking for crowds of any size, much less the ones I saw on IG, I settled in at Pat’s Rest-A-While on the Mandeville Lakefront.

I had been to The Chimes, Walk On’s, which was earning its reputation as ESPN’s #1 sports bar in America. I walked in there, and the noise was deafening, the bar was full, and that was obviously the place to watch it. But it was too intense for me.  After another stop at The Anchor, which had two people at the bar, and then Barley Oak, which had eight, I settled in at Rest-A-While with about ten people glued to the game.  I stared at it trying to figure it out, and one of the waitresses asked a waiter if he had any idea what was going on. She said, "If this doesn't end soon, I'm never going to even try to watch this again."

I felt the same way and decided to focus on the food. It has been a very long time since I had been to Pat’s Rest-A-While. The brunch menu had always had good specials, and this day was no exception. They offered grillades and grits made with short rib. A fried egg came in the center. But first, I started with a cup of seafood gumbo.

I liked the gumbo. It was a very, very dark roux, with a lot of seafood in it, and a lot of rice. This was so filling I could have stopped there, but I wanted the grillades and grits.

The bowl was enormous, and a rim of grease around the edges of the grits was pretty. I love animal fat much more than the average person, but I did mop up this ring of orange grease just a bit around the edges. The short rib debris was delicious. There were a lot of debris bits sitting in a pile of creamy, cheesy grits. They were coarse-ground and hearty. It was a great combo of debris and grits. I don't want egg yolks running over everything, but I got it that way and loved it.

It was a broiling hot temp out there on the patio at the bar at Rest-A-While, but at least I felt like a participant in the mania that took over the USA for that glorious three weeks in the summer of 2026. And I closed it all out with a great meal, in keeping with our brand.

And I still have some of those videos saved. Is that so wrong?