The world's smallest martini

We discovered on our drive back from Miami that you don't have to be on the water to have adventures.  When Rob and Carol joined us last weekend they raved about a restaurant they found in Florence, South Carolina, called Roger's.  So on Wednesday we drove the 650 miles from Miami to Florence in anticipation of a great, local dive, Carolina barbecue dinner.  Only to find out that Roger's is only open Thursday - Saturday.

So we asked the desk clerk at our hotel for another suggestion.  She gave us several, we visited two and chose the second.  They took our name, said it would be 20 minutes, so we went to the bar.  Now he should have known better (the most prominent feature of the bar was 100 beers nestled in ice, just waiting to be served), but Jim ordered a martini.  The bar tender poured one shot of gin in a shaker, then poured the gin into the glass, no shaking, just pouring.  The martini glass was 1/3 full.  I wish I'd had the presence of mind to whip out my cell phone and take a picture.  You wouldn't believe how puny that drink looked!  

But the gin had barely touched the ice during the pouring process so the drink was room temperature.  As Jim said, it was a good thing that it was the world's smallest martini, because it was also the world's worst martini.

Then on the drive to Oriental we discovered a barbecue place for lunch.  Good barbecue but what really set this place apart was the James Beard medal hanging on the wall by the door, complete with the invitation to attend the awards dinner in 2003, the year they won.  I've never actually seen a James Beard medal before and certainly never expected to find one on a North Carolina back road in a dumpy barbecue shack with a tin replica of the top of the Capitol building on the roof.  I love the back roads of America!