O-dark-thirty arrived on September 26, 2010 as we climbed into our trusty steed and headed for the high desert and the road to Reno; destination—the Gold N Silver Inn, our very first DDD spot.  Sadly, the experience was not a good one, fair at best.  Anna had Eggs Florentine which were bland and uninspired.  I just knew my life wouldn’t be complete until I sampled the homemade veal gravy that takes two days to make.  I’ve worked in some high-end restaurants (waiter) and I know all about demi-glace.  I should have tried my luck with the one-pound beef patty (which is what they made on the show) but I was afraid I would get bored with it and so I ordered the meatloaf.  Sadly, the meatloaf was bland and appeared to be nuked. The real disappointment was the gravy.    Most of the time, places with huge menus that are open 24/7 don’t have good food.  This place was good enough to make it on DDD however, so one thing or another has turned out to be a fluke.  Other than the fact that we were there at breakfast time, I don’t know what went wrong. 

It was an inauspicious start, but our server was friendly and we got an amusing story out of it.  Guy mentioned that the place had been closed only one day since they opened in 1956 (incredible).  Our waitress told us that the one day they closed—they were robbed!  So that was the end of that.  Imagine our luck to get such a juicy tidbit of insider knowledge at our very first place. 

We would have preferred to eat at Dish Café, but they were closed since it was Sunday.  If we ever make it back to Reno, I’m going to try the Awful Awful burgers and ring in on that raging food war.  We’ll also make it to Louis’ Basque Corner.

We hopped back in the car and drove up to Boise.  We logged over 700 miles that day, but there is virtually nothing between Reno and Boise except the road.  We arrived early enough to trek out to Pizzal-Chick for dinner.  I was dying to try the pizza with the homemade elk sausage, mushrooms and roasted peppers (Wild Forest Mist).  Being tired and wanting to enjoy a little wine before dinner, we decided we would order the pizza to go and take it back to our room near the airport.  The best laid plans…

If you’ve never driven through Boise, let me give you some good advice… don’t drive across town at night without GPS.  I’m no slouch at navigation, and I had printed up a handy little map before we left home; trouble is we landed in downtown (off the 184) and drove off the map into a maze of one-way streets.  We managed to make it to Pizzal-Chick, but it wasn’t until after a lot of cussing and me yelling at poor Anna to read the map (in the dark).  I’m sure everyone in Boise is having a good laugh about now.  Boise is a beautiful city and we loved visiting there, but the navigation can be horrendous.

We made it back to the room, changed clothes, poured some wine and sat down to relax and unwind from the long day’s drive.  Although the pizza was no longer hot, we finally got around to opening it and having some dinner.  There we sat munching on our pizza.  After a few bites, Anna said, “There’s no sausage on mine, how about yours?”  I said, “There’s no sausage on mine either,“ but I was enjoying the mushrooms.  We opened the box and inspected the rest of the pizza… there was no sausage.  We called back and told them, and even though it was after closing time, they apologized for the mix-up and offered to make us another pizza.  Well, we weren’t having any more of that Boise driving, and we were in for the night.  We told them we would swing by the next afternoon.  It’s not that the pizza wasn’t good anyway, but we had traveled far for the elk sausage, and didn’t want to leave town without it.  We had a full day planned, and didn’t know how we were possibly going to squeeze in another pizza, but we would have to make it work somehow.

We snuggled into our beds for the night and that was the end of the first day touring our beloved Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives.  We were already up to two places.