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Reviews The Branch Ranch has been featured in "Eat Your Way Across the U.S.A." by Jane & Michael Stern as well as in "Roadfood and Goodfood", a comprehensive restaurant guide of the "best" place to eat coast to coast in which The Branch Ranch was one of only fourteen restaurants included from the state of Florida! Here is what these
reviews had to say about The Branch Ranch... |
| "Roadfood
and Goodfood, The Branch Ranch" The great moment is the arrival of the tower of vegetables. Five hot pans stacked nearly two feet high, set upon the table and explained by the waitress, one by one; baked yams, scalloped eggplant, yellow squash, chicken pot pie, and pole beans with ham and white potatoes. |
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In a second basket, already on the table, are little golden biscuit rounds warm and chewy. And to accompany the biscuits, orange marmalade, wonderfully bitter, with a powerful citrus flavor, plus strawberry preserves, packed with whole soft-textured berries, picked from local bushes. There is a salad tray, too, with genuine tomatoes, and there are pickled beets and crunchy bread and butter pickles, put up with lots of garlic and an alluring spice bouquet. Everybody who eats at The Branch Ranch |
| gets
all of these things, as much as they want; plus, if you are so inclined,
a slab of country ham or baked ham, or prime rib or fried chicken. Ourselves, we don't mind sidestepping entrees altogether (ordering the low-cost "vegetable plate"), although the chicken is good, so's the ham; but it's all the goodies on the side that have made The Branch Ranch a legendary groaning board. Simple cooking, plain and good. The baked squash is just that - a big yellow squash baked whole in a pool of butter and milk; soft, comforting food. The yams are gigantic, fibrous, orange blimps. The chicken potpie is a sunny casserole, shreds of meat and vegetables in milk gravy, topped with powdery biscuits. The way the vegetable stack comes to the table, it is natural for one person to stand and dole out portions, just like at some mythical American Sunday dinner, the way it probably used to be in the 1950's when The Branch Ranch was Mary Branch's home, and she used to invite friends and neighbors in to share her bounty. Mary's reputation spread fast, and the Ranch grew, and now it's a huge place with many dining rooms and tourists and a million calling cards from around the country tacked onto every bit of wall in the entryway. But it remains a lovely place to visit, a brief detour off the highway into a scenic countryside of orange groves and grazing cattle. And despite its size, it is an apotheosis of farm cooking, and honest country meal impossible to find anywhere else in Florida, a rare and genuine taste of the state bounty that somehow manages to get shipped everywhere else in the nation but to local restaurants. "Eat
Your Way Across the U.S.A." You'll wait for
a table at busy mealtime, and the ambiance can be as hectic as a college
mess
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