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All of this traveling has made Andre hungry, and we don't want a Hangry monkey on our hands! So today's prompt is about food, and the best place for our buddy to eat in your town!

What food or foods are your town/area noted for? What's the prevalent cuisine? Where is your favorite place to eat out in your neck of the woods?

I mentioned some of the more important food places (the ones that also offer fine fermented and/or distilled adult beverages) in last week's entry, here: "A Tour of the Town" . To reiterate, there are several purveyors of glorious nectar that also serve delicious meals.

As Charlottesville is a university town, it attracts a wide range of cuisines. Just off the top of my head, in addition to what can only be described as American food, we have Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Belgian, French, Indian, Afghani, Mediterranean, Italian, and several others. There also used to be an excellent South African restaurant (with a bar), but, sadly, it fell victim to the pandemic. That's of course in addition to various familiar fast-food and casual chains.

Oddly enough, one thing we lack is a Denny's. And when I was in college here, we didn't even have a Waffle House. We had to get our late-night bleary-eyed food fix from Hardee's and a local deli that's not around anymore. Now there's a Waffle House less than a mile from me, and I haven't ended up there in years.

You don't "go" to Waffle House. You "end up" at Waffle House. It's right next to a Taco Hell, and I call the driveway between them "Desperation Alley."

While there's no one prevalent cuisine -- though at one time, you couldn't throw a chopstick without hitting a Chinese restaurant -- we're serious about our restaurants here. Someone told me once that we have more restaurants per capita than New York City. That seems to not be the case -- sources vary depending on how one defines the local population and what sorts of restaurants we're talking about, not to mention the ever-changing landscape of food service -- but we certainly have a lot of choice here. Obviously on an absolute basis, NYC has more and more varied eateries, but it's also dealing with over 150 times the population (not counting tourists).

As for favorite place? Well, I don't have one. I try not to get too attached to restaurants, as they flicker open and closed like lighthouse shutters doing Morse Code. I learned that lesson hard a few years ago: my favorite restaurant in the universe was The Raven, three hours away in Virginia Beach. I'm still experiencing grief from its closing. No, stop laughing; I'm serious here.

But if you looked at my credit card statements, a) you'd be appalled and b) you'd see Timberwood Tap House standing out as my most frequent destination, right up there with Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Both of them are within walking distance of my house, and across a parking lot from each other; they both serve excellent food, and they both have a wide-ranging, varied list of beers on tap.

Of course, I mostly go to the Alamo for movies, but I also find time while I'm there to order food and beer. With Timberwood, well, when restaurants reopened after the pandemic, it became my habit on Mondays to walk over there, sit on the patio, and enjoy lunch with beer and music. Even when it was cold outside.

But I like variety, and those aren't my only destinations. There's a local Mexican chain called Guadalajara, for instance, one of which is in walking distance in the other direction, and of course they also have tequila.

And of course Three Notch'd, the brewery, is only two miles away. I'd walk there even if I had a car, because, well... beer.

I can't leave this without calling out one of my other local regular vendors of victuals: Bodo's Bagels. They have three locations, and some say their bagels are superior even to the ones in New York. To which I can only say: spend more time in New York. Regardless, they're very good, even if they don't serve booze, and even though it is the sort of place where you can hear people complaining at the next table about food as cultural appropriation whilst eating a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel.

And hey, if you get bored with the local fare, Richmond is an hour's drive away, and DC, two.

Now I'm hungry. I'll resist staggering over to Waffle House, though.