Al-T's

   After driving all day and all night, what is the first thing a trucker does when they stop and get out of their truck? They start looking for another place to sit down. That’s an old trucking joke, very old, but not far from the truth.  And the best place for a trucker to sit down after battling traffic, bad weather and distracted drivers is at a table or counter where good food is being served.

   It’s been said that truck stops serve the best food and that may have been true at one time, but these days the good old fashioned truck stop diners have been replaced by fast food— only good for filling up an empty belly. Lost is that Mom & Pop feel and that once was an important part of the American trucking landscape. I should know, I was on the road for twelve years. 

 

   The hardest part of the job was being out there; away from home and family. This isolation gave rise to the need to be connected. C.B. radios gave truck drivers a way to communicate and commiserate with one another without having to stop the truck and sit down across from one another to do it. Misery loves company; or so they say. 

 

   It was too many years, and too many miles ago to know exactly where I was headed but I do remember I was driving northbound on Interstate 65 in Kentucky when I heard a truck driver on the C.B. start talking about the best food he’d ever had. The driver’s name, or handle, I never got, or can’t remember, is more like it— but he was from south Louisiana (that I could tell from his dialect and his passion for food in general). But he carried on and on for miles about some place called AL-T’s Seafood & Steakhouse in Winnie Texas. He carried everyone else on channel 19 right along with him that night.  I have to admit, I got caught up in his enthusiasm too and so, eventually, I started making mental notes. He talked about the freshness of the food at Al-T’s, the seafood at Al-T’s, especially about how folks cooked it like “they was cookin at home”.  The roux was of a particular fascination to the driver, and oh how he carried on about the roux, how perfect it was, how this roux made the best gumbo he had ever had.  He went on about roux and gumbo for at least another hundred fifty miles.

 

   Now I know a thing or two about gumbo. I know that the mere mention of the word evokes in me memories of my mother and Christmas Eve. Mama made gumbo every year at Christmas, which we feasted on after mass on Christmas Eve. Mama’s gumbo was what I was craving when I parked at the truck stop on the Interstate 80 junction near Gary, Indiana. I knew I would not find any gumbo there, I also knew that my mama was gone and whether I was home on Christmas Eve or not, she was not going to be there making the gumbo. I also knew that as soon as I could, I was going to be hopping off I-10 in Winnie, Texas to find out what all the fuss was about concerning Al-T’s. 

 

   It didn’t take me long to get to Winnie. I was in good with the freight brokers and dispatchers back in those days so they hooked me up with a load back down to Dallas and from there it was a hop, skip, and a jump down to Houston. I left Houston one evening, headed east on the road to nirvana. 

 

   Al-T’s was everything the mystery driver on I-65 said it would be and it’s still like no other place I have been while on the road.  Al-T’s is not a truck stop-- in other words you’re not eating out, you’re eating in.  And it may be the best place to eat along any road in the USA. Since my first time there, I never missed an opportunity to stop and eat at Al-T’s, and if there is one thing in this world, that a truck driver loves to do, its pull up a chair, sit down and eat. 

 

Al-T’s -Winnie, Texas, on Interstate 10 between Beaumont and Houston.

 

Al-T's Seafood & Steakhouse
Just off Interstate 10 • Winnie, Texas, USA
P.O. Box 1458 • Winnie, TX  77665-1458
(409) 296-9818