When I was a kid, I remember being taken to my first family cookout. I probably wasn’t super hyped about it, so my dad tried to get me excited by saying, “They’re gonna have hush puppies there.” This did, in fact, work, but probably not for the reason my dad thought it would.
I guess I wasn’t a super smart kid, because I heard “hush puppies” and immediately thought of a bunch of puppy dogs who were completely mute. I got excited to see these mute puppies in person. You can only imagine my disappointment when I arrived at the event only to learn that the term “hush puppies” actually referred to fried bread balls.
Despite my initial disappointment, I actually quite enjoyed the hush puppies, even if it wasn’t as interesting as interacting with real mute puppies. To this day, I really enjoy eating hush puppies whenever I get the rare opportunity to eat them.
So I was pleasantly surprised on my first visit to the restaurant Cookout when I found out I could get hush puppies as a side dish. It’s coincidentally fitting that a restaurant called Cookout serves hush puppies with their food, and a cookout is exactly where I first ate them.
However, my nostalgic memory isn’t the only way Cookout lives up to its name. Like a real cookout, there’s so much variety on the menu. You know when you go to a family cookout and it seems like every member of the family cooked everything in their pantry to bring to the event? You get the same kind of feeling staring at the menu of Cookout.
That feeling is enhanced by the actual taste of the food, which feels authentically cooked and not some re-heated pre-made food item that’s been sitting on a shelf. The burgers and hotdogs taste grilled, the French fries taste, well, fried, and yes, the hush puppies taste pretty great.
I think the icing on the cake of the experience, though, is that your food is served in a styrofoam container. Cookout recreates that feeling of picking up a styrofoam plate in the food line at your family gathering, only, you don’t have to put the food together yourself. You get all the pleasantries of a freshly grilled, cookout-style meal served on styrofoam without any of the hassle that comes with an actual cookout.
However, as great as their hush puppies are, I think seven-year-old me would still be disappointed that they didn’t actually have mute puppies.
