re: Brace yo'selfs fo de comin' yankification.

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Ah, grits--the apogee of southern culture.

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Your smugness says a lot about your preferences. If we want to talk culinary achievements and preferences, I live in the heart of immigrant country here in my part of Florida. We live on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, with seafood sources galore. The native population has been usurped by refugees from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, PA, NJ, NY and other places North, Midwest, and East. They outnumber the FL natives, bring their accents, their dollars, their total misunderstanding and lack of appreciation for what is Southern/Florida culture and cuisine. Restaurants around here don't offer anything that could be considered by Southerners as well-seasoned seafood, good fried seafood, or anything else with flavor beyond a small shake of salt and pepper. Oh, yeah - at daring moments they pour pepper and tabasco into the pan and call some things "Cajun blackened" this or that. But this is in no way like unto anything we'd recognize in LA. The preferred restaurants are places like Olive Garden, Applebees, Bob Evans, and other similar generic/sysco-laden national chains. The fish of choice down here divides between talapia and mushy grouper. Nobody has even heard of speckled trout. Fried shrimp is always an expensive disappointment. And if some restauranteur does have the nerve to offer something that resembles flavor, you can be sure you'll hear accented people complaining about how it's "too spicey!" It's depressing.