TP, have any stories/memories of Pea Soup Andersen's?
I adore Pea Soup Andersen's! Hap-pea and Pea-wee
(Do you get it?), working hard to split the peas for your soup!
That place is fantastic. The original one is near Solvang
(Buellton?) as I remember, we went to it a few times in the 60's and 70's. But the most memorable one for me was the Santa Nella location on that desolate stretch of I-5 up the Central Valley. So many family road trips on that freeway coming and going in the 70's and early 80's when my folks were still alive, during and after my little sister graduated from Stanford. We always got the "Traveler's Special" with each meal, which was about a $1 add-on to any sandwich or entree, and it included a glass of milk, coffee or tea, an ice cream shake for dessert with a ridiculous paper straw that collapsed into mush on about the third slurp
(decades before straws were a culture war issue), and an endless all-you-can-eat supply of pea soup with a little wicker basket full of different Danish crackers and butter pats. Do places even still do butter pats? That's a lost art.
My father, a proud Swede, would invariably mention to us after a visit to Pea Soup Andersen's as he was merging his giant Lincoln back onto the freeway that lunch was great and the Danes were good people, but they were
ever so slightly inferior to the Swedes for.... a bizarre and endless array of reasons that could involve anything from modern furniture design to cheese making to the effective management of SAS airlines. While my mother smiled patiently in the front passenger seat until she could interrupt him with the bold announcement
"Look, cows!".
There was also a Pea Soup Andersen's I used to go to in Carlsbad right off I-5 at the flower fields when I was coming/going to the family beach house in La Jolla, but it closed in the early 00's and became a TGIFriday's of all things. Except TGIFriday's was too cheap to retheme it, so it still has this giant Danish windmill towering above it for no good reason that must be very confusing for younger yet thematically aware freeway drivers.
But the absolutely
MANDATORY event for us with any stop at Pea Soup Andersen's was the family photo in the plywood cutout in the parking lot of Hap-Pea and Pea-Wee
(Seriously, do you get it? Tell me you get it.) splitting the peas for the soup. Honestly, if you didn't get that photo, you can't really say you have been to Pea Soup Andersen's.
Driving alone and just had the Traveler's Special for lunch? Ask a stranger to take your photo, they won't mind!
