Most anyone who has ever vacationed in the Florida Panhandle has probably driven Highway 331 through rural South Alabama at some point. If so, you know that It Don’t Matter Restaurant is the first sign of civilization this side of Luverne, Ala., once you pick up Highway 331 in Montgomery.
I’ve commented several times to my beach buddies as we’ve breezed past the diner that one day we needed to stop there. But due to its rather humble exterior and questionable cleanliness, we never have.
Last year, on family vacation I repeated this goal. It was driving me crazy wondering what inspired that name. What was it that didn’t matter? (My sons rather cynically suggested it was either “good hygiene” or “food poisoning.”)
So last week, driving home solo from vacation, I rolled into the gravel lot of It Don’t Matter.
What I had always thought was just a gray mobile home with a low-slung covered porch built across the restaurant’s front was actually the entrance into a two-story stone building. There was a dining room at road level and basement below. One of the cooks, who was out on the porch having a smoke, greeted me with a big smile and asked where I was from.