My crack research staff and I enjoyed a memorable Memorial Weekend. Our hotel was one of the Strand's newest, the Grey Poupon-colored Anderson Ocean Resort.
With its Spanish-styled color scheme, the Anderson stands out like...well, like a gourmet-mustard-colored thumb amongst the predictable aquas and grays of Ocean Boulevard's skyline So does its matching multi-story parking garage. The garage stands a full block away on Oak Street (valet parking available), but thanks to the spicy brown color-coding, you'll have no difficulty figuring out which parking garage belongs to the resort.
As with so many other gourmet items that have become common in our society, gourmet mustard, when it first became popular in the 1970s, struck many of us pragmatists (I was a very young pragmatist back then) as...well...off the mark. I remember the first time a friend's mom (I'm thinking it was Buddy Theilen's mom, but I could be wrong) slipped some Gulden's on me. My reaction was, "Wow! That's sure unique. Now can you hand me the real mustard?"
But like good mustard, as with $4.00 coffees and bottled water, when the product is not just gimmicky, but a true re-imagining of the original item, given time, a great new version of a product ends up changing the definition of the product itslf. What at first seems ridiculously extravagant gradually comes to seem not a reasonable variant, but the standard for the product itself. Such is the Anderson's class and impressive service that by the time we left the Resort on Monday morning, it seemed as though it was the rest of Myrtle Beach that needed a paint job. If mustardy paint brings this sort of quality to Ocean Drive, then bring on the Gulden's!
Many thanks to the ever-helpful and gracious Kimberly Miles at the Myrtle Beach Chamber and Visitors Bureau.
