Banana Pudding Smackdown

Thanks to cooking with my Nanny (grandmother, not sitter) when I was young, banana pudding is one of my top favorite desserts. She made banana pudding by making pudding on the stove top first, and then pouring the pudding over layers of Nilla Wafers and sliced bananas. The homemade pudding is the key!

I rarely find banana pudding on dessert menus, and I only make banana pudding about once a year, so when I do find banana pudding, I'm all over it.

I ran into banana pudding at a bbq joint, a restaurant, and a grocery store while in Charleston, SC. Styles and tastes ran the gamut. Who won?A quick stop into Bessinger's Bar-B-Q on Hwy 17 to pick up some mustard bbq sauce, and I couldn't resist a container of banana pudding from their cooler. I enjoyed the dessert on the beach, because...what? pudding isn't a beach snack?

The banana flavored Jell-0-esque pudding is not ideal (the only banana flavoring in banana pudding should come from the bananas), but fills that cheap, junk food craving.
Fat Hen restaurant on John's Island has really good food...and a good wait to get in the door. There aren't a lot of veggie options, but what I did have was awesome. I quized our server on the banana pudding prep. Pudding homemade? Not banana flavored? Yup. Yup.

Awesome!! Just like homemade. I can't believe it didn't come in a larger mason jar (isn't that cute), and I had to share it with three other people. I hate sharing.
What's that? Banana pudding in the cooler at Piggly Wiggly? Got it. Lets go! You'd be suprised at how nice Piggly Wiggly is now a days. The ghetto Piggly Wiggly we shopped at for the first eleven years of my life was just that -- ghetto.

The pudding is Jell-O pudding-like. But it's not banana flavored, which is a big up. They also do this little trick of layering a bunch of wafers on the bottom so not all of the wafers get super soggy. Some one was thinking! Piggly Wiggly has a really good fast food version of banana pudding.

Recap:
Bessinger's - Not really
Fat Hen - Hells yes
Piggly Wiggly - Yes