...and it's goodbye from us! Hello!

After a little bit of thought and a whole lot of hard work, we've realized that the time is long past to leave Blogspot behind, get our own domain and make this here blog of ours look more amazing - well, amazing, period - and easy-on-the-eye and generally professional-looking. Plus this should stop those annoying "service unavailable" 503 errors that people keep hitting.

So, it's with a heavy heart, heavy mainly because of all the hard work behind the scenes coding and copying and pasting and migrating 450-odd posts over to the new site, that we have to ask our friends, fans and followers to update their subscriptions, RSS feeds and bookmarks, because the post that you thought you might be seeing here today will instead be seen at our shiny new site over at Wordpress. The address is simply http://marieletseat.com , which, for those of us who just had business cards printed three months ago, is a bit of a pain in the neck, but that's the trouble with progress, I guess.

The new site gives us just about everything that I want at this time. One unfortunate sacrifice is the CommunityWalk map that you are used to seeing at the bottom of each page, as Wordpress and that java-thingumajig don't play well together and the new site does not support it. But what we lose there we more than make up in other functionality, including quick links at the top of the page to our most frequently-visited cities and states, and nice, shiny sticky posts of the most recent three entries. We've also dropped some of the less-frequently used labels or tags, and given you an easy way to follow our silly tweets, which also alert followers to new posts over at The Hipster Dad's Bookshelf and Thrillpowered Thursday.

The blogspot site will remain here, since that'd be kind of rude to the sixty gajillion people who have linked to chapters here to just delete it. And, in truth, many - many - of the links at the new site will point back here to blogspot until I find the time to update them all. (Just doing the barbecue page and Urbanspoon's data has been a chore enough!) But it won't be updated anymore, and comments here are turned off.

I do want to take this opportunity to publicly thank all of our many readers, supporters and commenters. We've received several emails and comments from complete strangers telling us that our adventure in eating more interestingly has inspired them to do the same, and that makes it all worthwhile. We've received some compliments from people like Creative Loafing's Cliff Bostock who've been doing this for years, and some playful teasing from the likes of Tom Maicon, who showed off how a dyed-in-the-wool sushi snob would respond to our inexperience with the cuisine. We've made the acquaintance and friendship of several fellow bloggers who share this wacky hobby, and enjoyed the spirited competition of Urbanspoon's leaderboards - did you know that, as of today, we're ranked # 59 of 6194 blogs, worldwide, and only one other blog in the Southeast, The Cynical Cook, is ranked higher than us? - and taken back roads we'd never have thought to take if we weren't encouraged to share what we find with our readers. This has been a blast, and I can't wait to see what will happen next. Thanks so much for making this so incredibly fun.

That address again is http://marieletseat.com . Don't delay, click now! See you there!

Fuzzy's Taco Shop and ADD Drug, Athens GA

I got stymied for the umpteenth time with this one place that I wanted to eat in Athens. Let's not go into it now. Maybe the time after next.

Anyway, on one of my previous trips to town, I noticed that a big sports bar was going in the space near the Morton that had previously been home to that tapas place. Actually, I don't think that it registered then as a sports bar; I just saw that it was a taco place. I've always got time for a taco place, but I somehow wonder whether Athens is large enough to have room for a new one. In college towns, you occasionally see a little friction between established restaurants with a lot of history, the fun and trendy new places, and the out-of-town interlopers who come in and suck business away, particularly downtown. Fuzzy's is definitely in the latter category. It's a chain from Texas with, at the time of writing, forty-eight locations in ten states, all of which have cropped up since 2005. The Athens store is their first in the southeast; a second, in Charlotte, is due to open in the spring.





These are California-style tacos, available with nine different meats. I ordered a two taco plate, which comes with a guest's choice of two sides, and settled on tempura shrimp and grilled chicken. The shrimp was sadly quite bland while the chicken was much more agreeable and interesting, but neither of them possessed a flavor that stayed with me for very long. I did like the texture of the chicken, and I really enjoyed the salsa. I was asked "hot or cold," and figured that to be some kind of euphemism, or fun Fuzzy's slang, but no, this place will serve you steaming oven-hot salsa for your chips, which was certainly unusual.

I've got nothing against newcomers. College is where you're meant to ground your memories and let nostalgia bring you back. To that end, I'll always be loyal to the much-loved Taco Stand. Sampling this revealed some interesting new things, and the staff really demonstrated that they're out to have a good time, but this place will be making memories along with today's undergraduates, and not occasional visitors back to town like me. For folk in my age bracket, the downtown Taco Stand is still there, and I spent the next hour or so with a curled lip, wondering why on earth I'd let my "try new things!" desire lead me away from a place that I would have enjoyed more.

Sometimes, though, even the old reliables will let you down a little. A visit to America's finest comic shop, Bizarro Wuxtry, most certainly did not let me down at all, happily. I'd been pinching some of my disposable income pennies and bought some books that I'd been wanting, including Dark Horse's really great new hardcover collection of Milk & Cheese by Evan Dorkin. I enjoyed catching up with my friend Devlin, and then I made my way over to ADD Drugs in Five Points to get a milkshake at their lunch counter. I love how they call it a snack bar. What I don't like is that I ordered a pimento cheeseburger with lettuce and tomato, and then struggled to find any meat in the darn thing.





The sad reality is that over the sixty-some years that ADD has been with us, the amount of meat in their burgers has thinned away to practically nothing. They still mix up a fantastically good milkshake, and I think it's one of my favorite places in town to just sit and people-watch and have fun small talk with the servers. But the burgers that were pretty good once upon a time, when the large neighboring space that has been home to the Earth Fare for so long was home to a different grocery store, perhaps Bell's if my memory serves, have fallen upon very hard times.

I drove home thinking that if I wanted tacos and a burger, then I should have gone to the Stand and White Tiger. Ah, well. We'll get some barbecue when Marie and I go to town next, and in the meantime, I had some fine new books to read, and at least I got a terrific milkshake out of the deal.

Bay Breeze, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about Bay Breeze, a locally-owned restaurant with two branches. We went to the one in Marietta on a lunch date with some of our neighbors. There were quite a few tween and teen girls in the party plus the baby, so as you can imagine the party was a bit on the loud side, but the restaurant has their floor space divided up into a few sections so hopefully there was at least a bit of a sound barrier. Regular readers may remember that I prefer to write about desserts, and have no fear, there was a rather magnificent dessert involved in this trip – but more on that later.

Bay Breeze is a seafood restaurant that is in head-to-head competition with another locally-owned small chain restaurant, the Marietta Fish Market. They are within a mile of each other, and there is a billboard advertising the other restaurant looming over the parking lot of Bay Breeze! Also, if you look at the reviews you will see a rather interesting number of positive and negative reviews that just happen to mention the other restaurant. I don’t know the whole story, but there is definitely some history between these two places. I have it on rumor that their owners used to be friends, and that a squabble over who would be planting a seafood restaurant on Canton Road caused the present impasse.




That billboard's been there since the restaurant opened.

Bay Breeze is a family style restaurant with a great big fish tank and lots of floor space. There is a good deal of ticky-tacky nautical style decoration, including a fountain coming out of a boat, but the set up is comfortable otherwise. The portions are generous but not big enough to choke a horse, and the prices are reasonable. While this is not really the place to go if you want health food, the meals I’ve had here so far have been tasty.

This time I was in the mood for something to clog my arteries and got the fried shrimp. It came out hot, crispy, and just hit the spot. The fries and cole slaw sides were OK. However, the more impressive lunch was on the girlchild’s plate – due to some exceptional behavior the previous day, she was allowed a slice of chocolate cake for lunch. It came with ice cream drizzled in chocolate sauce, and was far too much for her to handle, although quite delicious. We wound up taking more than half of it home.

Overall this is a good place to take families, with reasonable prices and convenient parking and tables. It’s also generally got good coupons floating around, doubtless because of the rivalry keeping competition going.

Bowen's Dairy Bar, Henagar AL

Real life had interfered with our plans in a calamitously disagreeable way back in December and January, and while we kept on trucking and did not let it inconvenience us too much, it did mean the cancellation of two out-of-town trips that we had planned. One of these was going to incorporate a visit to what is possibly the last surviving Kay's Kastles, a once-thriving ice cream chain that now only seems to exist in the town of Soddy-Daisy, a little north of Chattanooga. Perhaps we'll make it back sometime. I mentioned this to my mother, who never, ever objected to stopping for a treat at a Kay's Kastles in, say, Rome or Fort Payne, and she said that she had half a mind to take a side trip to this Kay's the next time the road takes her to Chattanooga. She says that she really loved Kay's grape milkshakes.

This was on my mind when we found ourselves in the town of Henagar, atop Sand Mountain, hoping that a dairy bar called Bowen's was still in business. We left Scottsboro after our curious detour to the Unclaimed Baggage Depot, and made our way to AL-35, crossing the Tennessee River via the simply amazing and spectacular B.B. Comer Bridge. This wonderful old steel truss bridge (seen in a YouTube video here) has been rated structurally deficient and is in the process of being replaced. Northbound traffic from Sand Mountain toward US-72 and Scottsboro goes across a newer bridge, lessening the load that this beauty must carry. It will apparently be demolished later in the year, so readers only have a few months left to see it.



It was only a couple of miles' detour to find Bowen's, which opened in the early 1960s. The business is closed from Sundays through Wednesdays, and I guess that I only phoned to ask whether they were still in business on one of those days. The top of Sand Mountain may be home to the possibly unfair stereotype of an out-of-control problem of methamphetamine use, but it's certainly not the home of a thriving social media scene. I figured that if I could indulge the ladies in a lengthy detour to that big thrift store, then they could indulge me in a fifteen-minute jaunt to see whether an old dairy bar was still in business.

Happily, it was. That said, there's nothing to it. If you, dear reader, have a passion or a curiosity for timelost little places like this or its similarly timelost cousin restaurants around the southeast - see the "dairy bars" label for other examples - then it is certainly worth the detour up AL-75 to visit Bowen's. If the countryside terrifies you, then you'd best stay inside the perimeter. In the days before interstate fast food, little roadside places like this were simply where the locals came for a hamburger or a milkshake. Those that survive, unheralded and unchampioned, still perform a fine service, giving the people of the community a place to come together on a surprisingly hot Saturday afternoon, taking a break from farm work. I'm not aware of any other restaurant around for miles and miles. It's simply where the locals go. Well, locals and oddballs like us who go a long way out of our way for the same sort of soft-serve cone that interstate chains serve. Nevertheless, as we got our cones and incredibly tasty cherry milkshakes, I told the nice lady who ran the place how grateful I was to see that Bowen's was still in business as time marches on.

An SUV pulled up while we stretched our legs, kicking up a cloud of dust. More ice cream was obtained, and the dust had not settled before the family was on their way.

When we returned to town, I told my mother that I couldn't help but notice that they sell grape milkshakes here. Henagar is just a half-hour, if that, from Fort Payne. She says that the next time she goes to visit her cousin Judy on Lookout Mountain, she'll phone me for directions.

Circumnavigating Alabama - Postscript

After finishing our quick visit to Huntsville, I had hoped to visit a couple more barbecue places in northeast Alabama, and so I used Google Maps to chart our way home. Then, unlike our "whatever happens" drive to Nashville the previous afternoon, I looked around Urbanspoon and hammered down two more places to try. This served as a "postscript," if you like, for my "circumnavigation" of that state two weeks prior, hitting a few more places that I couldn't have found at that time.

The first of these was a nice reminder of why I enjoy barbecue restaurants so very much. It is more than just the taste or the people, or the very real sense that, unlike just about any other food in America, no two places are anywhere even close to being the same, thanks to radically different recipes and preparation styles. If you'll allow me to ramble, in many barbecue joints, there is a real sense of history, that businesses can and often do last long beyond the fickle finger of fashion. There is a trend that we all notice if we live in a cosmopolitan, world-class city like Atlanta - don't you laugh; we've had two NHL teams - and keep an ear open for restaurant news and trends. Chefs get restless and bored and thrive on press and attention.

I think that it's part of the semicelebrity culture, but the impression that I often get is that a chef - slash - owner's attention lasts only as long as the rush of the crowd, or 27 months, tops. Oh, sure, there are exceptions - Hugh Acheson, for starters - but seriously, how many articles at the restaurant or real estate news blogs do you see in an average week that mention somebody notable opening up some new place, which also mention things like "Chef So-and-so, whose previous ventures include..." and then name some place that you always intended to go visit, but never did, and now it's closed. It's why, when, two months ago, three reputable blogs that I enjoy reported each others' rumors that a presently-trendy eatery on Edgewood was soon to close - it hasn't - I thought that would be a great shame, but I also wasn't very surprised, either. That's just how this business operates.

If barbecue places worked the same way, then this hobby would be radically different, and no fun at all. Take Atlanta's Old Brick Pit, for instance. Once upon a time - the mid-seventies and into the early eighties - that place was nationally known. As restaurant critics and writers in cities like Chicago and New York finally stopped eating at places on the fortieth floors of downtown skyscrapers and ventured, blinking, into rural America to see what this "barbecue" that Calvin Trillin had spoken of was, Old Brick Pit and Harold's were the places that the nationally-syndicated travel and culture writers visited when they came this way to learn about that peanut farmer who was running for president, and maybe see a game played by this town's first NHL team. This wasn't a flash in the pan; the newspaper-driven world sent thousands of travelers, tourists and locals to its door, in a way that small-audience bloggers and hobbyists like us can only dream about. An as-long-as-Blogger-still-exists Google link ain't got nothing on a dozen mentions in The New York Times over five or six years.

In time, the Old Brick Pit's reputation and fame faded. They still serve up some pretty good barbecue, albeit most probably not as good as it once was, but that business continues long after its time in the spotlight has faded. And that's what I was reminded of as I enjoyed a terrific sandwich at a little shack called Mary's Pit Bar-B-Que, somewhere between Gurley and Maysville, east of Huntsville out US-72. Once upon a time, this place was amazingly well known. A writer named Mike Kaylor befriended the Toney family in the early 1980s. Writing for the since-shuttered Atlanta Weekly, Kaylor wrote several articles about barbecue culture and road-tripping, in much the same way that we do today, and found many opportunities over the course of several years to single out Mary's Pit Bar-B-Que for his audience. Looking about, I see traces of that still around. A blog whose writer should seriously be using Urbanspoon called The Great North Alabama BBQ Quest visited Mary's late last year. This blog, incidentally, despite its quite limited scope, is one that I highly recommend. If it doesn't make you want to spend a week around Huntsville just eating beyond your capacity, then there is something very, very badly wrong with you.





Mary Toney opened her restaurant in 1957. She and her then-husband felt that they needed a little help getting their preparation just right, so they called in the services of a man named Walter Jordan who was known, quite seriously, as the "Master of the Hickory Pit." Mrs. Toney is still living, although the business is now managed by her younger son, Jeff. I happily thanked Jeff for a fine meal, because this was even better than the really good food that we had enjoyed a couple of hours earlier at Little Paul's.

We ate at a picnic table outside. The shack has just a few bar stools and a counter inside, and a window in the back, as it's principally, and unsurprisingly, a take-out joint. This was in sharp contrast to the meal we'd enjoyed about 24 hours previously at CBQ in Smyrna, where we were next to a smoker, between a car dealer and a traffic-packed highway. Here, we relaxed on a rural country lane, with a creek behind us and green, green grass all around. We let the baby put his feet in the grass and watched as he tried desperately to stand on Marie's shoes instead. We also ate a little. The ladies were happy with their desserts, while I was taken with the crunchy and tangy vinegar slaw and the thin, hot sauce. This was an absolutely terrific little getaway that reminded me, in the best possible way, of all those fantastic little middle-of-nowhere joints around Athens, Georgia. If you seriously think that there's a better way to spend a really nice, warm Saturday than with your family, eating barbecue outdoors, you are mistaken.

After our break, we returned to US-72 and continued east to Scottsboro. I had entirely forgotten, until we saw a billboard, that this is the home of the Unclaimed Baggage Depot, an enormous thrift store run by a company that buys freight after the airlines that have lost luggage have paid claims on it. Personally, I found it highly-priced and not even close to being like the weird and eccentric black hole that Roz Chast depicted in a fantastic comic strip that she did for The New Yorker - it's reprinted in her collection Theories of Everything, which every library should own - but Marie and our daughter loved it and would have happily spent another four hours there, given the time. We've penciled in a return trip for them, in fact, which will give us an opportunity to try some of the other barbecue shacks in the community beyond the one that we visited, Tate's.





Tate's was my fourth barbecue meal of the day - the ladies had now retired and waited impatiently for me to finish so that they could get their shopping going - and it was definitely the spiciest. In a moment of slapstick comedy, I spilled the tiny cup of thin vinegar-tomato sauce on the picnic table. The wood instantly soaked the vinegar right up, leaving the red peppery residue behind. It is also a take-out only place, the whole cinder block building being taken up by a kitchen. I was pleased that they offer Brunswick stew, and don't make any silly claims about that Gibson fellow brewing it up.

I'm afraid that Mary's was so darn good that Tate's, not quite as smoky or as moist, could not help but compare unfavorably, but it was still a perfectly fine recipe, and the ladies who were working that day were incredibly friendly and nice. They pointed me in the direction of the Unclaimed Baggage Depot, and were sweet enough to give me more sauce after I acted like one of the Three Stooges on their picnic table.

The present plan is to return to Scottsboro in three weeks' time and give Marie and our daughter many, many hours of shopping. We'll see if I can't come back with visits to another couple of barbecue places and dairy bars to share with all you trendy, cosmopolitan types.





The interactive map at the bottom of each of our pages displays every restaurant featured on this blog. A separate map of just the barbecue joints can be viewed here. Have fun with it!

The Barbecue Dynasty of Huntsville AL

Ever since we started this blog, I have wanted to go back to the great city of Huntsville and pay a visit. I had only been here once before - like millions of kids around the southeast, I took an overnight middle school field trip to the Space and Rocket Center - and did not really remember anything about the city. What we found was a very charming and busy region, with a run of sprawl south of the downtown area along US-231 that's pretty ugly but also decently managed, with a limited access highway running in tandem with the light-controlled avenues beneath it. We visited on a day with gorgeous blue skies contrasting the ring of the southern Appalachians that border the urban area, and it just felt peaceful and relaxed and, honestly, didn't show us a bad side. Huntsville is the home of a couple of minor, minor league sports teams and a hospital with a monorail, and it's where some of Big Bob Gibson's kinfolk have carried on his tradition with some interesting barbecue joints.

To be honest, this is an area that (again) needs more investigation and involvement than we were able to give it on a family trip, even one where we made five stops in Alabama before coming home. After a long breakfast in Nashville, we took I-65 south of that city for about an hour, and got off at exit 1. This took us through the twin towns of Ardmore, Tennessee and Ardmore, Alabama. It is pretty country up here, and I'm glad that we took these two-lane blacktops through these nice communities rather than staying on the interstate. Had we done so, we would have easily made our way to the original Big Bob Gibson's in Decatur, and perhaps undertaken a more thorough sampling, but we entered Huntsville from the north instead, and tried some of the places that his nephews and great-grandchildren started instead.

I did learn one remarkable claim. It's well documented that Gibson claimed the origination of white barbecue sauce for smoked chicken. I've not heard a particularly strong challenge to that story. But would you believe that he also seems to want to be the fellow who came up with Brunswick stew?





Let me skip forward a bit and explain that one of Bob Gibson's daughters started a chain of Gibson's barbecue restaurants in Huntsville, not stepping on his uncle's toes in Decatur, where Big Bob Gibson's restaurants rule the roost. It would appear that these are not as common as they once were, and I only spotted two of them - there were, at one time, four - on our visit. One of the former Gibson's locations is now home to Little Paul's. Interestingly, the building, right across from a large hospital, was constructed as a pharmacy several decades ago before Gibson's moved in. There's a little plaque by the door commemorating its history. Paul Sanford, the great-grandson of Bob Gibson, and his family painted over the front when they moved in back in 2002, but a close look still shows the "labelscar" left behind by the old Gibson's lettering.

Little Paul's has a reputation as one of the most popular barbecue joints in town, attracting the attention of many bloggers, both locals and travelers, including Davwud's Food Court, among others. Our visit found some darn solid food, prepared with lots of love and attention for a really busy Saturday crowd. I ordered the chopped chicken, hoping to sample the Gibson's-pedigree sauce over the meat for which it was originally prepared, and was very pleased with it. The chicken was moist and juicy and the sauce was quite wonderful. I had it with some vinegar slaw that was out of this world. Interestingly, they prepare both vinegar slaw and more traditional creamy, mayo-based versions.

The most peculiar side available, however, is Brunswick stew. As I've commented before, very few barbecue places in Alabama offer this dish, and some of those that do, such as Real Pit in Greenville and Hog Rock in Wetumpka, call it "camp stew." But my initial, pleasant surprise at seeing this on Little Paul's menu was tempered by the suggestion that it is made from Big Bob Gibson's original recipe. I asked the fellow at the register, and he "confirmed" that, yes, Gibson is the man who first concocted Brunswick stew. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but that simply isn't true.

I passed on Paul's stew - like three or four disagreeable places in the Atlanta suburbs, it is not a "side," but a separate, premium item - but when we made our way down to the second stop a little while later, they offered a lunch special of a sandwich, Brunswick stew and a drink. This was one of the two Gibson's restaurants that are still in town. I picked it as it was the further of the two away from Little Paul's.





Actually, while there appear to be two "Gibson's" in town, there are also two outposts of "Big Bob Gibson's" and one store called "David Gibson's," plus Little Paul's place. When we came through town, we passed by the Space and Rocket Center, awakening an interest that Marie had in visiting that she did not know that she possessed. Maybe one day, we can do that, and when we do, we should see whether we can tackle the town's non-Gibson barbecue!

The Gibson's that we visited was the one that other bloggers have not really written about. Huntsville's two local writers - Dining Dragon and Huntsville Plate - have told us about the Gibson's that we drove past. We went to the one on Whitesburg and, honestly, I didn't enjoy it very much.

I did, on the other hand, appreciate just how interested the staff here was in telling me about the Gibson dynasty, and how they smoke their pork for twenty hours over hickory. The nice woman at the register was quick to debunk Little Paul's claim that his great granddad invented Brunswick stew, which was nice. The white sauce was not bad and the stew, quite thin and packed full of meat and potatoes, tasted good, but the meat, sadly, tasted limp and tasted old. I'll assume that this was just a bad day, but this was no way to carry on the legacy of such a big name in the region's eating. Little Paul's had the atmosphere and vibrancy of a new and exciting restaurant, and Gibson's felt every one of its fifty-two years.

We were not entirely done with north Alabama. There was a little more barbecue to be had, and some interesting discoveries to be made as we made our way out of town on US-72, but more about that in the next chapter.





The interactive map at the bottom of each of our pages displays every restaurant featured on this blog. A separate map of just the barbecue joints can be viewed here. Have fun with it!

Return Visits to Two Favorites in Nashville TN

It worked out that on our trip to Nashville, I had an appetizer at one restaurant, a main course at a second, and a dessert at a third. I think that I'd do that every evening if only I could.

We drove up on a Friday for two reasons. Mainly, we wanted to try the fish tacos at the popular Mas Tacos Por Favor, which we visited on our previous trip to Nashville and which are only available on Friday nights. A secondary consideration was dining on our way home the next day; more than half of the places that we ended up stopping that Saturday afternoon are closed on Sunday. We always have to bear that in mind when we are traveling.

Sadly, our friend Brooke, who wanted us to try these fish tacos, was called into work Friday evening and wasn't able to indulge with us. They were every bit as good as Brooke suggested they'd be, and even better than the very good ones available down by us at Kennesaw's Buckhead Burrito Company. They're fried tilapia, underneath the restaurant's usual mix of veggies, and served with a wonderfully tasty smear of spicy remoulade. Tory and I each had one, while my daughter had chicken and Marie had a side order of plantains. I also had the evening special of a cactus and chorizo taco, and darned if that wasn't even better than the fish taco. Those two were a terrific way to start the evening.



Marie and I have said before that the very best restaurants are the ones where the staff looks like they are having a terrific time, like there is not one thing that they would rather be doing than making food and serving guests. I'm hard pressed to think of any restaurant, in any town, where the crew is having as much of a blast as Mas Tacos' employees and owner seem to be having. If some disgruntled employee wants to tell me I'm wrong, then I'll tell that joe that they need to be in pictures, because they sure fooled us. The crew was backed up, having just finished a ridiculous carry-out order of a hundred tacos, and the short line in which we waited rapidly filled up behind us. To help out, guests in the line started passing orders from the window to people who had already grabbed tables. The place was a complete madhouse, and everybody there was having a ball.

As our seats were needed, we vacated our space just as soon as the last crumb was finished and made our way to Pepperfire, as recounted in the previous chapter. I had my "main course" here, while Tory, Marie and our daughter waited until the third location on our agenda for theirs. This would be the wonderful Pied Piper Eatery. Granted, I have not been to this Pharmacy that everybody in Music City is raving about, but until I am proved wrong, I think this is the home of the best burger in Nashville. But burgers were not on the agenda this evening; in celebration of the ongoing Festival of Dairy, Marie wanted the restaurant's unbelievable grilled cheese sandwich.



This indulgent little gem is still called the Clay Aiken, even after the Pied Piper has revamped their menu and I'm even less sure who the heck Clay Aiken was, other than "cheesy." Seriously, when our grandchildren look to their version of Wikipedia, Mr. Aiken's principal contribution will surely be "inspired the name of the best grilled cheese sandwich you ever had." This place also has the best fried pickles in Tennessee, so I don't know what the heck Marie was doing ordering broccoli with her meal.

Now, about their menu revamp: it is amazing. The menu is a "used LP" in a protective sleeve. Seriously, you get a 12-inch "record" with the food selections on both the A- and B-sides, an inner and an outer sleeve and a beat-up clear cover to keep the dust off your precious used vinyl. The designer of this menu deserves a medal. Even though I just had a simple milkshake, I read every letter of that package like I was looking for a special thanks credit for Steve Cropper.

We love the music theme at this restaurant, and sat at the Janis Joplin table. We told my teenage daughter that the last time we were at Pied Piper, so disagreeably long ago, we sat at the Culture Club table. She said that she didn't know who that was, and so Tory, Marie and I all sang "Karma Chameleon" to her, very loudly. We've embarrassed that child before, and will surely do so again, but I don't believe we'll ever top the peak of mortification scaled with this effort. She curled her lips so tightly that she kissed the back of her throat before beating a hasty exit, not returning until her face returned to a healthy red glow.