Pancake Pantry, Nashville TN

Nashville has not made an appearance in this blog before now, despite it being one of my favorite cities and one which we try to visit at least twice a year. It's absolutely packed with good restaurants, great people and some wonderful friends, and I wasn't about to consider a trip to Memphis without swinging back through Nashville to shop, visit and eat.

We left Memphis on Sunday evening after supper and, thanks to the combined forces of Bonnaroo and the CMT Fan Fest distracting every single state trooper in Tennessee, were able to break the land speed record and get to Davidson County in a little more than two hours. The flip side of this is that, thanks to the combined forces of Bonnaroo and the CMT Fan Fest taking over most of the hotel rooms in the region, we had a dickens of a time finding someplace to sleep. Eventually, we wound our way south down I-65 to Franklin, not too bad of a drive back to Nashville's southern neighborhoods for an early breakfast at the extremely popular Pancake Pantry.

I've eaten at a fair number of pancake restaurants over the years. I think that between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge there were, at the last count, one pancake restaurant for every 6.4 residents, so there have been plenty of chances to load up on flapjacks for breakfast over the years. But darned if I've found a one of them as downright wonderful as the Pantry, which is brilliantly located right across the street from an amazing used bookstore which demands the attention of every bibliophile in the southeast. This time out, we learned a great secret about the place: if you arrive before 8 in the morning, you stand a good chance of avoiding the line.





We were coming up from Franklin to meet our friend Ashley, who actually lives north of the city in a lovely little out-of-the-way place called White House. We were running a little behind schedule, which isn't like us, but we were in Franklin, plus Marie wanted to check the air in our tires, plus I-65 was delayed by an accident involving a deer. Everything was working against us, so I was a little worried about that damn line.

One of the city's alt-weeklies once suggested that you know you're a true Nashvillain if you spend better than ten hours each year standing in the line at this place. Happily, we learned this time that the trick is to get there before 8 on a weekday, and you can avoid it. (People of Nashville, please don't change your routine based on this new information. We are early risers and don't like lines, so us knowing and you ignorant works out fine for us.) When we came back to the neighborhood after shopping elsewhere, we saw that the line had grown to its usual gargantuan length, which was nice because I didn't see the point in photographing the outside of the restaurant without the inclusion of people standing in line.

Actually, the really surprising part to this trip was learning that two of our friends in town are not, in the eyes of the Metro Pulse, true Nashvillains. Neither Ashley nor Tory, with whom we'd have lunch a few hours later, had ever been here before. On the other hand, I felt a little better about arriving fifteen minutes late since Ashley didn't have to stand in the line at all.

But here's the deal: people don't just stand in lines because they like standing in lines. Not outside England, anyway. People spend an hour or more waiting outside, oblivious to the weather, because the food here is so darn good. When we were last here, the previous October, Marie had the buckwheat pancakes and was enthralled by them. This time out, she had enjoyed some buckwheat pancakes back at Cafe Eclectic in Memphis the morning before, so I ordered them for myself and she got something even more extraordinary.

Marie says that she should have remembered from the previous visit that the portions are ridiculous, but ridiculous portions are part and parcel of this job. The restaurant offers a variety of three-pancake plates with various fruit compotes on them, so on a wild hair, Marie decided to try one each from three of them. They were delivered on individual plates - well, they'd have to, in order to keep the fruits separate, but it did mean that Ashley and I had to stack our food a little awkwardly thanks to Marie taking up about two-thirds of the table.

The pancakes are really remarkable. They are light and fluffy and absorb syrup well, but the compote did not make them soggy. The peach and cherry were awesome, but the raspberry best of all. They also come with this really remarkable sweet whipped cream. Marie was reluctant to try it at first on the theory that the food in front of her was already too much but relented on seeing the expression on mine and Ashley's faces after we tried it.

I think we're in agreement that a more sensibly-sized meal in the future would be two raspberry pancakes and a side of the whipped cream. Possibly with a little corned beef hash on the side. There may not be room. However you stuff yourself, the neighborhood is not a bad one for a ten or fifteen minute walk after breakfast. We don't take enough walks; maybe we should eat here more often and force the issue.

Coletta's, Memphis TN

On the Sunday we were in Memphis, I chose to wear my Zeb Dean's T-shirt. I packed it even before we established the bizarre truth that Marie had not selected a barbecue restaurant for us to try. It's just that I'm going to carry my home town pride with me, and even though Danielsville's not my home town, I wasn't about to visit a barbecue-happy city like Memphis without wearing my local colors somehow, much in the same way that I want to pack my Bulldog shirt when I'm in somebody else's football town.

We were at supper when it got a comment. I was in the lobby of Coletta's, an Italian restaurant that was, once upon a time, built out in the middle of nowhere but is now just a hop up the exit ramp from I-240, reading one of the many newspaper reviews that the place has received in the last eighty-seven years - it is the city's oldest continuously operating restaurant - when a fellow behind me asked "Where is Danielsville?"

I told him it was about twenty-five miles north of Athens, Georgia and he told me that if I liked barbecue, I should definitely try his. It's called Willie Mae's Rib Haus, and it's in the Arkansas suburb of West Memphis. I told him that I regretted that we'd be leaving town in about two hours' time, heading the opposite direction on I-40, because there are few things that I like better than a personal invitation to come try somebody's barbecue. So don't let me forget, Marie, the next time we go see your sister, we owe a fellow in Arkansas a visit for supper.

As for Coletta's, this place really is a sight. It doesn't look like a restaurant at all, but one of those cinder-block package stores you find in my father's anecdotes. And the food is good, make no mistake, but this is a place you need to see to get the full effect.





If you'd like to see what Coletta's looks like inside, go catch a rerun of The Rockford Files or Quincy or some other '70s Universal cop show. You know those smoky dives that every PI and policeman in Hollywood manages to visit to get some tip, where the bartenders wear red jackets and there's some hideous orange upholstery on the couch near the restrooms with the giant pull-handle cigarette machine nearby? The place that only stopped looking like the sixties because somebody unplugged a lava lamp? That's this place. It is nine hundred kinds of awesome. If you have any interest in this country's history of interior design, this place will knock you out. I told the manager on duty that night that I didn't think this place had changed in forty years and she replied "Well, certainly not in ten..."

I read about Coletta's over at Roadfood, and it was on the short list of three places that I asked Marie to consider for one of our meals. Idiotically, however, I completely forgot to order that $1.99 homemade sausage in Italian "gravy" that I was looking forward to trying. I was so looking forward to trying the barbecue pizza that I completely forgot about it.

Coletta's claims to have concocted the barbecue pizza, and while I can't confirm that, I'm willing to let the claim stand. It's chopped pork, served with cheese and a mild, sweet sauce on a thick, chewy crust. Honestly, it doesn't compare to the pork we had at Interstate earlier in the day, but it is nevertheless incredibly interesting and I certainly enjoyed it. I don't know that I've ever had anything quite like it!

Marie and Anne were also pleased by their meals. Marie says that the spaghetti and sauce were tasty but not out of the ordinary, but the meatballs were exquisite. They were tender, juicy, well-spiced and big enough without being excessive. The only thing about the meal that I found disappointing were the "breadsticks," prepacked crunchy strips that would not have been out of place next to the croutons on an inferior salad bar.

Coletta's was the last stop on our trip to Memphis. It's absolutely a city worth another visit sometime soon, even if Marie's sister didn't live there. I'm sure we'll be back before the road gets too long, and maybe catch a Redbirds game while we're there; that is one great-looking ballpark. I've enjoyed reading more about the city and other things to do since returning to Atlanta. If you're thinking about a trip that way, spend an enjoyable hour or so reading I Love Memphis, a great blog where a couple of the stops on our tour get a little more attention. Eat well, y'all!



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Dinstuhl's Candies, Memphis TN

This is Marie, writing the entry about Dinstuhl's because I saw the place first. We were in Memphis a little while ago to visit my sister, and since we ate well all weekend, Grant asked me to contribute a chapter to help get us caught up.

According to the rumors, Dinstuhl's was Elvis Presley's candy store of choice. They carry some merchandise like chocolate records and chocolate bars with Elvis' image, but it is not obtrusive, and they don't mention the relationship on their web site, so I can only put this forward as an unsupported assertion. However, knowing what we do about the King's tastes, I can definitely imagine him coming through these doors on a nearly daily basis, or at the very least having a delivery truck arrive at Graceland five times a week.

The store carries a wide range of hard candies, fruit slices, and other non-meltable treats, and my personal favorites are the grapefruit candies and fruit slices, which is perhaps just a little wrong because their specialty is chocolates. These candies have been known to appear in the mail on important dates like birthdays. The main problem with the chocolates, of course, is that I live so far away.



The chocolates are quite respectable but the dark is significantly better than the milk chocolate. I got a few different varieties on our latest trip (though not too much, out of respect for the weather) and can say that the chocolate raspberry cream is quite intense, the caramels are deliciously creamy, and the nougat is both exceedingly tasty and very chewy. My personal beef with commercially-produced nougat (besides the lingering "eww" factor of BSE) is that it is is much too tender, but Dinstuhl's does it right. I like a bit more chew in my candies. One of the other delightful things about Dinstuhl's is that it recently acquired a Kosher rating; and in their discussion they said that they only recipe they needed to change was their marshmallows.

Dinstuhl's does sell a number of products made by other companies, like Jelly Bellies. The chocolates, brittles etc. are their own, and those are the items that can be ordered through their web site.

I did not try their chocolate covered strawberry, and my allegiance to the caramels made by a certain other place in Asheville is not shaken. However, I have enjoyed Dinstuhl's products for many years and will continue to take the opportunity to have more when the opportunity presents itself.

Interstate Bar-B-Q, Memphis TN

I'll tell you the number one, guaranteed best way to start a good-natured argument: get into it with somebody local about where the best barbecue in Memphis might be found. Folk here take their pork seriously. The locals eat a whole mess of it, with a thick, sweet sauce and lots of slaw. The strangest thing about this trip, in retrospect, was that we were in a city world-renowned for its barbecue for a good twenty-four hours before we actually had any. Marie, who mostly arranged our meal itinerary this weekend, did this before, when we went to coastal Georgia and didn't have any seafood. I love my wife, but sometimes she misses the forest for the trees.

Fortunately, while Marie might be a touch myopic about such vitally important matters, she's also the most agreeable person anybody ever met, and was happy to put one of her selections aside so we could find some Memphis barbecue for lunch on the Sunday. Her sister suggested a place called The Bar-B-Q Shop on Madison Avenue. This wasn't difficult to find; there are several instances in Memphis where the streets are laid out in the order of presidents. It doesn't always work right, but Madison Avenue is actually sort of between Jefferson and Monroe. Unfortunately, it's also closed on Sundays, like a good third of the businesses in town. Tell you what, the next time we're in Memphis, not only won't it be in the middle of a summer heat wave, but it also won't be on a Sunday.

Stymied, we went back to Anne's house and looked up a place that got good reviews and was open. Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Q seemed to fit the bill. Sadly, driving there from the midtown neighborhood takes you through some really dilapidated areas of town, but it's a road plenty of people drive. We got there around two and they were completely packed.





Perhaps I was spaced out or overwhelmed by the crowd or the decor, but I didn't leave with a real feel for the place. It really was a case of sensory overload; there's just so much going on and it is so loud. Between the World Cup on TV and the constant thudding of cleavers hitting counters in the kitchen, this place was as noisy and frenetic as a college town bar on a Friday night.

Nevertheless, between the three of us, we certainly ate extremely well. I am looking forward to going back to Cafe Eclectic one day and trying for a better meal, but while that was my favorite restaurant of the five sampled in Memphis, my lunch at Interstate was hands down the best meal. I had a pork sandwich without slaw - the only gap in the constant barrage of noise was the sudden gasp and beat of silence from the whole room when I asked my server to hold the slaw - along with a side of beans and a small plate of Mr. Neely's famous barbecued spaghetti.

Now this stuff really is interesting. It's chopped pork over spaghetti noodles with a sauce that mixes the thick sweet stuff served on sandwiches with a thinner, red spicy sauce. It was piping hot and incredibly wonderful. My tongue enjoyed the nicest burn it's had in weeks. I'd never had anything quite like it before, but, again, reputation and legend beat me to the punch. When we got back to Georgia, I told Neal about it and he said that he saw Jim Neely a time or two on Paula Deen's show talking about it. One of these days, I hope to find something new to eat that Neal didn't already see on the Paula Deen show.

We all liked this thick sauce a lot. Marie says that the only thing wrong with it was that there wasn't any on the table to put into the center of her sandwich. Although the outsides of the filling were pretty well drenched, the bread was inadequate to the task of containing the sandwich for eating out of hand, and once she gave up and started using a fork, there was just so much meat put into it there was a significant amount of pork that didn't have any coating. I think the server might have brought us some more if anybody had a chance to ask above the din.

It is perhaps a shame to lose the welcoming feeling that I'm certain Interstate must have had in its earlier days, but perhaps that's the price of such wild success. This food is completely wonderful, and while I'd have preferred a slower pace and a little more attention, I understand how these things happen. When a place gets this big on the strength of its excellent food, spirited owner and a roaring word of mouth, it's understandable that the personal touch starts to slip away.

The really crazy thing, though, is that I hear talk that there are at least two barbecue joints in town that are even better. Of course, the talk came from people who were about ready to come to blows over the matter, but at least they were good-natured blows.

Penzey's Spices, Memphis TN

This is Marie, writing the entry about Penzey's because I am the cook in the family. Penzey's is the kind of place that could make any cook weak at the knees. Imagine a room filled with wooden racks and shelves, the air scented with the smell of blended spices, and on every shelf and rack stands a glass jar containing a sample, which can be opened and sniffed and shaken. If you've ever stood in a store with a bottle or jar of something tempting in your hand and put it back because you didn't want to risk $4 or $6 or $10 on something untried, this is the answer.

The first time I visited one of their stores was on a whim, because a friend of my sister's said she liked to eat their candied ginger as a snack, and it seemed like a good way to kill some time while on our way to somewhere else. When I went inside I almost got trapped by the cinnamon. I just couldn't pull myself away without buying some to take back with me, and had to open my new jar in the car to get some more whiffs on the way, because it just made me so happy. They have four kinds, each distinctive and very individual. The Vietnamese is strongest, to the extent that you have to reduce the amount by a third in your recipes. I wound up getting the full array of baking and cooking spices that I usually use in holiday recipes. My family agreed that year's holiday's cooking, especially the spice cake, was hands down the best ever. This includes my mom, who usually makes the spice cake herself. After that year, I got to make it in her kitchen any time I wanted.

Visiting the stores in person is several hundred percent better than ordering online, even if you live where the shipping cost is less than the price of gas to get there. The main reason is the sample jars, but their website is also not terribly convenient to use; for instance, it is easier to google the recipes listed on the site than to search for them, and it requires altogether too many clicks to put anything in your basket. Once past that quibble, however, their customer service is great, and they send something free to try out with most of the orders. If you don't live in or within driving distance of one of the lucky cities that hosts a location so you can experiment a little, definitely place an order for some of your familiar basics. Also try one or two of the blends that look appealing. You really won't want to use anyone else after you try Penzey's.

I'll also note that even though it is technically true that you ought to change out your spices once a year, it's definitely true that a 2-year-old bottle of their good quality stuff is as good or better than a fresh container of grocery store ordinary. If you still need to be sure before you order, get a free catalog. They come with coupons and recipes and some really lovely pictures of food.





As a side topic, for anyone who needs to reduce salt in their diet, Penzey's is where you need to go to get back flavor in your life. They have a very large number of salt-free options, some of them just tasty in their own right and only coincidentally salt-free, and some specifically designed as something to turn to when you can't use salt. My husband puts Mural of Flavor on everything that he doesn't put pepper on instead, so the salt shaker is a very rare visitor to the dinner table, even though we are not on any salt restriction.

Penzey's spices were among the things I introduced to the family when I married my husband, acquired kids, and suddenly had the ability to cook big recipes without having to eat them myself for three or four days running. Grant says he can no longer eat bread without the Penzey's Sandwich Sprinkle blend. I cook nearly all my vegetables with one of the Italian, Adobo, or Singapore curry blends; the first time the kids fought over who was going to get the last helping of sauteed squash was sweet, sweet music. It is incredibly easy to make really flavorful and satisfying dinners even without a lot of variety in your diet, just with a handful of the blends and a little experimentation. A sprinkle of Singapore spice goes wonderfully with tomato soup, for instance, and also makes a divine chicken salad. Chicago Steak Seasoning should come with every grill sold, as a required basic tool for cooking out. The basics are very good, too. If you get some thyme, sage, and bay leaf it is sure to get used up every winter if you do any cooking at all.

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Swanky's Taco Shop, Memphis TN

You have to love a place whose mascot is the spitting image of ex-Bauhaus singer Peter Murphy from those old Maxell tape advertisements, you know? Perhaps that wasn't intentional, but once I sat down at Swanky's location in Germantown, a suburb just east of Memphis packed absolutely full of places to spend money, and saw this sunglassed guy on my cup, I was reminded of ol' grumpypants, sang a verse of "All Night Long" and enjoyed a good taco.

After breakfast Sunday morning, Marie and her sister and I enjoyed a nice drive around the city, stopping at a large chain bookstore (Bookstar, apparently affiliated with Barnes & Noble) and seeing all sorts of things. We eventually made it out to Penzey's Spices, about which more in the next chapter. Marie and Anne could easily have spent six hours and their next three paychecks here, but there's only so much looking and sniffing that a man can enjoy without a payoff, so I excused myself and walked next door.





There's really not much I can write here beyond a "first impression" capsule, since I just popped in and out for a single chicken taco and a soda to kill some time while the ladies shopped, read a few pages of the latest Flyer and beat the heat a little. Memphis was suffering an absurd heat wave that weekend; Wikipedia suggests that the average temperature in June is 91, but every bank we passed showed off a scorching 99 on its sign.

I did notice one thing that really sets Swanky's apart from all the assembly-line burrito joints in Atlanta: it has a full bar, with what appeared to be more than a dozen tequilas on offer. I don't know whether they do this at every location - there are three, two in Memphis and one in Franklin - and I don't know that the posh interior design is all that necessary for a laid-back, light meal with simple food like this, but the taco really was good, and I certainly wouldn't object to a longer meal and a chat with the owner or some locals next time. Heckuva lot better than Moe's, anyway.



Swanky's operates a second location, in East Memphis:

Cafe Eclectic, Memphis TN

Marie's sister moved up to Memphis ages back to attend Rhodes College and decided to make the city her home. Honestly, I wasn't entirely sold on the place, but there's still a lot to like about it, particularly the people. We might have found the urban decay in the city center and the areas south of town quite disagreeable, but everywhere we went, we saw people really enjoying themselves, and restaurant workers who seemed to truly like their jobs.

The staff at Cafe Eclectic might have been the most vibrant bunch of the lot. We only got to see it as a breakfast joint, but it is open well into the night, providing a kicked-back place to hear live music and drink from their soda fountain. Honestly, if the restaurant's lunches and suppers are half as good as their breakfasts, then this is surely one of the city's best restaurants, and I say that despite being a little disappointed in my own meal!





I had the porridge, because I've never had porridge before. I can't swear that I've ever even seen porridge on a menu before, but then again, I don't eat breakfast out as often as you might think from reading this blog. Maybe the old Bluebird Cafe in Athens served it. Anyway, it took several spoonfuls of brown sugar to make my porridge edible, and did nothing to dissuade me from thinking that between Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you had four people with nothing better to eat.

Naturally, everybody else had much better food. Marie had the buckwheat pancakes, and said that they were every bit as good as, but quite different from, the ones at Nashville's Pancake Pantry. They were lighter, fluffier, and not as strong. Perhaps they were a blend of buckwheat and wheat flour?

I suspect that the greatest treasures are the baked goods in the glass case up front. I had a chocolate cake doughnut which was not at all bad, but unfortunately I chose to eat it after I had finished one of their strawberry doughnuts. Oh, man. That might have been the best doughnut ever baked. Marie and I would like to try the giant puffy croissants from the glass case next time. They look buttery and altogether delightful. The scones also looked very tempting to Marie.

Cafe Eclectic is located on McLean Boulevard, just a short walk north of Overton Park and the city's zoo and, happily for my sister-in-law, also a short walk from her house. The parking's a little limited, and we got some hilarious gesticulations from a neighbor as we slowed to a possible stop in front of his house. Perhaps the next time we visit Memphis, it won't be in hundred degree weather and we can just enjoy a nice walk from her place.



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Boscos, Memphis TN

This is Marie, writing the entry about Boscos because I saw the place first. We were in Memphis this past weekend to visit my sister, and since we ate well all weekend, Grant asked me to contribute a chapter to help get us caught up.

I had gone to Boscos once before, on a trip that my brother and I took some time ago. We had eaten well and in great quantity during our visit, as well as stopping by a delightful candy store (about which more later), and Boscos was our last dinner in town. My appetite had long since left the building, and as I don't enjoy eating without one, I got a salad and envied the plates around me. As I recall on that visit my brother had something off the dinner menu that he enjoyed tremendously, and the pizzas looked great. Therefore, on this trip I arranged for us to visit Boscos before anywhere else. It helped that we arrived in the late afternoon. They do have a Sunday brunch that we will probably want to check on on the next visit, but that will not be for quite a while.

Boscos is a somewhat upscale pizza, beer, and nice-dinner sort of place. They serve a $10 individual pizza that you can eat on your own but is still big enough to share with someone (especially if beer is involved in the meal), and you may want to share if you plan to save room for dessert. Alternately, you can spend a bit more on a steak or fish or whatever else on the menu strikes your fancy. All the plates on the other tables looked good, but we were there for the pizza.

The restaurant is divided between a bar area and the dining area, probably because before cities across the country started banning smoking in public places the bar area had a thick smog and needed a wall or two (or full atmospheric scrub system) in between to allow diners the chance to taste their food. Now that the air is clear all it does is cut the noise level a bit and look pretty. The dining room also has an open window to their brewery which is mainly a view of large vats and copper piping. The pizza oven is also in sight if you have a table in the right part of the building, and the air throughout is lightly scented with the smell of the oven and the baking pizzas. Delicious.





Service is quick and friendly. We had come early enough for there still to be a few free tables as we came in (there would be a waiting list by the time we left) and the staff is trained for crowds. My sister recommended the beers and Grant tried a stout that suited him very well.

For the pizza, we chose the Palermo (sausage, pepperoni and portabella mushrooms) and Anne took the Germantown Purist (barbecued chicken and red onions), and we shared. Well, Anne declined to take any of ours, but then she could eat there any time she likes so can pass on variety in an individual meal. The crust is thin and there isn't too much sauce so it held up to the heaping mound of ingredients well. The cheese is tasty and has good texture, and the mushrooms were good, but the meats stood out the most. The sweet Italian sausage has enough flavor to accompany the huge pepperoni slices without having to stand in the background.

After some time ogling the dessert menu, Anne and I decided to share the chocolate torte cake with raspberry sauce, which was just barely not too much for us. Grant was kind enough to take only a single bite, but he inexplicably does not care too much for the combination of raspberry and chocolate.

Boscos has four locations. The other two in Tennessee are in Nashville and Franklin, and the fourth is in Little Rock, Arkansas. I can't speak for those locations, but the Memphis one was definitely worth going back to if we get the chance.



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Milo's Hamburgers, Birmingham AL

Well, here's the situation with our recent road trip to Memphis: we didn't get to stop in Alabama for some white barbecue sauce. I had a place picked out and we were looking forward to it, but mercifully, I had the sense to double-check on the restaurant, located in the northwestern town of Hamilton, and learned that they're not actually open for lunch on Saturdays. Insanity. Who ever heard of a barbecue joint that wasn't open for lunch on a Saturday? Well, I say that, but they're out there. The wonderful Hot Thomas in Watkinsville, near Athens, started a schedule some years back that's basically the least convenient set of hours anybody ever tried to open, and never, madly, on Saturday.

This left me stumped about where to eat because, if you look at US 78 in northern Alabama and Mississippi, you can see that's not a road that winds through many communities. The day before we left, however, I remembered that when we were last in Birmingham, we drove past a Milo's. I was familiar with their sweet tea, which is sold in area grocery stores and is certainly about the best available in gallon jugs, but wasn't really aware that they had a chain of fast food places. I looked them up and cross-referenced our journey and learned that we'd actually be driving right past one of them on Forestdale Road in northwest Birmingham, so we made plans to stop in.

It's a very curious little place, really. The original Milo's Hamburger Shop was opened by Milo Carlton in 1946. A second came almost forty years later, once Carlton decided to franchise the idea. Today their website lists sixteen locations in north Alabama, meaning they cover about the same region as Jack's. I find this so charming, that there's a part of this country where two fast food chains duke it out, each with more than a dozen locations but almost entirely in the same area code. North Alabama might actually be the only part of the country where this happens. Jack's has just barely penetrated west Georgia with two stores, but otherwise, as far as I can tell, both chains exist solely within the 205 area code.





Milo's serves up your basic fast food hamburger patty on a bland and ordinary bun, but they kick up the experience by serving it with the house sauce, which is really unique. It reminded me of a dark steak sauce with extra cayenne and salt. The patty basically comes dripping with that and sprinkled with diced onions. It's not at all bad, and works equally well as a dipping sauce for the fries.

I was also amused by the side item that I ordered. I saw on the menu that they offered toasted cheese. Now, this was clearly listed as a side item right above fries and only costing 99 cents, so I figured that it would be their take on fried poppers or something. Actually, it was another sandwich consisting merely of two or three slices of cheese, slightly melted and served warm on one of those bland and ordinary buns. I don't know that I've ever come across a toasted cheese sandwich being offered as a side item before.

Honestly, fast food meals just don't rise much above "okay," and that was all this was, an okay meal elevated by the curiosity of the sauce and the obscurity of the chain itself. I'm certain travelers can easily find worse meals, and none of them would let you get back on the road with a cup of Milo's iced tea. This stuff is really great, and it's amazingly sweet. It somehow tastes just a little bit better after you've been gobbling fries served with seasoning salt and dipped into this salty house sauce. You'll definitely want to get a refill before getting back on the road on a hot summer day.

I'm not sure when we'll be back in the area. Marie and I have joked for years about driving to Nashville via Birmingham, for no other reason than doing it the stupid way. We laugh, but I do notice that if we take state highways and back roads, we could get to the town of Decatur, and try out Big Bob Gibson's place, and then only be about ninety-odd minutes from Nashville. That way, I could get the supposedly original white sauce and make up for that place in Hamilton having such dopey hours. The only problem with that plan is that should Gibson also end up keeping traveler-unfriendly hours and doing anything stupid like closing for lunch, there's neither a Milo's nor a Jack's within forty miles. You've got to have a contingent strategy for operations as critical as this, you know.

White Tiger Gourmet, Athens GA

I forget where I first heard of this wonderful little place that opened in Athens last year, but it was almost certainly either from Hillary at Flagpole, or that delightful Foodieville Wordpress blog which doesn't get updated very frequently. Either way, somebody whose opinions I trust told me that there were some really good burgers waiting for me at the intersection of Boulevard and Hiawassee. My daughter and I stopped in one day in the spring to try it out and were very satisfied.

I went back to Athens a week ago for lunch and gave their burger my full attention. What a treat! This really is one of the best meals in town.





White Tiger was an early proponent of the recent craze for farm-fresh meat and veggies. This results in a pricier meal than most - a burger, side and drink will run you about twelve bucks - but this is definitely a case where the cost is worth it. They do a variety of special burgers, but I like to keep mine simple with just a few basic toppings, and the final product is just perfect, an oozing, juicy, really wonderful burger.

I had my burger with a really nice side of okra and tomatoes over rice. The burger itself, juicy and accompanied by some wonderful mixed greens, was certainly the best available anywhere in Athens, and the side complemented the taste of the beef just perfectly. I enjoyed a good book and the weather was just this side of ideal, so this was a truly good lunch indeed. I think it will be impossibly sticky and awful the next couple of months, but when it cools back down a little in the fall, a picnic lunch in this lovely old neighborhood will certainly be on the agenda.



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Early Girl Eatery, Asheville NC

Last Sunday morning, we finally came to the end of our trip in Asheville, and had time for one last meal before checking out. Prior to our first visit in 2009, Marie had read about Early Girl Eatery, and heard it suggested as a reasonable alternate should Tupelo Honey Cafe be too packed. That's really no way for a restaurant to get a reputation, and I didn't think it was fair then. Having enjoyed one of the best breakfasts I've had in months here, I'm certainly opposed to thinking of it that way.

Early Girl is located literally behind and above Tupelo Honey, with an entrance on Wall Street. On Sundays, they open at 9 am. Not 7 am, as certain incompetent bloggers with whom you might be familiar would tell you after glancing at the hours and misreading them. We got dressed and parked downtown at 7.45, realizing too late that Asheville simply doesn't get up that early on a Sunday. Making the best of things, we enjoyed a several-block walk around the town, looking in the windows of businesses that we had not seen yet. The city is perfectly suited to early-morning jaunts like this, although sadly, that great big climb up the hill behind the civic center is an absolute bear when you're as out of shape as me.

Our walk got us back to Wall Street as the first of our fellow diners started milling around, so we took our place near the door. By the time they opened, the line was forty deep. See, that reputation mentioned above is totally unfair; this place is really known as the restaurant with the knockout breakfast worth waiting in a long line.





I don't remember what Marie had. I'm sure it was very good; in fact, she declared the other day that it was even better than my meal, but she's wrong. I had the Early Girl Benny, a lovely twist on eggs benedict. Served over a grit cake, it's poached eggs, tomato, spinach and avocado with an unbelievable tomato gravy. It's incredibly light and just explodes with flavors that mix very well together. It's served with a biscuit that makes every other biscuit you've ever had surrender.

The funny thing is that I had been planning, since we walked past on Friday night and I misread their hours, to have the shrimp and grits, about which I have read amazing things. At the last minute, the Benny suddenly appealed to me and I changed my mind. This doesn't often work out for me, but if that shrimp and grits bowl is anywhere as good as these eggs... well.

Marie and I will be going back to Asheville in late July, and for the most part, I think that we want to try new restaurants instead of repeating. However, a second shot at this place sounds like a terrific idea. I really do need to try the shrimp and grits, if I can somehow manage to not order these lovely eggs a second time.

See you soon, Asheville. Don't change a thing.

Moose Cafe, Asheville NC

For our Saturday evening supper in Asheville, I turned to the regulars at roadfood.com for a little help. I knew that we wanted either barbecue or a classic southern meal, but also that the former was going to be a little difficult. Here's one more teeny thing on the "con" list about the city: if there are any proper eastern North Carolina barbecue restaurants anywhere near Asheville, they have yet to make themselves known to us.

Now, there are several Tennessee-style barbecue joints in town. There is a quite good place called Fiddlin' Pig on Tunnel Road, and I could happily spend many nights there kicked back and listening to live bluegrass. I've also heard good things about Luella's, just north of downtown, and now that I'm back home, I see that Ed Boudreaux's, which has a place downtown and another in nearby Brevard, looks to be worth a visit when we return in July. Sadly, I just can't find a whole hog-styled place with a house vinegar sauce, yet.

That left a good Southern meat-n-two supper, and a regular on the forum recommended Moose Cafe to us. This is a pretty big place with a gift shop located in front of the WNC Farmer's Market, and they do a great job and served us up right. There's a second Moose Cafe a couple of hours east in Colfax as well.





I had the country fried steak with pepper gravy and it was quite good. Marie had the fried chicken, which she likes better than I do and said it was really nice, too, but the real winner here were those pickled beets. I'm not kidding. You might think it odd to plan a meal around a side dish, but if they're anywhere close to as good as those beets, you'd be playing it smart. Marie says they're as good as the beets she gets in the Netherlands.

I am perfectly prepared to swing by the Moose Cafe for a snack of pickled beets any time we're in the area. Should fortune and circumstances allow us to move up here in a couple of years, we're certain to do some of our grocery shopping from the farmers market, allowing us the chance to bring some home almost weekly. I'm certain we'd be spending a lot of time at the North Carolina Arboteum and the Moose Cafe's not far from there. Heck, somebody could even open an eastern Carolina-styled barbecue joint nearby. It could happen.

Heck, we'll probably smuggle some into the movie theatres with us. It's better than popcorn. I suppose we might get some funny looks before the previews start, though.

The Soda Fountain at Woolworth Walk, Asheville NC

Years ago, there was a chain of five-and-dime stores called Woolworth's. Younger readers may not remember them, but they sold disposable, usless tat for low prices, and, in the days before fast food chains, were also a destination for shoppers who'd take a lunch break at what we now call an "old-fashioned" soda counter. They'd serve up quickie sandwiches and ice cream treats and maybe some of them would offer chili or roast beef or Salisbury steak. Hot meals were generally left to the larger, full-service diners of the 1940s and 1950s, with lunch counters their smaller brothers, but apparently some of them branched out a little.

The Woolworth's chain gradually collapsed under the weight of discounters like KMart and Richway, finally shuttering completely in 1997 once Wal-Mart had flexed its mighty muscle. For quite some time, the former Woolworth's in downtown Asheville sat vacant until somebody had a very novel idea to reuse the space.

The present day Woolworth Walk is a really big art gallery, featuring reasonably-priced works by dozens of local artists and craftsmen. It's an excellent use of the building space which tries to incorporate as much of the property's 1920s-30s art deco style as is feasible. In one of the best ideas in the history of real estate, the present-day owners have reactivated the old lunch counter and turned it into a darn good, inexpensive sandwich shop, with a full-service dessert counter, selling ice cream sodas, floats, egg creams and phosphates.





They've also staffed the counter with a crew that wears the finest uniforms of any restaurant that I can recall: matching black tuxedo-print T-shirts. They do a fantastic job; when we stepped in last July, and again last weekend, they ticked and tocked behind that counter like a finely-oiled machine. A half-dozen staffers are needed on a busy Saturday afternoon to keep this packed place humming.

On Saturday, I had a pimento cheese sandwich and a black-and-white ice cream soda, and Marie had an egg salad. Each of our sandwiches were accompanied by Lay's potato chips, which is probably the only thing this place does wrong. I like to have something with my sandwich, but hate that it has to be this thin, tasteless styrofoam. The sandwiches themselves were both very good, absolutely piled high with the filling, and while you'd have to be a complete incompetent to get a black-and-white wrong, the combination of the classy, tall glass and the lunch counter setting makes for a very satisfying little drink.

Following that, the real genius of Woolworth Walk's setup becomes apparent. It's not a long walk, to be sure, nor a vigorous one, but after having a nice sandwich and soda, it just makes sense to spend a few agreeable minutes walking around the two floors of artist galleries. And if you happen to find a nice gift for somebody while you're stretching your legs, so be it. It's definitely a setup where everybody wins.

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The Chocolate Fetish, Asheville NC

This is Marie, whose usual contribution to the blog is to order something my husband didn't so he can get menu envy, or to describe some experiment that made it to the dinner table and turned out well. This time the reason I am departing from tradition (and so soon after last time!) is to discuss a subject very dear to my heart: chocolate. Specifically, a wonderful little Asheville, NC business called The Chocolate Fetish.

I first heard about the place when looking for interesting things to do in Asheville on our honeymoon trip, as that town was one of the stops. We had planned a peaceful little shopping/eating visit to end our marathon multi-state honeymoon, and were surprised by a music festival instead. We had to chuck several of the items on our agenda for that trip because of the agreeable distraction, and the chocolate store might possibly have been a victim of the cut if it hadn't happened to be practically across the street from one of the non-negotiable items on the itinerary (Malaprop's, which although a bookstore, is nevertheless a possible entry -- or at least side bar -- in this blog if we can ever tear ourselves away from the books long enough to sample the pastries at the coffee bar).

I am very glad we stepped in. In fact, this store has joined the favored list. On our last visit, we went twice. Well, I did. Inexplicably, my husband was able to resist the urge to buy anything for himself. Perhaps the explanation might have something to do with my tendency to share.

The Chocolate Fetish is a lovely little place right in the middle of the charming Asheville downtown area, and has recently expanded to add more than twice the floor space. As the staff acknowledged, the prior layout was a little cramped and difficult to negotiate when crowded. The quality of their products is simply amazing, and despite the name none of the items available are in saucy shapes.

The absolute best item they have is the sea salt caramels. The store offers a wonderful package with a variety of sea salts in a mixed box of dark and milk chocolate coated caramels. We spoke to the (delightfully chatty) shipping manager, and he said in the years they have been sending their products around the country, they only lost a couple of packages to melting, and one of those was sent to Phoenix, Arizona. You should be safe ordering one of these for your very own even in summer, and it's highly recommended that you do so. You can taste the different flavorings of the various kinds of salt from one candy to the next. The chocolate itself is freshly made on location. It is beautifully smooth, sweet with just the right touch of bitterness, and the taste lingers well in the mouth.





The other best thing they have is the chocolate strawberries. Those are perfect in every way, though I recommend the dark chocolate again over the milk, just because I'm biased that way. Milk chocolate is a very good thing and often on my shopping list, but the dark chocolate from this store is so wonderful it's just a shame to dilute it. The strawberries are worthy of their coating as well, bigger than golf balls and dangerously juicy. If one of these won't make you roll your eyes back in your head and sigh, there is no hope for you!

These are just my opinion; the store has quite a number of best things. The reviews and awards they have earned have been for truffles. Now, I can't eat more than one truffle every couple of weeks at most. Caramels and chocolate strawberries can be consumed every day--for as long as they last, anyway. Your opinion about which item on their list is best is quite probably different from mine. Perhaps you would like the key lime truffle, or the chocolate covered marshmallows (good quality stuff, not grocery store cotton balls). Perhaps you like chocolate covered orange peel. Whatever your weakness, make sure to order some of it. Odds are you'll be planning a visit to Asheville, NC not long after your first bite.

Tupelo Honey Cafe, Asheville NC

This weekend, Marie and I finally got to try the Tupelo Honey Cafe. This took long enough; it has been eluding us for almost a year. Well, that's not true; it eluded us about eleven months ago and we haven't been back to town since, but it was absolutely worth the wait.

Just to give you a little backstory, I fell in love with Asheville when the kids and I came to the city for an overnight visit in 2005. Some years later, when Marie and I started getting serious, we had a discussion about our future and where we will live. We agreed to stay in the Atlanta area for the next few years, but to move just a little north, to a smaller, cooler city, after a while. Asheville was one of the cities on our short list, and so when we took a honeymoon road trip last July, we visited each of them to see what we thought. I had my fingers crossed that Marie would like Asheville as much as I do. Happily, she did. We elected to make a second, longer visit before finalizing a decision. Now that we've done so, we've confirmed that, health, jobs and money pending, we will move up here in a few years.

Prior to our honeymoon trip, we laid out a battle plan of restaurants to try along the way. Marie, responsible for Asheville, selected Tupelo Honey Cafe on the strength of dozens of glowing reviews. But when we arrived in town last July, we stumbled right into the annual Bele Chere festival and 300,000 music lovers. Downtown was a little inaccessible to people who drove in not knowing to expect that; so were the first three hotels we tried! So we had supper instead at a pretty good barbecue place out on Tunnel Road and decided Tupelo Honey would wait until our next visit.





Downtown Asheville is an incredibly vibrant and fun place, with dozens of small, local business that stay open late selling books and music and clothes and art, and dozens of restaurants, many of whom source their food from local farmers. The city attracts a huge, young, fun-loving crowd of free spirits. While we waited for a table at Tupelo Honey Cafe on Friday night, a drum circle had started up in the park across the street. There's a big traffic island between the one-way streets of College and Patton which the city has turned into a park, and the park gets occupied by musicians and performance artists from sunup to sundown.

Tupelo Honey Cafe is small enough and popular enough to result in there always being a short wait, but we had a snack on the drive in and amused ourselves watching the music and silliness, so the half hour passed instantly. And it was worth it. This food is just amazing.

The restaurant starts your meal with completely wonderful biscuits, served with honey and with a blackberry jam which is to die for. Marie had flank steak with cheesy cauliflower and declared it magnificent, and washed it down with a glass of rosemary peach lemonade, which was quite strong but very tasty.

But while her meal was completely great, on this occasion, I lucked out. I have the worst problem with what I call menu envy; invariably somebody else at my table orders something that ends up better than my selection. That didn't happen this time. Marie's flank steak was certainly great, but I had the evening special: almond encrusted rainbow trout, served with garlic mayo and tomatoes with cheese grits. I've never had trout so good. The restaurant claims that their Friday trout is just hours old, harvested earlier in the day.

Supper for two could easily run upwards of $60 here if you'd like wine, appetizers or a dessert, so it's not a place we can justify all that regularly. But we're tempted. I worked up a "cons" list about Asheville. Apparently the only negatives to living here are the number of smokers, the number of dogs, and that, wherever we might find jobs, we'll either be perpetually broke or perpetually cranky from fighting the temptation to have three meals a day here. Maybe some of our other Asheville finds will be a little easier on the wallet.



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Guthrie's, Dunwoody GA

Now here's a restaurant with an uphill battle. Guthrie's has been around since 1965, and the formula that we know them by - limited menu, incredibly tasty sauce - was finalized in 1982. They have a strong claim to being the place that invented and perfected the chicken finger restaurant formula, yet somehow they've been completely passed in the market by one of their imitators, Zaxby's. Now, Zaxby's isn't bad, and we've been known to stop in many times over the years, but when I first discovered a Zaxby's in the nearby town of Watkinsville, I described it to all my Athens friends as "kind of like Guthrie's, but with more stuff."

Guthrie's couldn't have had much less stuff at all. The menu consists of really incredibly amazing chicken fingers, Texas toast, fries and slaw, served in a handful of ways. I recall that if you stopped at the Guthrie's on Baxter Hill, you could get them in a plate, in a box, in a smaller size without slaw or between two slices of bread. Those were your only options. They were absolutely essential to the dorm dining experience. Everybody who lived in the high-rise dorms had Guthrie's all the time and those of us by the stadium regularly; so did thousands of tailgaters and high school students. The line out the door whenever Clarke Central was playing at home in the fall was every bit as insane on a Friday as on a UGA game day.

That Guthrie's was the third in the chain, which is quite successful today in its home state of Alabama, with scattered outposts in other Southern states. In the early nineties, Guthrie's opened a second Athens store, over by Cedar Shoals High School, so their students could enjoy the same Friday night craziness. This was a hugely important Athens tradition in the 1980s and 1990s, and its simplicity fueled wonderful urban legends. Some said there was a secret menu, and some said that if you left a penny in the sauce - a sort of peppery brown mayo, totally delicious - overnight, you could retrieve it polished and glittering.

Then one day in the late '90s, the Athens locations were gone. It was very abrupt and their departure fueled a whole new raft of urban legends, which I'll decline to repeat in these pages. Some stories are best left unreported, if unconfirmed. Talk radio should try that sometime.





Several years later, Guthrie's returned ever-so-briefly to the Athens region, opening a store twenty-ish miles north in Danielsville. It's gone now, but there are two stores in the Atlanta area along with the twenty-ish restaurants in Alabama and six in other states. I was working in the Ravinia building when the Dunwoody store opened in 2004 and a co-worker mentioned it. She thought, wrongly, that it was a Zaxby's knockoff. I let her know it was the other way around, but you can bet that Guthrie's glacier-like speed at expanding is going to run into that everywhere. If they try moving into Louisiana, they'll be called a Raising Cane's clone.

Guthrie's is an occasional destination for us, whenever we need a quick meal on the top end of I-285 while going out of town through Spaghetti Junction. On Friday, Marie and I had hoped to get lunch further up the road as we started an anniversary getaway, but trouble leaving work early meant that we didn't get on the perimeter until after the lunch rush had already ended, and the Spaghetti Junction backup already showing signs of starting. (You'll notice I don't say who had trouble leaving early. Maybe I'm polite, or maybe I just don't want you to think ill of me.) This store has expanded their menu just a little, adding wings and breakfast to their offerings, but what they need to do is hire somebody to straighten that place up some. Nobody ever stopped at Guthrie's wanting cleanliness - that Baxter Hill store looked like a war zone from sunup to sundown - but I'm starting to get at the age where I want somebody to get out from behind the counter and wipe down dirty tables.

Then again, it's not like this is haute cuisine; it's finger-gooping greasy fried chicken fingers, done right. You remember how one day you went through a Zaxby's drive-thru and didn't have to wait for your food and the sauce came prepackaged in a factory-made plastic cube with the ingredients on the label? Guthrie's reminds you of the days before Zaxby's got corporate enough to change into that. Or, if you will, the days before there was a Zaxby's. I hope that they're always around, somewhere, and that there will always be people who will spread the word that theirs was the better restaurant, first.

Now if only I could convince Guthrie's to serve up those fried mushrooms and Fanta Cherry that their imitator has. Don't you judge me.



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Antico Pizza, Atlanta GA

Some chapters back, I suggested that Atlanta's top five pizzerias are probably good enough to challenge any other city's top five pizzerias, or at the very least good enough for myself and a representative of Chicago to at the very least greatly enjoy every last bite of proving the other wrong. I had been hearing really great things about Antico, a teeny little place on Hemphill just down the road from Ikea, and wondered whether it would be good enough to break into my personal list of the metro area's top five.

Wonder no more; it isn't. It's still quite good, and certainly worth a visit, but I didn't leave as satisfied as I had hoped.

Antico's pies are very tasty, large enough for two, and come to around twenty bucks. They use fresh ingredients, including some amazing cherry tomatoes and wonderfully tasty bufala cheese. If they could just do something about the presentation, it would elevate a good meal into something special.





Antico is easy to find. It's easy to drive right past, too, as Neal and I discovered early Thursday evening. He had the day off and suggested we get together for supper before our usual Thursday night get-together with friends, and I suggested pizza. We found the place with no difficulty, and arrived before the evening dinner rush.

The restaurant appears to have a very limited seating area, doing most of its business as takeout. It turned out that the room that I thought was merely the kitchen actually doubled as a dining room, with space for more than twice as many customers. I can't swear that I've ever seen that kind of setup before.

But even before we sat down at what appeared to have been Antico's only table, I had gone off the place. We placed our order at the register with an unpleasantly surly woman who grouchily told us the house rules and that there were no substitutions. That's actually a rule that I'm fine with; I figure that if you're one of those people who tries to order a Reuben with cole slaw instead of kraut, you've got no business ordering a Reuben in the first place. Anyway, she was a grouch, and underlining it the emphatic way that she did annoyed me, and the only drink options are bottled (teas, water and three Coke products), which I didn't like either. Then we had to read something before we sat down.

Okay, so there's a single large table in what appeared to be the only seating area. You have to pass through this room to get to the combination kitchen/dining room. The table seats eight, and so I figured this would be a nice little shared experience similar to how they serve up at the Smith House in Dahlonega. Only the Smith House employs an army of incredibly friendly servers who routinely check on you and make sure that you're doing fine, and the Smith House would never, ever do anything so unbelievably tacky as tape a label to every seat around the table which read something like "If you move this seat, you will be asked to leave." Neal and I, who took places at the far corner of the table, each seem to spend an inordinate amount of time with our eyebrows raised over some damn fool thing or other, but that warning on those chairs really might take some beating.

After an agreeably short wait, a server whose face I never saw appeared between us to drop a large metal serving tray on the table. Apparently you don't get individual plates here, either, although you do get quite a lot of pizza grease. If the pie wasn't made from excellent dough with such good ingredients, it would have been worth complaining about. I just shrugged, tore a section from the roll of paper towels on the table and soaked up a little of the oil before eating. Varasano's, my favorite pizza in the city, used to get some stick for its pies having damp centers, but I've never seen as much oil and grease on a Varasano's pie as what I sopped up last night.

I'm probably making this experience sound a lot worse than it was. Every restaurant, after all, has the right to restrict its drink selections, label its chairs the way they want, and even leave diners abandoned without a greeting, a how-is-everything, or any other cordial triviality, and I treat these as part of a restaurant's character and these eccentricities as charming in their own way, and don't wish for them to sound like complaints. Antico makes a simply excellent pizza, despite their odd choices, and if I lived in the neighborhood, I would probably eat here regularly. That is, if I didn't feel like driving to one of at least five better places in the city.

Farm Burger, Decatur GA

This is Marie, whose usual contribution to the blog is to order something my husband didn't so he can get menu envy, or to describe some experiment that made it to the dinner table and turned out well. This time I am departing from tradition to describe our pre-anniversary dinner at Farm Burger, a locally owned burger joint that uses meat from animals that didn't spend their lives in a box or being force-fed things they probably wouldn't eat otherwise. We found out about the place from an AJC review, and from David, who gave us a glowing recommendation.

Now, regarding how animals were treated before coming to the table, I am quite willing to spend three times as much on animal products from humane sources. Farmer's market eggs are a particularly good example, because they taste so much better than the plastic they sell in egg cartons at the grocery store. In this case, however, this good quality stuff is fairly comparable in price to the midrange ordinary. It was about $16 for the two of us to have a burger each and a nice-sized bucket of fries to share. How great is that?

The place was busy when we got there Saturday night around 8. All the tables full and only a couple of seats free along the side bar. We only waited about ten minutes to get to the counter and entertained ourselves by inspecting the menu, which contained topping options such as arugula and bone marrow along with the usual suspects--except ketchup. You can get that at the table, but it is not something they appear to believe ought to be on a burger. The ladies ahead of us in line asked the cashier if it was always this busy, and were told that this was slow.





After admitting this was our first time, we were asked about our doneness preferences and medium was suggested. This is something I'd read in comments before about grass-fed burgers--that you can't let them get too done or they lose the special something that makes them so great. There was a table outside sitting empty when we carried our drinks and order number away to find a seat, and it was lovely weather so we braved the risk of smokers to enjoy the fresh air.

The food arrived quite promptly in little wire baskets lined with brown paper, and the fries were in a little tin bucket of the type that usually contains a mosquito repellent candle, also lined with brown paper. My burger had cheese and tomato, and Grant got one with tomatoes, red onions, chipotle mayo and mustard which he says was wonderful. (The general consensus is that despite the full menu of wild toppings, it is very easy to overwhelm the flavor of this beef, and keeping it simple is probably the ideal way to do it.)

They're lower in fat than feedlot beef, although you'd never know it, as they were also incredibly juicy. That first bite was just wonderful. The rest were, too, but we'd had a steak recently that was pretty decent, and it didn't have as much flavor as this burger did. And they were more filling, too.

We have a favored local burger joint whose meat patties are as large and whose buns are more substantial, and who have much bigger fries portions, but the meals we eat there aren't as filling as these Farm Burger selections. Maybe it was that we'd had a substantial lunch that day, but I like to think that the food tasted so good it slowed us down, made us savor it more, and was as a result just more intrinsically satisfying. We'll definitely be going back.



(Update): In 2011, Farm Burger opened a second location in Buckhead. With our baby in tow, we stopped by this location a week before Christmas, confirming that these are among the best burgers in the city. They are certainly Marie's favorite. They're in the strip mall across from the Disco Kroger, downstairs from a Ru San's.





Pictured is a daily special, a beef burger with pepper jack cheese, mustard greens, tomatoes, fried onions and FB sauce, along with a pile of very good fries buried under garlic and parmesan. Marie had her burger with beets, goat cheese and arugula. The food, the service and even the music were all excellent. Marie really enjoyed being introduced to a singer named Mike Snow. We really do like this place a heck of a lot.



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