Bocado, Atlanta GA

So I finally took the plunge! Bocado is one of Atlanta's best-known newer restaurants, and if I'm not mistaken, every blogger in the region has already visited the place. It's been on my to-do list for ages, but other things and other meals kept coming up. They have a really convenient location on Howell Mill right where it meets Marietta Street, and I've been known, occasionally, to drive right past it in the early evenings, when Williams Street is really blocked up and I need an alternate way over to the interstate. I've just never had the opportunity to stop in before.

Two Fridays ago, I knew that I would have a convenient time to make it over here for an early lunch, and finally planned to try one of their said-to-be-amazing sandwiches. Now, the burger has been getting rave reviews, but I was most taken by the writeup that one of the town's newer restaurant bloggers, Atlanta Food Snob, gave to a sandwich with pimento cheese, poblano peppers and bacon with fried green tomatoes. That sounded like four perfect ingredients for a spectacular sandwich. The burger was simply going to have to wait until another time.

Then I got sick. Oh, I'd been sick all week, so that's not accurate.

No, what happened that Thursday night was that I passed over from "allergic reaction to pollen plus moderate sinus drainage" to "report to the cyber-technician to have throat removed and replaced with plastic pipe to put an end to the agony that is breathing." It's times like this that the well-meaning science fiction authors who warn of an emotionless future when humanity has replaced all their broken fleshy bits with machine parts look even more like the tweed-jacketed dweebs who wrote for Omni because mumsy and dadsy never let them try out for sports. With every inhalation, another ounce of bile, phlegm and gack, and with every exhalation, a sensation not unlike coughing up a set of rusty steak knives. Suddenly, the prospect of ingesting pimento cheese seemed incredibly unappetizing. That much dairy could wait a week. I wanted a doctor, I wanted enough antibiotics to make a dead elephant stand to attention, and I wanted barbecue. Bocado would wait.

So could the antibiotics. There was nothing wrong with me beyond sinus drainage and irritation and a long-diagnosed habit of making minor illnesses and issues seem like devastation and catastrophe, but having returned to the 'burbs, I looked around for something closer to my area (Briar Patch), and came back to Bocado a week later.





I have to tell you, friends, this sandwich was worth the wait, but you have all waited long enough and need to go get yourself one.

I arrived very early, found one of the few parking places available at the restaurant - if you're the fourth car there, I realized later, you're meant to park in a lot across the street - and read a little of my book before it turned eleven. The sandwich completely met my expectations. It was utterly delicious, the tomatoes were terrific, the pimento cheese as good as it gets, and not even remotely as gooey as I had feared, the fries and the pickles were very good, and I hope to go back soon and try one of those burgers.

Honestly, there's nothing more that I have to say about it. I should have visited sooner and I want to go back after I've cleared a pile of restaurants off my Atlanta to-do list. Simple as that, really. But I was right to wait the way that I did; I was in a much better mood and certainly enjoyed the hard work that Bocado puts into their food and presentation. I've eaten at some of Atlanta's more recently popular places and found them overhyped and undercooked, but Bocado really does a terrific job.

The Chocolaterie, Cumming GA

Boy, howdy, is it ever a good thing we don't live very close to this place. We don't have an awful lot of money at the best of times and have a baby on the way. This place could very, very easily blow one heck of a hole in a fellow's wallet. Hoo, boy.

So a couple of Sundays ago, Marie and I celebrated her birthday with an afternoon together. We had lunch at Sam's and then drove north through Roswell and Crabapple and up Georgia-372, which is called Birmingham Highway for some reason. This is a very pretty drive, past million dollar homes and gorgeous trees and into Cherokee County. Eventually, this put us sort of east of Ball Ground, near a retirement community called Big Canoe, and that sent us into the southwest corner of Forsyth County and our destination, Poole's Mill Bridge Park.

Marie and I both love covered bridges and waterfalls, and this has both. Well, it's more of a cascade than a waterfall, I suppose. The bridge is no longer open to vehicles, but visitors can walk through it, and play in the shallow river as it hits the rapids. It's a quiet and secluded spot, but popular enough to bring several couples, dog walkers and families. We stayed for quite some time, and left as a birthday party was arriving in the covered pavilion.

Around 2:30, we continued east, crossed Georgia-400 and wound our way behind an enormous, upscale development off exit 13. I'd been here three or four times when I worked in Alpharetta and we celebrated co-worker's birthdays at either Ted's Montana Grill or Red Robin. There's a movie theatre and a Barnes & Noble here and, a few doors down from a Stride Rite shoe store, a place that sells some of the most decadent chocolates in the city.





The Chocolaterie's specialty is truffles, and they don't scrimp on these. Priced at between $1.75 and $2.50 apiece, guests are not going to gorge themselves here, but they are going to get incredibly high quality with every bite. We selected a half dozen from the forty or fifty available - one for me and five for Marie - and I've never tasted anything like them. I made my key lime truffle last for several very small nibbles, not willing for the experience to end. And I don't have that much of a sweet tooth. I thought Marie was going to black out and fall over.

The shop is filled with other imported treats and snacks, and they also do fudge and other drool-worthy things. For guests looking for something a little cooler, there are little single-servings of Edy's, Ben & Jerry's and Itti-Bitz, priced right at just a dollar or a buck-fifty each.

Perhaps the most exciting thing in their case was one that I decided to save for later. They do a small number of really spicy truffles, too. I am incredibly curious about the ghost pepper one. It's decorated to look like a little white-sheeted kiddie haunted house ghost. Or maybe I'll work my way up the spicy truffles until I get to that one. Marie will definitely want to return more than once; I expect I'll have many chances.

Sam's BBQ1, Marietta GA

I've been telling myself for at least five years that I needed to get over to Lower Roswell Road and check this place out. Friends, if you live in Cobb County, don't make the mistake that I did and put this off any longer. Sam Huff has been cooking up some amazing pulled pork that you seriously need to try. He apparently lives out in West Cobb, in that Lost Mountain community that I had driven through just two days previously, and was a regular on the competition circuit for years, winning all kinds of awards for his pulled pork, ribs and brisket. Six or seven years ago, he partnered up with Dave Poe and they opened what would become two restaurants in Marietta. They've since gone their separate ways, and Poe got the other place on Whitlock. I drove past it two days previously as well. That was an odd weekend.

Two Sundays ago, Marie and I were going to do something to celebrate her birthday. She just wanted a day together, away from kids, with a few general ideas about what she'd like to do. As I assembled a battle plan and a road trip that would take us via back roads up through Roswell and Alpharetta, I looked for lunch in the area and realized we could get some barbecue at Sam's place. Even better, Sam's wasn't one of those irritating closed-on-Sunday joints that have been complicating my life. We drove right past a place that I wanted to try, Amos's, which is near Ball Ground, on our trip. Closed.





Sam's occupies two storefronts in a beat-up old strip mall near Johnson Ferry Road. One of these is the takeout store and the other is the restaurant. Sam's has been answering the same questions about their food for so long that it's led to some playfully exasperated T-shirts and signs explaining how many people can be fed with a pound of pork, that their meat is pulled and never chopped, that take-out orders are two doors down, and other rules. This has led to playful teasing from the regulars about supposedly misunderstanding the policies. During our visit, I saw two groups come in to enjoy lunch who ribbed the kid at the register that they wanted carry out. Poor kid.

The pulled pork here really isn't very smoky, but it's very moist and flavor-packed. It's served dry, and guests can help themselves to three sauces at a pump station next to the drinks. The most popular, unsurprisingly, is a sweet Kansas City-styled tomato-based sauce, but, while good, I found this the least of the three. The vinegar and the mustard sauces were both outstanding. I don't know which I prefer; both really complemented the meat really well and I haven't enjoyed the combination of great pork and great sauce so much in weeks.

The sides were very good, too. I ordered the lunch special with a sandwich, baked beans and a glass of sweet tea, and Marie enjoyed a plate of pulled pork with green beans and potato salad.

I definitely plan to go back soon for another meal. This is absolutely among the better barbecue joints in the Atlanta area.

Ok Sun, Columbus GA

Ages back, when I first went down to Columbus with Matt to meet his pals and see the town, we stopped by a diner called Gabby's. It was a pretty filthy place. It was sort of a Waffle House crossed with one of those dumb joints that tries conning you into thinking it's a "1950s" diner by way of a bad airbrushed picture of James Dean with his arm around Marilyn Monroe, but they served up a quite remarkable plate of hash browns via the kitchen sink, and they seemed to be the only place in the city that served Royal Crown Cola from a fountain. Quite apart from the inescapable truth that RC is just plain better than Coke, you'd think that more places in town would want to shine the local spotlight on a nationally-known beverage headquartered in the city. Of course, you'd also think that everybody in Chattanooga would want to serve Double Cola, and they don't, either. At least several places in the Carolinas seem to be proud of Cheerwine.

About a year later, I was back in town and we went to Gabby's and I ordered an RC and the waitress, no joke, went straight to a Coca-Cola dispenser and filled my glass. "This tastes an awful lot like a Coke," I told her.

"Isn't that what you wanted?" she said.

"No, I asked for an RC."

"Oh, we don't have that," she said, evidently unaware that her business once sold them. We never returned to Gabby's, and I see that the diner has since closed. As well they should, given such an unfortunate business decision.

A couple of years passed before Ric e-mailed me shortly before one of our planned trips from Columbus to Mobile. He had found another place in town that served fountain RC.



So after our trip to Mobile that year, probably 2007, we drove over to this small, family-owned Korean place to check out what they had to drink. Unfortunately, the photo above shows that there has been a sad change since my last visit. You see the label for "lemon-lime," right? In 2007, that was Upper 10. If you're interested in odd, regional sodas, that will get your attention. As recently as 2007, RC was still providing Upper 10 for fountains.

But times have certainly changed. That fountain itself is a glorious relic, but I'm not entirely convinced that's actually Royal Crown Cola in it anymore. I've found two barbecue places in Asheville that have fountain RC and its vibrant, wonderful taste, mixed correctly, is pretty unmistakable. I had a cup of what the label claimed was RC and drank some flat, generic-tasting bilge. So if anybody from the Royal Crown Company in Columbus is reading this, you either need to get somebody over to Ok Sun and recalibrate the machine, or tell 'em to quit claiming that what they are serving is your own wonderful beverage.

It's probably worth noting at some point in this entry that there's another reason to visit Ok Sun. The food's darn good, too.





We returned to Columbus and stretched our legs for just a moment at Ric and Maggi's place before driving over to the restaurant. It's five exits away on I-185, which, in Columbus terms, is the other side of town. Maggi called their friend Katie, who's just about as effervescent and silly as she is, and great company, and invited her to join us.

Ok Sun has a lot of community goodwill. Katie and Maggi have eaten here since they were children, and another of my friends in town, Cheryl, was once so outraged about our visiting the place in 2007 without inviting her that she pretended to be aggravated with me for a month. This is a place that locals absolutely love, and with good reason.

The house specialty is the bulgogi, and most of us had that. I had actually been planning to try the spicy pork bokum, but decided to heed my doctor's advice the day before and not rush into anything too spicy just yet. So I had the bulgogi as well, and really liked it.

Bulgogi is thin strips of very flavorful sirloin, cooked over an open flame and marinated in a bath of seasonings. It's served with steamed rice that has just a whisper of salt in the small, diced carrots, and a healthy portion of chop che. As with the fries that he ordered down in Mobile, Ric's son didn't make a lot of headway with the chop che, but the rest of us just inhaled it. This was indeed excellent stuff.

I greatly enjoyed spending the day with Ric and Maggi and meeting Katie, and maybe, if Ok Sun can get that drink machine of theirs fixed, I'll come back some time for that pork bokum. But not the next time. When we next come down to Columbus, probably in the fall, I've already decided on two or three more places there and in the neighboring Phenix City which are crying out to be tried. Plus Marie's definitely going to want another meal at Country's; she was a little sore at me last year for keeping that barbecue from her as long as I did.

Kendall's BBQ, Georgiana AL

I've said before that I'm sure other parts of the continent - Wyoming, Montana, the Yukon - have mind-deadening, desolate highways bereft of civilization, restaurants and funnybook merchants, but in the southeast, we have two humdingers of our own. I-16 between Macon and Savannah is one, and it's pretty amazingly stultifying, but that's like rush hour in Philadelphia compared to I-65 between Montgomery and Mobile. This highway, 169 miles of nothing, will try the patience of the most seasoned road tripper.

But I was not completely prepared to give up hope. I-16, of course, has Jomax Bar-B-Q in the town of Metter along its agonizing length. I wondered whether I-65 might also have something worth similar that would be worth a stop. I put the question to the good folk at Roadfood.com and got back several encouraging suggestions, leading me to think that this road wasn't quite as burdensome as I had made out. I picked Kendall's BBQ from the recommendations, and asked Ric whether he would mind stopping on the way back to Columbus for a snack.

Would you believe he'd known about Kendall's for years?





Used to be, Ric would drive from Columbus to Mobile and back twice a month to spend time with his son. That's an awful burden for anybody to handle on his own. I suggested many years back that I would come along for a trip a year, to spend a little time catching up and having fun, enjoying some gulf coast air and food, and to give him somebody, anybody, else in the car with whom to talk. Over time, the burden has become much easier; Ric has since married the wonderful Maggi, so his trips are not always solitary, and, happily, he usually has only to drive as far as the midpoint town of Greenville now that his son's mother is occasionally willing to meet him part of the way. So his eight-hour round trip to get his son has become just a four-hour one. The poor kid's read an awful lot of books on I-65, though.

But you've got to do something on I-65 to kill the boredom. This road is amazing; nobody lives in this part of the south. We found out why this past Saturday. Summer starts on March 19. We stopped in the town of Georgiana to try Kendall's and it was 87 degrees without a hint of breeze. Maggi, recovering from a stumble a couple of days earlier, got so red on her arms as we stretched our legs and waited for our barbecue that she believed she would burn. In March.

Well, I say that nobody lives here, but that's not true. Those that do seem to spend their Saturday mornings fishing and hunting, and then make their way to Kendall's in droves in the early afternoon. It's a takeout window with a beat-up wood patio and picnic tables, and it gets very, very busy. It shares a parking lot with a gas station and getting your car in here can sometimes be very tricky.

I just had a sandwich, and, kick me, again failed to ask for it without sauce. This was the second time in two days that I did this, and the second time that I got way too much freaking tomato-based sauce. It was pretty good sauce, very agreeably sweet and very complementary of this excellent smoked meat, but there was more of it than the meat needed. I'll make a deal with everybody who runs a barbecue joint in the south: I'll remember to order my sandwiches dry and y'all quit drowning your food, else I'll send Louie the Lifeguard in to sing at you.

We were there for a short time, enjoying the warmth and stretching before our sandwiches came up and we got back on the road. It's not nearly so awful a trip when you have good friends and good food. We got on the other side of Montgomery and Ric decided we should swing by Auburn to see what has become of the oaks at Toomers Corner in the wake of that jackass from the northern part of the state poisoning them. We're all Bulldog fans, but that crap is inexcusable, and we were all repulsed by it. The trees weren't visibly sick-looking to me, but I don't know what I would be looking for. I do know that seeing all that soil dug up and all that exposed root system didn't look right. I hear the prognosis is still pretty bleak. I hope that if those trees do go, somebody poisons that jerk's root system.



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The Original Oyster House, Mobile AL

About a year ago, I expressed a little petulant dismay that the first out-of-state restaurant that we featured on this blog was in Jacksonville, Florida, a town that I'd never visited before, in the state that I love to hate. A small part of that pouting came about because I had hoped to have one of my favorite places in Mobile, Alabama be the first out-of-Georgia eatery, or perhaps another great restaurant in that gulf coast town just packed with great restaurants. For many years, I have taken a Saturday in the spring to ride down to Mobile with my good friend Ric, who treks into Alabama twice a month from his place in Columbus to visit his son. Unfortunately, a combination of illness and bad scheduling meant that I didn't get to go down to Mobile when it was convenient in 2010. So I was really looking forward to getting out of town for a day and making the ungodly trek down I-65, about which more in the next chapter, to this fabulous city, and spend some time catching up with my buddy, of whom I don't see nearly enough. It's a haul; sure, I only drive the leg from my place to Columbus and back, but the whole thing is 750 miles in a day. It's best to break it up with a couple of meals and visiting some good people along the way.

When I first joined Ric for this mostly annual road trip in 2002, we got a recommendation from some people down on the gulf coast to try a place called The Original Oyster House, and we have usually eaten there each time. The other place that we've visited, twice, is the legendary Wintzell's, a joint that demands another visit and a chapter of its own one day. Boy, reading about the restaurants in Mobile makes me drool. When Marie and I take a long weekend, one day, to go down this way and visit New Orleans and Baton Rouge, we will definitely be spoiled for choices. I want to visit Foley Coffee Shop, and Manzi's Antique Club, and Moe's, and oh. And Brick Pit. I think that's the place with the gauntlet-throwing sign out front that tells guests that, if I remember correctly, "we proudly serve the best damn barbecue in the great state of Alabama." Oh, yes, we need to eat twice in Mobile on our way to Louisiana and twice more on the way home.

When we first visited the Original Oyster House, they were in a different location, a few miles east of their current digs. They were located across the street from the USS Alabama, a battleship permanently moored there as a national park. We got to eat there twice, I believe, before Hurricane Ivan hit the region in September 2004. When I joined Ric for a visit in January 2005, we motored over to the Oyster House to see what was left of their property. It had taken a direct hit. Down here on the gulf, you often see homes and businesses on stilts. The Oyster House building suddenly looked like that, only it wasn't built that way. That structure has since been razed, with no trace that anything was ever on that site. The current property has survived all the other devastating storms that the gulf coast has taken in the last six years, and is an incredibly popular, huge family restaurant.





There's a very unusual item on the Oyster House's menu, one that has caused a small amount of foodie controversy and isn't at all native to the local waters. On that very first visit, years back, they were offering, among their daily specials, some lemon pepper grouper. I had an order of that and raved about it for a year. That was the most amazing fish I ever had. Only it wasn't grouper. For the last several years, a supplier (or two) in the region has been unsuccessfully fighting a government lawsuit over mislabeled food. What they had been selling to restaurants around Pascagoula, Mobile and Pensacola as grouper was actually an Asian freshwater fish called sutchi. When this broke, many restaurants quit dealing with that supplier. But the Original Oyster House knew how popular it was and kept serving it, only making sure that guests knew what they were getting. Over time, the sutchi has graduated from the blackboard specials and to the printed menu, where it is, boldly, said to be "better than grouper."

Since I was planning for a second, smaller meal a couple of hours later, I decided against a large portion on Saturday, and passed on the sutchi. I just had a lunch portion of flounder and shrimp with cole slaw. The flounder was, notably and sadly, less than outstanding, but the shrimp were really terrific, and the slaw, heavy with onions and exploding with flavor, just amazing.

Making the shrimp even better was the do-it-yourself sauce. Rather than giving guests a cup of pre-mixed cocktail sauce, the Oyster House provides all the ingredients and lets you experiment. I made myself a horseradish-heavy cup with garlic sauce and a little Worcestershire. As you might have gleaned from the previous couple of entries, my allergies have been quite unbelievably awful this year, and this was exactly what I needed. I raised the shrimp to my mouth and immediately teared up. One bite of that stuff and sinus cavities that had been blocked for six days suddenly found fresh air. This did, I say as delicately as possible, require that I turn my head from the table for a few moments. It was completely blissful, even if nobody in their right mind would want to have been sitting next to me.

The fellow who was sitting next to me was Ric's son, aged twelve, who also had the flounder and shrimp, with fries. I've seen this boy order fries many, many times and never eat more than one. I bagged a couple; they're great big steak fries which just cry out for some sea salt to be poured lengthwise across them. Ric and his wife, the effervescent, accident-prone Maggi, shared the KP's Sampler of flounder, shrimp and chicken tenders, with red beans and rice and some amazingly good cheese grits. They certainly don't scrimp on the cheese in this dish; you should definitely try this stuff.

We arrived shortly after eleven and the place was completely packed before we left, with a giant mob in the huge lobby area. Its size and tourist-friendly popularity have made it a must-visit destination for years, a standout on a stretch of road with at least three other gigantic seafood restaurants. The long wall of autographs from celebrity visitors is a further testament to how good this place's PR people are, but it stands or falls on the strength of its food, and the fact that Ric and I have returned five times after that first visit is proof of just how good and how reliable they are here. If you'd like to really indulge in a great meal, get yourself some lemon pepper sutchi, an extra order of shrimp, cheese grits, slaw and a trip to the huge salad bar, and then make damn sure somebody else is willing to drive while you enjoy one of the best food comas you've ever had.

(Note: Sadly, my "mild" [that's a medical term] shellfish allergy has prevented me from actually trying the oysters here. Shrimp I can eat; oysters, clams and a couple of other shellfish are very bad for me. I have heard enough raving about the oysters here to make me insanely envious of them. I figure the owners wouldn't name their restaurant after a dish without believing in it. Spare a thought for me when you sample them, would you?)

Briar Patch Restaurant, Hiram GA

Next week sometime, I'll get around to telling you about why I ended up here, instead of at Bocado like I intended on this past Friday. Briefly, I found myself suddenly desiring a nice, comforting plate of chopped barbecue pork instead of the sandwich that I had been thinking about all week. There are a pile of barbecue joints around Atlanta on my to-do list, but the one that spoke to me the most was this old place way out Georgia 120, long past the point the road changes its name from Whitlock to Dallas Highway. From the Marietta Square, it's about twenty minutes' drive. I had only been to Briar Patch once before; when I had the Geocities barbecue page up, a reader in the area recommended that I come out this way and give the place a try.

It had been a really long time since I drove out this way at all - long enough to miss an unfortunate change. The El Pollo Loco where we used to eat is now an IHOP. That California-based chain made a big production out of moving into the Atlanta market about five years ago, but it kind of did a half-assed job, if you ask me. Not bad burritos, mind. They've a few stores left, I believe.

Anyway, the road takes you past Cheatam Hill Cemetery, where my father was laid to rest in his amazing, see-it-to-believe-it plain pine box, past the IHOP, past the gigantic, upscale Avenue at West Cobb, sister development to the nice shopping center between Marietta and Roswell on the same road, through a charming community called Lost Mountain, and to the Paulding County town of Hiram. Weirdly, I realized too late that I was out in this general direction just four days previously. My son's middle school had a band competition at McEachern High and this place is only seven miles from that school. Let's do a better job watching that odometer with gas prices like these, okay?




Not visible in the above photo: Seven hundred trillion ragweed pollen particles. Per hundred. It was a rough day.

This place is a big and definitely popular destination in the area. I got there at twenty past eleven and parking was already at a premium. Briar Patch employs a huge staff to keep things moving efficiently. The service line gets you to a couple of registers underneath three big video screens that show off the menu. It's a big, full service restaurant with burgers and steaks as well as hickory-smoked pork, beef and chicken. I went with a "little" pork sandwich basket, which comes with fries and slaw, and asked for an extra cup of stew.

Weirdly, and I'm not sure what to make of this, they offer bottled water for free, but charge ninety-five cents for a cup of ice. I'm pretty sure that I've never run into this before.

I made the mistake (again!) of not asking for my sauce on the side. The sandwich, nicely priced at $6 with slaw and fries, comes drowned in their red tomato-based sauce. The chopped pork was very tasty, but I think that the amount of sauce really overwhelmed the meat. I was able to fork out a couple of nibbles that tasted much better on their own, or dipped in a really good spicy hot mustard sauce. I got a little cup of this for my fries. My doctor had, just an hour earlier, told me to lay off the spicy food for a week while my allergy-devastated throat heals, but the mustard sauce is just so good that I couldn't resist a few contraband bites.

The slaw was really nice and creamy. I recall, from my first visit many years ago, not really enjoying it, but it was a pleasant surprise this time out. The stew was very mild, thick and chewy, and quite honestly the highlight of the meal. It tastes terrific, and it felt so good going down my gullet. I will say that the portions are really reasonable, but will probably feel small to people used to overeating with a plate of barbecue like I used to do. Since I'm trying to whittle down my portion sizes, I was pleased, but I can imagine some eaters might want to pay the extra dollar for a large sandwich.

I brought some Gregory McDonald to read, but was distracted a little by the decor. Apart from the mounted deer and game heads throughout the store, the top tier of the walls show off some painted artwork depicting Confederate soldiers fighting in Paulding County. (A drive from Marietta will take guests through a tiny sliver of Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park.) On the wall above the exit door, there's a big depiction of a not-entirely Disney-styled Br'er Fox threatening Br'er Rabbit with a trip to the briar patch.

I've lived in Georgia all my life and consider Joel Chandler Harris a whimsical part of our common folklore, but was surprised to learn that neither of my kids has any idea who the heck Uncle Remus was. I know the tale in this painting from my third grade teacher reading it to us. I suppose that you can't do that in school any longer.

Bonus awesome food story link: My best pal, who lives up in Ontario, had the most awesome experience that anybody has ever had at a Pizza Hut this past weekend, when some old idiot crashed his car into the restaurant while he and his wife were eating. I like excitement when I go out to eat, but this is a step too far in that direction for my liking! Glad y'all are okay, Dave!

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Zucca, Smyrna GA

Every year, our friend Neal turns his birthday into a week-long celebration called The Festival of Neal. We asked him, a couple of weeks in advance, before he got completely booked, whether we could schedule some time to take him to supper somewhere. He selected a place near him in Smyrna called Zucca. This was one of those places that I'd been figuring that I'd get around to for many, many years.

Zucca opened its first of four Atlanta locations in 2003. There's the one in Smyrna, which we visited, one near us in Kennesaw, one a little further up the road in Woodstock on Towne Lake Parkway, and one in Decatur. I'm of the opinion that Atlanta is completely packed with amazing pizza restaurants. Does Zucca have a chance at breaking into my personal top five of Vingenzo's, Varasano's, Fritti, Everybody's and Labella's?



Marie wasn't able to join us Wednesday night. She needed more sleep than I do back before the pregnancy, and even more today. This past week has been lousy with allergies and pollen and it's hit me worse than any spring of the past six years and I've been an absolute nightmare to sleep with, since I can barely breathe. A couple of nights previously, I banished myself to the couch for fear of waking her with nose-clogged snoring. I proceeded to wake everybody in the house, even the boy who sleeps in the basement. I mention this because the plan was for me to pick up the children and drive down to Smyrna and meet Marie at the restaurant, and instead we nearly collided at the foot of the driveway. She came home, completely exhausted and spent and full of stress and frustration and asked me to deliver apologies, but she needed to sleep. And did she ever. It was fitful and interrupted, but she got to lay down for about twelve hours, and she deserved every second of it.

Like a complete lout, the pizza slices that I brought home were covered in bacon, which she doesn't like. Well, that's another one in the failure column for me!

Well, the children and I stopped in to visit my mother for a few minutes, and got to the restaurant just before seven. It's a family-friendly sports bar, with a big sign in the airlock advertising franchise opportunities. At various points during the week they have trivia and games, and on the weekends, they have loud music and DJs who evidently can't spell their own names. Or maybe she's called Sue Spence. Who knows? It was, unusually, a time to discuss spelling and pronounciation. Like many middle schoolers, my daughter is incapable of speaking for more than four minutes without announcing that something has been "pwned." This is evidently pronounced "powned" in twelve year-old-ese. Our friend Todd was able to join us, and he saw the reunited British band OMD earlier in the week at The Loft. In twelve year-old-ese, that's pronounced "owmed."

I started with a bowl of minestrone to sooth my allergy-ravaged throat, and it was excellent. I might have saved a penny or two by ordering just a small pizza and a second bowl of that wonderful soup. The pizza that the kids and I got was my son's choice. He wanted to try the Buffalo pizza, which skips tomato sauce in favor of blue cheese and ranch, topped with chicken, bacon and tomatoes with wing sauce and blue cheese crumbles. It was very good and there was a heck of a lot of it. A large pie here will easily feed three.

The birthday boy ordered Zucca's Victory pie, which, they boast, earned them the 2008 prize in an International Expo of some renown. It's a ramped up Margherita - mozzerella, basil, olive oil and parmesan - adding sausage and mushrooms. Neal substituted onions for the mushrooms. Todd also ordered a large pie - more than enough to take several slices back home to Samantha, who also could not join us - with sausage and peppers. I had a slice of this and thought it was pretty good, but certainly elevated by the quality of the sausage, which was just excellent. Sometimes, better ingredients make an enormous, palpable difference.

David was also able to meet us after bowing out of work a little early. Pizza's not really part of his diet, but he did enjoy a bowl of the terrific minestrone, and a large Greek salad. Well, to the naked eye it was a Greek salad; according to the menu it was a Tuscany salad. I'm really not certain what the difference would be!

Overall, it was a good meal. They do good work here, and the service was fantastic. The pies are probably not as good as Antico, but the service was leagues better than what you find there, so I'd put the two on about equal footing as far as the overall experience. Just like Antico wasn't qute able to knock its way into my personal top five, nor was this place. Not at all bad, but not quite transcendent, either.

Seriously! You have to try this soup!

This won't be a very long entry. I just felt it important to remind my readers in the Atlanta and Jacksonville areas - we haven't visited any other towns with a Sweet Tomatoes - that, for the next two weeks, you can try one of the very best soups that any restaurant, anywhere, serves up. It's the creamy tomato soup at Sweet Tomatoes, known as Souplantation on the west coast, and for many years, they have, criminally and haughtily, only offered this wonderful treat in the month of March and for one week in October. They serve the most mediocre chili every day of the year here, but only offer the tomato soup for just one month.

We hadn't actually been back to a Sweet Tomatoes since we celebrated Neal's and Marie's birthdays a year ago. I said, then, that I've found the overall experience agreeable if unexciting, except where the soups are concerned. They have a few very notable ones apart from the creamy tomato, such as a shrimp bisque and a chicken lime thing, but our desire to visit many different restaurants rather than just stick with favorites over the last several months has meant that Sweet Tomatoes has been off our radar, and I never even checked to see what soups they might have offered anytime lately. But at the beginning of the month, the writer Mark Evanier, who brought this wonderful soup to the world's notice, rang the dinner bell to tell his bajillions of readers, "Soup's on!" So it was back to Sweet Tomatoes we went.





This past Saturday, Marie and I met up at the Dunwoody Sweet Tomatoes with our friends Victoria and James, who just moved to a new place in the East Atlanta neighborhood. Victoria suggested that we meet up for a meal again sometime, and I told her that it was creamy tomato soup month again, but she'd never heard of it, meaning that this restaurant still needs to work on getting the word out. Marie and Victoria are each in the later stages of their first pregnancies, and have a lot to share and talk about, although not necessarily soup.

Meals here are very reasonable. For nine bucks - seven if you join the "Club Veg" club for email coupons - you get all you can eat salads, pastas, freshly-baked breads and about nine different soups from which to choose. I typically have a medium-sized salad and three bowls of soup. This time, I had two bowls of the amazingly delicious creamy tomato and one of the almost as amazingly delicious shrimp bisque.

Creamy tomato is on the menu for just two more weeks. If you're in a town with a Sweet Tomatoes, you should definitely make plans to get over to one as soon as possible. In Atlanta, there are four stores, all on the north side, outside the perimeter. With pollen ravaging the area and our sinuses, wouldn't a nice bowl of delicious soup do you good?

Taco Cabana, Atlanta GA

You can't miss this restaurant at the intersection of Piedmont and Monroe. It's the place that looks like the two fellows from Miami Vice are about to beat up on the guy bringing in all the cocaine in his DeLorean. Taco Cabana has always been this garish, and that's part of why they spent about six years in court defending their look.

In the late eighties and early nineties, this spot was occupied by a nearly-identical restaurant called Two Pesos. This was the only Atlanta location of a chain that had started in Houston in 1985. I ate here several times when I was in high school and when I came home during my first year of college. In fact, my very first car - and here's an odd memory - died for good one night after a meal here. It was a wonderful, gigantic 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 and that great beauty would have driven me to Europe and back, had I asked. I was having car trouble all day, and fretted with two friends at Two Pesos what I would do if it couldn't be repaired. Well, it couldn't. It cranked twice more, once when I left the restaurant after a horrible, grinding shriek of metal, and once, for the final time, after it conked out again at a traffic light down the road. So Two Pesos was my last meal with that Oldsmobile.

What I didn't know then was that Two Pesos was already years into a losing battle defending their business. Two Pesos had been started by some businessmen, allied with a former manager of one of San Antonio's Taco Cabana stores, in 1985. Within a couple of years, Two Pesos had blanketed Texas with locations, and the much slower-growing Taco Cabana found themselves facing competition from a lookalike copycat which had established themselves in cities like Houston and Dallas, flinging locations as far afield as Colorado and Georgia to establish themselves ahead of where Taco Cabana could go.

So Taco Cabana sued Two Pesos for ripping off their look, feel, design, store layout and menu to such a degree that customers were left confused as to which came first. The Supreme Court eventually weighed in Taco Cabana's favor. Left with a lower court order to completely reconstruct every one of their existing stores, Two Pesos elected instead to sell out to Taco Cabana. The Atlanta store was remade and remodeled into a Taco Cabana over the course of about an afternoon.





I'm not sure why I never popped back by the business, whatever its name, after that fateful evening when my car cranked for the last time. I remember they always had decent food at great prices, but the road just never took me by again. Well, not when I was ready for a meal there, anyway. Years and years passed and I read about the slugfest that the two restaurants had in court and figured that I should stop by again. It might make a readable story, if nothing else. Or something weird might happen.

Now, one thing that I didn't like about my trip to Taco Cabana is that they don't have chips, although they offer them. For ninety-nine cents, you get a pair of flour tortillas that you can rip into small pieces and eat with their tasty salsas. Somebody should tell that guy behind the register that those aren't chips. So I had two tortillas along with a platter of two chicken tacos, rice and beans. I asked for one hard shell and one soft in order to sample some different flavors, and thought that chicken was very good for this sort of food. There was nothing very unusual or weird in my meal, but it was a step or two up from what you'd get at a similar place, and priced right. I liked the layout and the big patio space, which is probably quite fun and relaxing in warmer weather.

So then I went to my car and it would not start. I turned the key and nothing happened. The whole electrical system was not responding.

I know this must be impossible to believe, but twenty-one years after my Oldsmobile sputtered and died after I had a meal in this building, I came here for the first time and the hotdamned restaurant killed my Camry. You want to tell me the odds of that?

Turned out I had one of those very rare car problems that I can actually solve. One of the battery terminals had a loose connection. I avoided a freakout, shook my head in disbelief, popped the hood, jiggled it, bit my lip, tried again, thanked God and drove, nerves wracked, to my brother, who spent a few minutes replacing bits and tightening things and making sure I was roadworthy again.

I figure Taco Cabana is surely the safest restaurant in the city now. My car's had problems there twice. It's like Garp buying that house in John Irving's novel after an airplane crashes into it. There's just no way in the universe I could possibly have car problems there three times, right?

The Georgia Pig, Brunswick GA

With a heavy heart, we woke on Saint Simons for what we plan to be the last time in Marie's pregnancy. This was the last long, overnight trip on the calendar until the summer. I slept horribly, and she not much better, and we ended up getting a later start out of town than planned, as she was not feeling at all well that Sunday morning. So we kicked back for an extra couple of hours to let her rest before giving our goodbye hugs and getting back on the road.

I was looking back over our writing in this blog and I see that I have only occasionally mentioned my biggest frustration and bugbear in the world of restaurants: the ones that are closed on Sundays. Having to work around the schedules of places that close their doors on heavy travel days really is a headache, especially when we have five hours of road to cover. Fortunately, The Georgia Pig in Brunswick, which we had been intending to visit for ages, does keep Sunday hours, thank heaven. It had gotten so bad that I had declared a blanket ban on Sunday travel in south and middle Georgia, but work schedules required that we get back on the road on the "closed" day. We even took a very different way home, via Glennville in Tattnall County, in the hopes of landing just one more possible barbecue joint on the way home, and were still stymied.

But The Georgia Pig was waiting for us, open seven days a week as it should be, right off I-95, where, for decades, travelers and truckers to and from Florida have been pulling off the road for some sassy attitude and some pretty darn good barbecue.



Reading around about the Georgia Pig, I'm struck by just how many people comment that this is a place with a frighteningly grouchy staff. There are many more reviews around, I think, for this place than many other barbecue restaurants of its vintage - it evidently opened in the 1960s or 1970s sometime - because while a large city like Atlanta has had a few standouts for years for writers and bloggers to decide to try on short visits, as far as chopped pork, Georgia Pig pretty much has had this whole stretch of interstate between Savannah and Jacksonville to itself for ages. There are two more places down the road in Kingsland that have opened in the last few years - G-Daddy's and Jack's - and a couple of barbecue places in Brunswick and on St. Simons Island for people willing to take a longer detour (Mack's, sadly, has closed before we could ever get there), but Georgia Pig, in its tree-filled clearing behind a gas station right off the highway, has had all the press and attention, and all the fame.

It's also picked up some decidedly mixed reviews among the volume of them out there. One point I will agree with Taco Bloggo on is that, for a restaurant in a town that (most right-thinking folk say) gave name to a stew, the Brunswick stew here is just woeful. It tastes exactly like somebody opened a can of Dinty Moore and poured it over some frozen lima beans. It was, in point of fact, just about the worst stew I've ever had.

Now on the other hand, happily, everything else was very good. I'll apologize for the lack of a food picture in this entry; the restaurant adopted a firm rule against photography inside after somebody's flash once distracted a fellow behind the counter as he was bringing down a cleaver, and, frankly, these good old boys were surly enough without me trying to break a house rule.

Honestly, if you're serving up chopped pork this nice, I'm not going to object to anybody being surly, and not break the rules. This was some of the smokiest meat that I've ever eaten. The sandwich is served on a toasted sesame seed bun, better to maintain consistency as sauce soaks through it, but I ordered it dry to get a really good taste of the meat without sauce. It was so packed with smoke that I'm wondering just how long they smoke the meat here. Probably the better part of a month, I'm thinking. The sauce is a mild and tangy tomato-based one, and it complements the meat perfectly. They also have a ridiculous array of bottled hot sauces available, but I don't believe the chopped pork needs any. I also tried some excellent BBQ baked beans, as good as the best I've had elsewhere.

There are still dozens of restaurants in Glynn County that I would like to try, and ages, I hope, in which to try them. I'm glad to know that whenever the road demands us on a Sunday, this place will be around as a welcome substitute for whatever place we'd have preferred to try that ends up being closed on this aggravating, traveler-unfriendly day.



Update, 3/6/12: Sadly, it wasn't even around long enough for a second visit. After forty years, the Georgia Pig closed in March 2012. The space will be taken by Saint Simons' popular and amazing Southern Soul, who plan to open in April.

St. Francis Xavier's International Food Tasters Festival, Brunswick GA

This is Marie, making a contribution about a rather delightful annual event at my mother's church, the International Food Tasters Festival. It's been going on for 21 years as a fund raiser. The event started out rather small but has been getting bigger, and by this year there had to have been at least a hundred people in the room just while we were eating, including several of my mother's friends who were looking forward to meeting me and my family. A few restaurants even participate in providing offerings. If I remember correctly, my mother made a few contributions towards the early, small events, but she has just been going to eat since then. That's really more of the fun part as far as I'm concerned.


Some Cuban picadillo was the high point of this plate, which also includes some potato salad, kielbasa and carapulca.


From the top left, this is rosemary pasta, a roll, carapulca, saffron rice with peppers and a cube of cheesecake.

One of the things I knew to steer Grant towards was the blackened shrimp. There's a really delightful contributor who brings a huge batch of them every year. I remember on one occasion the shrimp was actually cooked in a big black wok-shaped pot over charcoal outside the door, so the guy who brought it could serve right out of the pot. That was marvelous, but since everyone this time was using steam trays and the like I would gather that the rules have changed. The servers were even all wearing plastic gloves. It's a shame to lose the fun factor, but cleanliness trumps fun when you start attracting the kinds of crowds that attended this event. It was a shame Grant couldn't have seen that, but it was still quite satisfactory to see that he went back for seconds and then thirds.

The variety was quite good. The blackened shrimp of course got highest marks from everyone. I was the only one to try the plantains from the Jamaican stall except for Mom, and they were lovely. We shared the occasional forkful from each others' cups and made recommendations if the item was too small or awkward to be easily sharable. Grant of course had to report to me how the kielbasa and other sausagy things were (reports were positive) but we all tried things that others didn't. Which is as it should be.


Clockwise from the top: Chicken afretada, jambalaya, blackened shrimp and higado liver.


Clockwise from the top, this is adobe chicken, Singapore noodles, m'jadra and the blackened shrimp.

The kids both tried some of the soups and quite liked the clever presentation of the potato soup from the Irish table - it was in teeny little bread bowls made out of rolls. Julian tried to eat his as a finger food, which led to amusing results, but he said it tasted good anyway. Ivy got several of the desserts. I had a bean and peanut stew from Peru called carapulca that no one else liked but I thought was lovely. Other standouts included chicken afretada and a mango salad from a Filipino member, something called m'jadra, a rice and lentil dish from Syria, and a really good corn chowder, allegedly from heaven. Grant even had some hidago, not learning until much later that it was liver, onions and tomato sauce.

Almost all of the desserts were standard bake sale kinds of things except for the lace cookies which, while very pretty, are generally dry enough that you really want to cup of hot tea to go with them and since that was lacking I passed. I wound up with three servings of cheesecake anyway (two standard American and one Italian ricotta) and they were quite satisfactory. Grant was most pleased by the key lime cake.

Our son deemed the food "amazing, some of the best I've ever had." He seemed most impressed with the ricotta cheesecake. Our daughter ate a bit here and there and then found the company of the other kids more compelling. Grant and I had fun comparing notes and making suggestions. Overall this was an excellent suggestion of my mother's and continues her trend of offering good ideas.

Bubba Garcia's Mexican Cantina and Zuzu's, Saint Simons Island GA

I was just saying last month that the presence of Jack Davis artwork is a sure sign of a restaurant's quality, and here, for the third time this year, is a place with his wonderful and distinctive art emblazoned for all the world to see. Never mind the Zagat sticker in the window, does a place get a thumbs up from one of Mad Magazine's Usual Gang of Idiots, that's what I'd like to know. Bubba Garcia's, a small cantina owned by the same group on Saint Simons Island behind the popular Gnat's Landing, goes one better than even the good places this year with caricatures of the owners - Old Brick Pit and Mayflower Restaurant - by having the business's mascot be a signed Jack Davis creation.

We had been enjoying a very entertaining trip down to Saint Simons. The children were mostly well-behaved and enjoyed walks around the village on Friday evening, with my daughter making certain that she visited her favorite vintage clothing store. Marie's mother had made us a very good dinner of these nicely-spiced meatballs, potatoes and an awesome gravy, and then we played Settlers of Catan, a game which Marie enjoys more than anybody else, and which I will occasionally play as a third so that she'll have an opportunity to get a round in.

On Saturday, the five of us drove over to Brunswick for a very neat little late morning trip which Marie will tell you about in the following chapter. In the afternoon, she took the kids for a walk on the beach while I napped and got some sneak previews of some things that Marie's mother is knitting. It was a very, very relaxing vacation. In the early evening, we decamped and moseyed over to meet up with Marie's father and stepmother. He took us all to dinner at Bubba Garcia's. This is just a short drive to the other side of the island's airfield in a little combine of shops and businesses called Redfern Village. You have to drive past all the island's unfortunate invaders of chain restaurants, which awkwardly share space with the much more interesting local businesses which are screaming out to be sampled, and navigate one of the absolute worst traffic circles that I've ever seen to get to Redfern Village.





Bubba Garcia's theme, unsurprisingly, is "redneck Mexican," and the house specialty is a barbecue chicken quesadilla with red onions. Marie's father had this; she had the standard quesadilla with shredded chicken. I enjoyed a very nice pair of shrimp and pineapple tacos with grilled peppers and onions, and my son had an order of steak fajitas. The girlchild and Marie's stepmother, who brings out a sense of gleeful, conspiratorial silliness in my daughter like few others can, each had a plate of nachos.

Obviously, this place isn't looking to win awards on tradition or radical new recipes. It's just really tasty bar food, with endless chips, very good, mild table salsa and excellent service. I imagine that the place gets much busier and louder in the later evenings, but the laid-back, quiet, island getaway feel is evident at the time we came.

An hour or so later, the sun was thinking about setting and, after Marie's stepmom returned home to see about her army of dogs, the four of us took a walk with Marie's dad along the rocks above the beach. The tide had come in and I spotted a dolphin playing in the surf. Marie, who'd seen such a sight many more times than me, wasn't as thrilled as I was, but I don't think anybody could be. We made our way back to the village after checking out the new construction they had done around the pier, and stopped into a little cafe called Zuzu's for dessert.



Zuzu's is a great little place to get after-dinner treats. They make sandwiches and grill up burgers here, but they probably do most of their business as an ice cream parlor. They serve Greenwood brand ice cream here and they make the requisite shakes and sodas. My son was on a pistachio kick that day. Earlier, after their walk on the beach, he bought himself one cone at the nearby Saint Simons Sweets, and enjoyed a second when the five of us stopped in and Marie's father bought us all desserts. He had a mango sherbet and I had a Black Jack: root beer with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. That's exactly the sort of thing one should sip while walking around on an evening as pleasant as that was.

Yoder's Deitsch Haus, Montezuma GA

So Thursday of last week, I went by one of the cafeterias on our to-do list of Roadfood.com-reviewed restaurants, and on Friday, the four of us visited another one. We took a trip down to visit Marie's mother and father on Saint Simons Island, a trip that puts us within striking distance of six of the remaining restaurants on that list - five in middle Georgia and one in Savannah. I decided that we'd take the furthest one from the highway, Yoder's Deitsch Haus. If the rumblings that I've been hearing about gas prices are true, I figured we should probably visit the one farthest away now, while gas is only about $3.50 a gallon. Yoder's is about thirty miles south of Macon and then fifteen miles west of the interstate, and it's probably worth the trip with gasoline at twice the price.

Boy, this is beautiful country down here. Much of the land in this chunk of middle Georgia around Montezuma and Americus is owned and farmed by Mennonites, as is the restaurant, bakery and country store that we visited. It's the greenest grass you've ever seen, and unusually dense with black and white cows clustering around streams and milling around twisted and gnarled trees. The presence of the extended Yoder family is apparent as you drive west out State Route 26, with some of the roads that feed into the main highway sharing their name as well as the businesses. The cafeteria is set up in a large, unassuming building with a small sign out front, and staffed by servers wearing the faith's traditional, modest dress. There's plenty of parking, and space for buses from churches all over the state to bring in groups to eat here.

In the previous chapter, I noted that at Matthews, I had a pretty good meal. That's not a complaint; dozens of inferior restaurants serve far worse within walking distance of that business. At Yoder's Deitsch Haus, however, we had a genuinely terrific meal with even lower prices. I'm really glad that I didn't do these two restaurants in reverse; I'm much more pleased to have my family share such good food with me here.





Like most cafeterias - well, apparently, I think that, prior to Matthews, it had been about six years since I've been in one - guests can select a salad first, and then a dessert. At Yoder's, this could be a tremendously dangerous choice, because you could probably just sit down to four slices of pie and call it the best meal of your life. I'll come back to that. Should you go, try and restrain yourself and select your meat and two. Marie and I each had pot roast, which was very, very good. My son had fried chicken, which was even better, and my daughter had sausages, which were evidently amazing, but she gobbled the darn things up so quickly that nobody else got to try a nibble.

But as good as the meats here are, the vegetables are even better. I was a little discouraged by the dull iceberg lettuce in the salad, but all the other veggies were quite excellent, especially the beets. I could have just had a bowl of those and the dressing. Marie says that we shouldn't call it thousand island dressing so much as "inspired by" it, so I'll take her lead. We each had creamed corn, which was excellent, and various other treats. My son was not as taken with his mashed potatoes, which he thought were lumpy, but my daughter loved her cheesy potatoes and Marie quite liked her green beans.

Oh, but then, these desserts. Marie had a slice of cherry pie, which she said was amazing. My daughter had chocolate, which she insisted was better. My son had peanut butter, which he not only insisted was better than either of theirs', but even better than the peanut butter pie that he had at Zarzour's in Chattanooga three weeks previously. True to form, he then got out his phone and updated his Facebook so that all his friends stuck in fifth period could see that, once again, my boy was out on a family trip lording his awesome desserts over them. But then I allowed my children each a single small nibble of my slice of shoofly pie, which is a crazy, thick and sticky melange of molasses and brown sugar and both children wept. This is the best pie on the entire planet. Gas could get up to seven bucks a gallon, and if you come by I-75 exit 127 in Georgia, you're still going to want to pull over and drive the thirty mile round trip for a slice of this. Marie said that it was all right, but she likes fruit pies better. Marie is, occasionally and rarely, hopelessly mistaken on points like this.

After lunch, I thanked the staff and we wandered over to the country store. My daughter and I were distracted by a goat named Martha, whom you may feed for fifty cents. Martha probably won't allow you to pet her unless you shell out for some food first, I noticed. In the country store, we considered buying some licorice or horehound for the road, but settled on a jar of locally-made blueberry jam. Marie's hoping to make pancakes one morning this weekend so we can try that out. The girl at the register was very amused by the two-dollar bills that we used to pay for it.

We then enjoyed the nice ride back to the interstate, bought some gasoline while it's still only $3.50, and made our way across the state to the coast. It's a straight shot down Georgia 26 to Hawkinsville, where you can pick up US 341, the old Golden Isles Parkway, and take the two and a bit hour last leg to Brunswick. This is probably worth discussing a little more should we actually stop along the way and eat on this road, but I find this a much more pleasant ride than the interstate, with only one mind-numbing segment, the twenty-odd miles just east of Jesup. Then Marie drove around Brunswick down every fool road in town for half an hour before she got to the causeway. Well, she lived here for years; nostalgia can do this to a driver. And she drove right past Willie's Wee-Nee Wagon, which is on our to-do list for a later visit, so we can't hold it against her.

Matthews Cafeteria, Tucker GA

Marie and I made it our rule to not give a negative review to any restaurant that either of us visit. It goes against the grain of this being the story of a good life spent eating well. If we have a bad experience at a restaurant, it just doesn't make it to these pages. That doesn't mean, however, that I can't express a little disappointment when an otherwise good meal just plain lets me down.

I first heard of Matthews Cafeteria when the second volume of the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives tie-in books was released. I was really looking forward to the second book, because I feel that Georgia was badly underrepresented in the first one, with only the Marietta Diner making its pages. Don't get me wrong, that's a pretty good restaurant, but it's still a little overrated. I wasn't sure, then, which Georgia restaurants had made it onto the show. You can check out the full list yourself, thanks to the excellent Flavortown USA fan site.

So the book was released - this has been a year and a half - and Georgia got two more restaurants in the print archives of Triple-D. Neither of which I'd ever heard of. It felt like Fieri got together with the ghost of Douglas Adams to upgrade Georgia from "harmless" to "mostly harmless."

Well, Matthews stayed off my radar until it got added to the list of restaurants reviewed at Roadfood.com late last year. When we started Marie, Let's Eat!, we agreed to visit and feature all of the 29 restaurants there, barring two for reasons I'll mention when we finish the goal. Last year, two more were added - Barbecue Kitchen in College Park, and Matthews Cafeteria, meaning there was no getting around it, I was going to have to go to Tucker and try this mostly harmless restaurant. (One of the Roadfood.com restaurants, Melears in Fayetteville, has since closed, leaving a total of 30 on the site. At the time of writing, we are ten away from the goal of 28. Two of those ten will be appearing in this blog over the next week.) So I grumbled and complained and looked around and actually read Fieri's team's writeup in the book, and watched the segment on YouTube. I also asked around a couple of months ago to see whether any of my friends knew anything about the Roadfood.com restaurants on our agenda. My friend Laura, whom I have known since high school, when I listened to too much Smiths and she listened to too much Duran Duran, said that theirs is the "most awesome home cooking ever" and that she used to brunch there every week.

And then there are the reports of their Brunswick stew. Now, if you look up the Triple-D segment on YouTube, you'll get the very curious sight of Fieri acting like he's never heard of Brunswick stew at all, which is really weird and not especially believable, but you'll also see this amazing concoction of chicken, creamed corn, potatoes, Worcestershire sauce and a whole mess of other stuff that looks like the most fantastic stew ever. Suffice it to say that when Thursday rolled around, I was licking my chops in anticipation of getting to Matthews as soon as they turned the metaphorical "lunch" sign on to get ahold of that stew.

Would you believe they didn't have any? Or that the girl at the register said that they only have it on Wednesdays?!





Stymied and not a little crushed, I enjoyed what was nevertheless a pretty good meal. I went for a traditional meat and three, with a pork chop, mashed potatoes, green beans and dirty rice. Everything was quite tasty, especially the dirty rice, which was seasoned just perfectly. I think that if I actually lived in this section of Dekalb, I'd be ready to eat here most of the time. It's a proper southern meat and three, every bit as good as, say, Vittles or Folks Southern Kitchen. In fact, there's a Folks just a hop, skip and a jump away, down Lavista near I-285, and you can get food of the same or better quality, for better prices, at a locally-owned place here at Matthews, so there's no reason to frequent that particular outpost of that chain. No, the vegetables are not of the same quality as the region's highest points - Mary Mac's and Doug's Place - but they're just fine for a meat and three.

I was, nevertheless, a little disappointed, not merely in the lack of Brunswick stew, but in the lack of attention from the wait staff. They seemed to employ an army of ladies in white with red aprons, but the only ones who spoke with me at all were the lady working the line serving my food and the one at the register, who told me the bad news about Brunswick stew only being served on a day I'm working downtown. I was there for the better part of forty minutes and helped myself to a couple of top-off refills of the very good sweet tea, and not one person asked after me. It's probably just as well; I might have asked an impertinent question about why the heck there was a microwave oven against the far wall next to the bottles of A-1 and Red Rooster. Don't know that I've seen that in a dining room before.

The meal, as I keep saying, was pretty good, but whatever disappointment I had with the service was more than made up for with the strawberry shortcake. This was amazingly decadent and wonderful, and almost as good as the lovely pound cake treat that Marie made a few days before. I'm sorry that my better, sweeter half wasn't around to try it. Hers is better, but she appreciates other people's excellent desserts even more than I do.

But while I'm registering disappointments along with the good food, let me raise one other. The previous Saturday, Marie had to work some overtime hours. I picked her up afterward and we had a little cheap date night, just the two of us, at the wonderful America's Top Dog. The previous visit proved to be really good, but this second trip saw me trying one of their half-smokes with chili and man, oh, man, was that ever amazing. It wasn't until I was back on 285 after lunching at Matthews that I realized what I should have done once I realized I wasn't going to get to try this Brunswick stew was just had two veggies and a dessert, and then stopped by America's Top Dog one exit north for another half-smoke. I had a perfectly good meal, but I was completely stuffed, and what I should have done was thought it through a little more. For somebody who looks forward to regularly visiting a fast food joint two years in the future, I sure do let my impulsive side mess me up when it comes to getting something to eat, don't I?

StaQs BBQ, Smyrna GA

Every so often, I run into a restaurant that really isn't that amazing, but there's something about it which deserves a little bit of praise and attention just because the people behind it have come up with something just a little extra. It's when I find a place that does something that nobody else does that I get a real sense of pleasure. Even when there is room for improvement elsewhere, a restaurant should be hailed for at least offering something unique. So it is with the ridiculously-named StaQs.

My daughter seems to have been mostly absent from the pages of this blog lately; she missed out on her brother's trip to Tennessee with me, but that's not to say she's been completely idle. She has been going through a difficult period, getting used to the awful social rules of middle school, and, sadly, acting like going well out of the way for something to eat is a monstrous burden upon her texting and iPod time. She is, after all, twelve. Well, last week, she and I had a little time after a doctor's appointment for a quick snack, and even though I probably should not have spent any additional money that day, I realized that we'd be going by StaQs, which is on South Cobb Drive a couple of doors down from Vittles Restaurant.

This particular stretch of road has been pretty brutal to barbecue restaurants. I mentioned many months ago that the venerable Old South BBQ was just a stone's throw from some others, intending then to come back and try StaQs, but it slipped down the wishlist. Just north of Windy Hill, you can see the building that once housed Champs, a pretty good place that was notorious for blaring Country Music Television at maximum volume in every room of their big facility. The restaurant has sat untouched, the old signage still there, for more than three years. Across the street was once another barbecue joint, the name of which escapes me, but they too kept their signage long after the business closed. Old South still seems to thrive and has seen off at least two challengers around this intersection, but economically, this isn't the most upscale region of Cobb County. Rents are probably a little cheap here, suggesting that StaQs might have been right to start small in this building, which I believe was formerly a Waffle House.

Speaking of that, I did mention that something on the menu here was notable, even if, perhaps, the overall quality of the food is something that still needs a touch of work. StaQs offers a remarkable little dish called, appropriately, The Mess.

The Mess is, simply, a small serving of chopped pork and cole slaw atop a waffle with maple syrup. I don't know who came up with such a thing, but they deserve a medal.





For people already in Smyrna, it's certainly worth stopping in, but as for whether it's worth a very long crosstown drive to try, I'd have to say probably not. I really didn't enjoy the pork as much as I hoped, and neither sauce - a sweet and a hot, each tomato-based - were really that amazing. Nor was there enough pork to really sample much of the sauce, as the maple syrup had already made the meat very sweet. It's a remarkably good idea, but I suggest the pork could use a lot more smoke flavor for this meal to be a real showstopper.

On the other hand, the stew here really is quite good, and worth a try. It's made with chicken, corn and potatoes in the traditional tomato base, and you get a really big helping of it for your money. My daughter will often just order a bowl of stew when we go out, and this was considerably more than either of us were expecting, or that she could finish. She had the rest of it for lunch a few days later.

Speaking of lunch, thanks to this place, I'm now wondering what a plate of a drier, smokier meat might taste like with maple syrup. Maybe I should run up to Ellijay and get some of Oscar Poole's pork and try some of that done this way. Hmmm.