Beaver Creek Biscuits and Barbeque, Lithia Springs GA

I think that, to hear Marie tell it, my worst habit might be my swearing, which she kindly suggests might have improved a little bit over the last few years. Since I try to write this blog for all audiences, I am very cautious about swearing or being offensive. That was not a consideration last week. See, I had been wanting to go to Beaver Creek for quite some time after reading Jon Watson in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "Food and More" blog rave about it, suggesting they might offer the best pulled pork around Atlanta. I had it on my calendar for a visit at the beginning of the month, but then the baby surprised us by arriving early, and I had to put it off. This worked out for the best; fortunately, with my older children off school, I could phone them - maybe I should get a data plan - and ask them where in greebledy-gronk sassin'-frassin' tarnation this consarned dadburned barbecue place was. My older son had to navigate me here without using either Urbanspoon or Google.

See, Urbanspoon had the wrong address listed. Six Flags Drive, where this restaurant is not located, is north of I-20, off exit 46. The restaurant is actually on Six Flags Road, off exit 44 and just south of the interstate. But it gets worse. Google Maps - and yes, this is the second time in ten days that I am writing to report a failure there - had the wrong physical location of the (incorrect) address. Once I finally got to where 1451 Six Flags Drive should actually be, there was no restaurant there. Do you really blame me for cussing a blue streak?



So I had wasted valuable time and gasoline getting here, I had to talk my son into believing that it was more likely that the internet was actually wrong than I was not reading street signs correctly, and what's more, this Harry Kemleman novel that I was reading had turned out to be one of the lousy ones. This was going to have to be some excellent barbecue to talk me down off this ledge. Happily, it was better than I hoped. About my only quibble, apart from the restaurant foolishly letting its website expire, is that this place definitely needs to pick one name and stick with it. This is more than just the expected idiosyncrasies in the spelling of "barbecue," which our blog usually settles by going with the name on the building's sign. Depending on where you are looking, this place is either called "Beaver Creek Biscuit Company," "Turner's Barbecue" or "Turner's Store." I'm going with "Beaver Creek Biscuits and Barbeque," because that is what is on the staff's T-shirts.

Although, between you and me, at home and with company, I am probably going to call this place "That Blankety-Blank Place Out By Six Flags That Nobody Can Freaking Find and I Drove Around for Half a Flippin' Hour Looking For." Well, that's not entirely accurate. This place was absolutely packed by 11:30, drawing an enormous lunch rush from the businesses around Thornton Road, so plenty of people know where it is. Once you find this place, you're not likely to forget it, for it is terrific. Watson was right; this is easily among the best, if not the outright, hands-down best, pulled pork in the region.





The pork itself is simply excellent, smoked just right and full of flavor. Accompanied by some decent fries and pretty good, oniony, Brunswick stew, it would have been a pleasant success without the sauces, but those turned some great meat into something memorable. Beaver Creek talks up what they call their Seminole sauce, a mustard-vinegar mix, surprisingly thin, and I really liked that. But the other sauce, the hot stuff, that's what you're going to want to sample. I don't know that I've ever seen something like this at any of the barbecue places that I've tried. It's a thick, bright orange sauce and it is the absolutely perfect accompaniment to this meat. Make sure that you order your pork plate pulled and dry so that you may experiment with each. I'm not sure what is in the hot sauce. Possibly mustard, peppers, and maybe a little mayo? Whatever, it was one of the most interesting finds that I have had on my barbecue travels. Also surprising was the complete lack of a tomato-based sauce. I'm pleased that they made that decision; it makes their business stand out a little more.

One other thing that I really liked was the inclusion of Fanta Cherry in the soda fountain. You never see that at restaurants other than Zaxby's. One other thing that I didn't really like so much was the unusual reaction of the woman cleaning the tables as she saw me snapping pictures of my lunch. She furrowed her brow and, with a hint of hostility and a drop of confusion, asked "Why are you taking pictures?"

If I had been reading Gregory Mcdonald, I might have introduced myself as Ted Nugent and told her I was from the health department. Fortunately, I was only reading a mediocre Harry Kemelman and told her, "My wife couldn't be with me today. I want her to see what I'm having for lunch."

She should probably get used to food bloggers taking photos here. Once the word gets out, a few more folk in this hobby might want to come out this way. Just remember, gang, south of I-20. I sent the address correction into Urbanspoon already.

The Sound Table and Café Intermezzo, Atlanta GA

Date night! Marie and I got a very pleasant surprise from her father when he came to visit last weekend. He gave us a big wad of money and told us to go enjoy each other's company at a nice restaurant or two while he watched the children and read A.A. Milne to his new grandson. Unfortunately, I left it too late to make reservations at Two Urban Licks, so I went with a backup plan, The Sound Table. This is a popular new place, just starting its second year, at the intersection of Edgewood and Boulevard in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, and its chef and owners had previously collaborated on the popular Top FLR.

Marie and I enjoyed a very good meal here. We were early, before it apparently gets pretty loud, and got to enjoy some conversation without yelling across the table to each other. They have an amazing cocktail list here, for diners looking for something unusual. I was briefly tempted by a simple glass of Cointreau and orange juice - it really has been a while since I had one - but we just had water, as we almost always do.

Sound Table's menu changes quarterly, and even then they make changes each evening based on what vegetables they can source, so guests will not have much luck reading blogs and getting ideas. That said, we did enjoy an appetizer of fried chickpeas salted with curry and a wonderful small serving of lamb meatballs with Roma tomatoes that got us ready for some excellent entrees. I ordered the hanger steak with a beet salad. This was very simple but so incredibly delicious. It was merely a small plate of arugula, beets, avocado slices and anchovies, but each complemented the other very well.





My meal was good enough that I did not quite get menu envy, but I came close. Happily, the perfectly seasoned steak was tasty enough to make it quite a standout. Marie enjoyed a grilled pork chop that was just heavenly, served over butter beans and greens. She also had a bowl - a huge one, as it turns out - of excellent cauliflower, cooked with red curry and peanuts. Everything was extremely tasty and appropriately portioned. This was a very good date night detination.

We passed on dessert, as I had planned to really give Marie's sweet tooth a workout. Unfortunately, my desire to pick up some caramels from a reasonably new place called The Sugar-Coated Radical was foiled, as they closed earlier than I was planning. We will return some other time, now that we know to arrive before the dinner hour. We drove on instead to Café Intermezzo on Peachtree, near Collier, for some decadent cake, arriving just as the sun was going down.





One day, we might return to Café Intermezzo for a full meal; it certainly has an interesting menu. Speaking of which, the drinks menu here - or perhaps "beverage book" is more appropriate, as it's a full fifty pages long - is just about the most overwhelming and mad thing that I've seen in ages. I've occasionally wondered whether there might be a place in town, other than the GSU dorms, that serves absinthe, and now I know. Since the days of me drinking myself stupid over some damn girl in French class are long gone, I'll pass.

Café Intermezzo has a dessert showcase that rivals the ones we see in Cobb County at Marietta Diner and its sister places. A gigantic slice of cake here will run you about eight bucks and you know with every bite that you're indulging in something sinful. I had choclate and Marie had cheesecake and, somewhere in the beverage book, we noticed that they sell bottles of Hank's soda. I have been on a black cherry kick lately, although the cream soda that Marie enjoyed probably complmented her cake a little better. Although really, a tall glass of milk might have done just as well.

Eventually, we had to leave the patio and get back to the suburbs, and end our date night, as parents often do, swinging by the grocery store to pick up things for the kids. We're just so romantic, you know.

Café de Paris, Marietta GA

Last Friday, Marie's father came to visit and to see his first grandchild. He's been an awesome stepgrandfather to my older two kids, but this is the first grandbaby that he's been able to cuddle and to whom he can read poems. It was a good visit, even if it did reinforce his negative feelings about Atlanta's sprawl and traffic, and we enjoyed a couple of good meals while he was here.

He suggested that the six of us go to a French restaurant. Urbanspoon showed that Café de Paris was not very far from us and it had a good review from the enjoyable Atlanta Restaurant Blog, so that made our decision easy. Friday rush hour traffic through all this sprawl was still pretty awful, but we got there in about twenty minutes.





We all had very good meals here, although my daughter, still confused as to whether or not she actually likes coffee, found her cappuccino too bitter and had to add about a half-pound of Sugar in the Raw to it. Marie had Quiche Lorraine and her father had a shrimp carbonara dish. I had pan-fried grouper and my daughter had a Divan crepe, which comes with chicken, mushrooms and broccoli.

To be honest, the entrees all seemed very good, but I was most impressed by the soup. None of us had their lemon artichoke, which comes highly recommended, but we each had either the tomato basil or the shrimp and corn chowder, which was excellent. The chowder is not on the menu every day; it should be.



For desserts, most of us enjoyed the creme brulee, but Marie chose to have a strawberry crepe. I think she made the better choice. She was very pleased with it, and we were very pleased with the experience.

Hot Thomas Barbecue, Watkinsville GA and Jittery Joe's, Athens GA

Many years ago, Hot Thomas ranked among my very favorite barbecue restaurants. When I lived in Athens, I would drive over to Watkinsville maybe once a month to get a chopped pork plate. Then I moved away and they hit a run of bad luck and closed for a while. Actually, I sort of found out the hard way, by driving over here on two or three occasions in the 2000s and finding only disappointment where there should have been great barbecue.

They used to be called Hot Thomas Barbecue and Peach Orchard, but I learned from the always excellent Chopped Onion that their peach trees froze and died some years ago. This led to a period where they shut down and then, I think, reopened with different hours, depending on the season. Presently, they're open Monday through Saturday until 6 pm. This is the sort of thing that might could change. I didn't want to ask and be thought rude, but the Thomases are getting older, although still just the sweetest, most welcoming and wonderful hosts in the business, and I was a little shocked to see just how feeble Hot has become since I last visited. I don't know, I didn't ask, what their long-term plans for the restaurant might be, but it's probably worth planning a trip sooner rather than later.

Last week, I called and confirmed they'd be open and Marie and I took the baby up for his very first road trip, to Athens. She sat in back and tried to give him a bottle along the way, and he reminded her that Daddy gives the bottle, Mommy's supposed to nurse. Then again, he was probably just ready for some stew. Poor kid's had nothing but milk for sixteen days.





I'm actually a little worried about how time has taken the edge off my memories of this place. On the one hand, even though it had been such a long time, I remembered exactly the sign explaining their six sauces. There are three each - mild, hot and "x-hot" - of a ketchup-based and a vinegar-based mix. I like the honesty of describing that as ketchup-based, rather than tomato-based. Marie had hot ketchup and really liked it. It was thinner than she expected and packed the right punch. I had extra hot vinegar based, which was last used to power NASA's Saturn missions. I had a little cup of it on the side. I enjoyed a few bites of this wonderful chopped pork, which is moist and packed with flavor, although not especially smoky, and then dipped some meat in the cup. I haven't had anything that spicy in weeks. Oh, my. This was amazing. I had forgotten just how wonderful everything tastes here.

Proving that I never paid half as much attention to things when I was younger as I should have, you can get chicken mull at Hot Thomas. I guess I saw it on their menu and just never asked what it was when I should have, only learning what mull was years later. Sadly, the mull here is not quite as good as other places in the area that I've tried, but the stew - more hash-like than Brunswick - is fantastic, and so is the slaw.

Assembling the perfect barbecue plate will not be difficult if you live in Athens, but it requires three people with cars to go in different directions and bring it back from four places. It's quite simple. Have one person drive down to Paul's in Lexington to get the chopped pork. Have another drive up to Danielsville and collect the sauce from Zeb's and on the way back, stop by Bill's in Hull for the mull. Have the third member of your team go to Hot Thomas for the stew and the slaw. Heat everything up when your drivers get back and feed everybody the very best meal that has ever been assembled.

This stew was just too good for a baby to miss out on. I dabbed a couple of drops on my finger and let the baby suck happily on it, thrilled to finally have a great new taste. Marie didn't entirely look upon this with complete approval, probably because no parenting book has suggested that stew should be offered to babies at sixteen days old. Sometimes, it must be said, books don't tell you what you really need to know.

We left Hot Thomas, hoping that it won't be the last time, and went back to the other side of Watkinsville to visit one of Marie's friends and show off the baby. On the way, we passed by the turning for the Elder Covered Bridge. We should probably make another visit to Hot Thomas and swing by there to take some pictures. I love photographing Marie with a covered bridge in the background. Well, anyway, we visited for a few minutes and Marie dropped off some of her amazing banana bread, and then we drove along Simonton Bridge Road into east Athens. We tried again to get this darn baby to have something more than a few drops of stew to eat and he still wasn't having any of it.



About a quarter to two, we met up with some more local friends at one of Athens' many Jittery Joe's locations. This is a hometown coffee shop with a hugely relaxed feel. My favorite location is gone now; the old one in Five Points was where I spent 1999 beating most of my senior paper into shape. Our sixteen-day old son met somebody younger than him, as our friend Eleanor had her second baby just seven days previously. Scott dropped by for just a few minutes on a lunch break, and Paula brought us a wonderful crocheted blanky.

Jittery Joe's comfortable and relaxed atmosphere makes it a perfect place for people to linger for a good while. They even have old board games! While neither Marie nor I drink coffee, there are plenty of other things to sample. Sadly, they were out of both brownies and the lemon mix for the freeze that Marie was hoping to try. She had a peach freeze instead and Paula had mango. I just had a bottle of Blenheim ginger ale. I figure, any place that will let me sit back on a couch for two hours sipping hot ginger ale while the ladies talk about their babies is a good place. We didn't spend an awful lot of money here, but it's a great place to enjoy company and pass the time.

Before leaving town, we visited our friends at Bizarro Wuxtry for a little while and introduced the baby to them. Then we got that carry-out order of fries and feta dressing from The Grill that I was hoping to enjoy the last time we were in town. With Marie sitting in back with the baby, that left the front seat of the car free for me to open up the box and dip and drive. The baby did great; we have a bigger road trip in store for him next month and I hope that it goes half as well.





(Update, 9/2/11: I'm glad that we took the chance to visit again. On Aug. 30, it looks like the pain of his stroke got too great for Hot to bear, and he ended his life. God bless you, Hot, and thank you for giving my boy his first taste of stew.)

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Traveling Fare, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing a chapter on Traveling Fare, or rather more specifically Paul's Pot Pies. It may seem a little odd considering that it's May in Georgia, but we had a couple of very cool days that made a baked hot pie something to look forward to as an evening meal. My mother had come to visit and wanted to offer a treat, and this was just the thing.

Traveling Fare is a local Marietta business that has been around for over a quarter of a century. You can go to the small storefront just off the Square and get a lunch, or buy some of the pot pies to take home and bake for dinner.

Our latest opportunity to try these came when my mother came up to visit our new baby and wanted to provide a no-fuss meal that would still let her enjoy his company. Since the little guy tends to be a bit fussy around dinner time (probably the only time of day he regrets the whole milk diet thing) and needs extra care and attention then to be happy, a meal we could pop into the oven and forget about for an hour was just the thing.





I have to admit I would never have given them a try if it weren't for the Marietta Square Farmer's Market. There's nothing like a free sample for making you want to go spend money to get more of what you just tasted. They are a regular at the market and show up with large casserole dishes that let them give quite respectably-sized samples. The pies themselves are really cute, with a hand-cut flower made out of pastry dough decorating each one.

I don't know how many of our readers might have spent some of their starving-student or strapped-newlywed meal budget on those under-a-dollar frozen soup-with-a-crust things that went by the name of pot pie and would therefore flinch away from the mere idea. These are not those pies; these are something delectable and substantial, filling and a pleasure to eat. Also, aside from the traditional chicken or beef stew-type varieties, you can get Jambalaya with sausage and rice, creole shrimp with lots of shrimp, and several other varieties. I'm a fan of comfort food and have to admit that the chicken is my favorite, but the rest of my family prefers the Jambalaya. I haven't had the opportunity to try all the flavors yet, but so far there hasn't been one that was unsatisfactory or even slightly disappointing.

The storefront is quite small, and the bulk of the business seems to be take-out and catering, but if you choose to have lunch there you can chat with Paul behind the counter. The lunch menu includes some intriguing salads that I should check out soon. He's quite friendly and willing to tell you about his products or just talk.

Troy's BarBQ and Ole Tymer BBQ, Rome GA

Two Saturdays ago, Marie and I were enjoying a little tour of northwest Georgia that took us to four barbecue restaurants. The original plan, drafted before our baby was born, had been to continue north up GA-100 to the town of Coosa, see whether anything interesting might have been waiting for us there, and then drive east to Rome before coming home.

Unfortunately, we did have a little time budget to worry about, as we did need to get back and relieve Marie's mother of babysitting duties. So when we got to the town of Cave Spring, we changed plans and drove to Rome from there. Coosa would have to wait for some other time. My parents and I used to drive through there all the time. They grew up in Fort Payne, Alabama, and we would go back out this way to visit my grandparents every four or five weeks.

Marie doesn't believe that she's ever been through Rome. I hadn't been by in around five years. The town used to be home to a very, very minor league indoor football team called the Renegades, and I was curious enough to come check them out back when I cared a bit more about that sport. I had supper on that trip at a barbecue place whose name I could not remember, but I looked over the listings at Urbanspoon, shrugged, thought that it might have been Troy's, and got directions. I was incorrect. I'd never been to Troy's before, although many, many people have in the eighty years the restaurant has been in business.





Troy's, today, is in a large, open space in a small strip mall that also houses a Ru San's. It is a characterless, commercial site that the present owners have attempted to spruce up with photographs and signage from the restaurant's heyday. Apparently first opened in the 1930s, Troy's was in a large building that was later demolished for a bypass. In the 1950s, they relocated to the place that generations of Romans knew very well. Troy - I'm not sure whether that was his first or his family name - passed away a few years ago, and the new owners bought the rights to it from his heirs. They have mostly kept the classic layout of the restaurant in its fondly-remembered space, with a three-sided counter right in front of things, but the much larger space in this strip mall means that they can accommodate several more tables on either side of it.

The pulled pork here is served in a deep, red tomato-based sauce. I asked, and it is prepared that way in the kitchen; you can't get the sauce on the side. On any other day (these days), I might have minded a little, but since the sandwiches that I enjoyed at the previous two stops each had such very different takes on meat, I appreciated getting a third style in one afternoon.

Nothing here blew us away, though I did like the slaw and Marie was taken with her butter beans. It's pretty good stuff, served with a great, positive attitude from a terrific staff, but I think that I would like it better if it was in a different location, and not one that feels like it was built yesterday. Recipes with this much history deserve a better presentation.



I was mentioning above that the last time I came to Rome, I ate at a place whose name I could not remember. By chance, our drive to Troy's took us right past that place! It's a drive-through shack called Ole Tymer, and while it doesn't have Troy's long history, it's closing in on thirty years in business.

By this point, Marie and I were completely full, but I pulled into Ole Tymer anyway and got a bag of food to take home and reheat. I remember enjoying the meal that I had here five years back, and the chopped pork and stew didn't disappoint. Then, I sat at one of their concrete picnic tables and read several chapters of Marvel's Essential Luke Cage and just enjoyed the heck out of my nice late afternoon. But on this Saturday, I took my food home and had them with our odds-n-sods supper of leftovers and freezer pizza. I daresay I had the best meal. The chopped pork was smokey but also moist, and the stew was very good.

Ole Tymer kind of needs to invest in a new sign. It looks like there's been a change in ownership, or at least half-ownership, sometime in the last few years, but the name of the second owner is still somewhat visible on the sign, his name faded but present. Every restaurant has a story; it looks to passers-by that the story of this one is tinged with sadness.

That wrapped up our first northwest Georgia tour. There are still several places along and nearby the I-75 corridor that we can try on another loop sometime, or on a similar jaunt into Alabama along I-59. It probably shouldn't surprise you to learn that I've already sketched out another little day trip. Maybe we'll get the chance to try it in a couple of months!

Lively's Owens BBQ, Cedartown GA

A week ago, Marie and I took a little barbecue tour of northwest Georgia. We went out I-20 almost to the Alabama line, then drove north up GA-100, took a right at Cave Spring and sauntered over to Rome before returning home to Marietta via I-75. The trip took almost six hours and took us to four different restaurants. I wanted to sample this area for several reasons, but one of the big ones was this: nobody else seems to have done it. There are many excellent food and barbecue bloggers out there, but nobody has really covered this area. I greatly enjoy a pretty comprehensive site called All About the Smoke which covers northeast Georgia, but there's nothing like it for the other side of the state. Even the magnificent, and sadly still on hiatus 3rd Degree Berns has given this region a wide berth.

I don't reckon that anybody will be accusing me of trying to goose my Urbanspoon stats with these four entries; as near as I can tell, absolutely nobody is talking about barbecue in Tallapoosa, Cedartown and Rome. We should do something about that.

In the previous entry, I told you about our first stop, in the border town of Tallapoosa. From there, we got turned around a little bit. Marie and I use Google Maps to navigate on our trips. This was the first, and, heaven willing, the last time that the service got so completely hornswaggled by the notion of getting a fellow from point A to B. After we had eaten at Turn Around, we asked our server whether there was a grocery store in town. Marie and I had each realized that a town this near the Alabama line might have its soda aisle served by Buffalo Rock. The server told us there was a Piggly Wiggly which turned out to be within walking distance, just 200 yards further along US-78. Next door was a Jack's fast food place, first mentioned in this blog about a year ago and still, somehow, not given a proper visit.

So we bought some Buffalo Rock and Grapico from the store and resumed our Google Maps journey. This took us back about a mile in the direction we came, and then in a loop back towards I-20. About four miles later, we emerged at a traffic light on US-78, the Jack's visible about 200 yards to our right. Google Maps, you failed us.

Anyway, we continued on, distracted briefly by a sign pointing out the site of historic Possum Snout, past some damage and felled trees from the region's recent horrible storms, and Google Maps failed us again as we got into Cedartown. If I hadn't spotted a sign for South Main Street nowhere near the point the directions told us to look for it, we'd have missed it completely.





The first big surprise here is that the restaurant we were looking for is in the process of changing its name. Owens Barbecue, a family-owned business, was bought in March and is currently calling itself Lively's Owens, although they have not yet changed the roadside sign. Owens was evidently here for thirty years in this small brown shack under gorgeous tree cover; Lively has been in charge for about two months and has introduced a few new menu items.

The pork here is not as finely chopped as many other places, and the portions seem a little smaller. I had a sandwich and stew again, and Marie just had a cup of slaw. While the restaurant's "classic" sauce - traditional Georgia tomato-vinegar mix - is still available, the new owners are promoting their "Darbi-Q" recipe. This is a Carolina-styled sauce, thin and brown-orange. It is really good, though I'm not sure whether the menu needs to feature a "Darbi-Q" as a separate sandwich, when it's evidently just their standard pork sandwich, drenched in sauce.

The stew didn't hold a candle to the recipe that we tried about an hour earlier in Tallapoosa, but it was also memorable and I really liked it. This stew was in a thinner soup, with larger chunks of meat, and it was very peppery. I really like trying places like this that have their own take on a dish.

We were eating at the same time as a small group from the nearby National Guard base, and passed the time talking with them about, of all things, the Winchester House and the recent preoccupation among religious scam artists about the end times. According to one billboard near our house in Marietta, the world's meant to end today. Well, if it does, thanks so much for reading, and if it doesn't, stop by on Monday and we'll tell you about the next two places on our tour.

The Turn Around Bar-B-Q, Tallapoosa GA

Many years back, Marie and I had a good pal, Dave Prosser, who moved from Athens to Anniston, Alabama. He's since moved farther afield, to Idaho, dug up dinosaur bones, got lost on a mountain for three days, got married, and has only come back to town once. But while he was living in Anniston, I took the kids to visit one time. This would have been 2002 or so. I realized that US-78 connected Anniston with Atlanta, and decided to take that back home instead of I-20. Crossing back into Georgia brings you to the small town of Tallapoosa, and I stopped at the Turn Around Bar-B-Que for a take-out barbecue sandwich and fries and munched on those in the car for supper.

These days, Turn Around is no longer open for supper. They're a breakfast and lunch place only, and they don't do a roaring trade in lunch, either. That's just not right; this Brunswick stew is completely remarkable, and if you are reading our blog and like barbecue, you need to plan to get out here and try this stuff.





This past Saturday, Marie and I got out for her first baby break for a drive through northwest Georgia and a barbecue tour that I had planned a couple of months ago. Our baby came two weeks early; he was due on the 18th but came on the 3rd. We had originally planned to get out and do this tour on the 7th, but we used that day to treat her to some hot dogs around Atlanta instead. Marie's mother was in town visiting and providing some much-needed help, and she watched the baby for about six hours while Marie and I stretched our road-tripping legs.

Tallapoosa is about one hour from our place in Marietta, and we got to Turn Around at 11.30. The sign out front is faded and, incorrectly, still notes their old dinner hours. Inside, the walls are peppered with grouchy, silly but nevertheless unwelcoming signs about following the house rules. Fortunately, our server was polite and agreeable, and utterly unlike the signs! Marie and I each ordered a chopped pork sandwich, and I had stew and she had potato salad. The pork is incredibly smoky and really, really dry. It's served on a buttered sesame seed bun, but it really needs some sauce. There's just the one here, a medium-thick red sauce of tomato and vinegar.

The pork is pretty good; I've certainly had worse. But this stew... well, I've certainly had many, many worse helpings of stew than this. It is simply remarkable, right up there with Harold's and Speedi-Pig. It's just not right that nobody seems to know about this stew. Seriously, if you're on I-20 between Birmingham and Alabama, you should really swing by this place and see what I am talking about. It doesn't appear to be anything special, just the standard ingredients of (I believe) ground pork, chicken, tomatoes and corn, but it is seasoned just perfectly.

Turn Around has recently started selling ice cream and brags about their banana splits; that's a pretty good idea to try and draw the after-lunch crowds in and I hope that it works. This isn't an area that I get too very frequently, and I kind of want them to still be around, serving this stew, the next time that I am.

Marie and I passed on dessert as we had several more stops to make. More about those in the next chapter...

Red Burrito, Woodstock GA

About a week and a half ago, I got so aggravated with this girl that I used to date that I have to tell you about it. Now, you might think that "girls that Grant used to date" would not necessarily be on top of the list of people whom I would want to stop and visit with my newborn baby on the way home from the hospital, and normally, you would be right. However, I've stayed friendly with Jennifer for years, even if we are not as close as we once were, and she's known Marie since before Marie and I began dating. Jennifer manages a comic book store in Woodstock, which is not at all bad as far as Diamond catalog stores go. It is downright terrific for anybody interested in buying modern comic books and superhero tchotchkes, although sadly lacking in boxes full of embarrassing dot matrix Star Trek fanzines, untranslated Brazilian James Bond comics, indefineable weird Japanese things and stacks of 1960s British newspaper comics, and there's not a single 1970s National Lampoon with since-unreprinted Gahan Wilson pages in the joint. That's why I never visit. Screw Iron Man, I'm into the good stuff.

Well, since I wanted to show off the baby, and since Jennifer's store was on the way home, and since Jennifer's more than midway through her own pregnancy, I suggested to Marie that we swing by and see whether she was in. Marie, sleepy but still glowing, agreed that we should, and so we stopped by for a few minutes to say hello and brag about our youngun. Jennifer invited us to come by the next day for Free Comic Book Day, we waved goodbye, pulled back out onto Towne Lake Parkway, and I did a complete double-take because I thought I saw something quite unexpected. After we got the baby back home and settled, I went online and confirmed it. Yes, the Hardee's people have opened a Red Burrito in Woodstock.

Red Burrito is the fast-food Mexican chain run by CKE, which is the parent corporation of Carl's Jr. They bought Hardee's in 1997 and seemed to shut down about a third of them, which was just about the closest thing to a mercy killing I've ever seen in the restaurant business. This is actually a point I've been meaning to come back to for ages; remind me to tell you about Chicken Express one day. Anyway, noticing the success of their rival Yum! Brands and their dual-branded Taco Bell / KFC / Long John Silver / A&W stores, CKE decided to make similar restaurants with double menus. On the far side of the Rockies, there are Carl's Jr. stores dual-branded with Green Burrito, and on this side, there are Hardee's dual-branded with Red Burrito. These have steadfastedly avoided the Atlanta area until about a month ago. The first two Red Burritos have finally opened in Lithia Springs and in Woodstock. There's another one up the road outside of Rome.

So the next evening, the older children and I went back to the comic store for my son to get a free Sonic the Hedgehog book, and for me to express my aggravation. I could not believe that, knowing how I feel about small-market regional fast food, she would work one parking lot's distance from this place and not tell me that it had opened. Jennifer, kindly, explained that she remembered well how I feel about regional, small market sodas, but had no idea that I cared about regional fast food chains. I suspect that she was drawing a polite veil of no-longer-caring-in-the-slightest about how, for years, I have gone on about White Castle and Whataburger and Jack in the Box.

Oh, all right, so I wasn't really aggravated, but I get so few opportunities to aggravate other people by showing up at their place of business and yammering on about fast food chains when they're exhausted and tired of working a big promotional day with hundreds of extra visitors these days. How could I resist?





So, aggravation duly caused, the children and I went up to finally try a Red Burrito. I first heard of them ages ago when, curious about some point or other, I looked up Hardee's on Wikipedia and saw the reference. I've since seen a billboard for one on I-95 in northern Florida, and we drove past one in Asheville when we were last there, but my curiosity over a fast food taco wasn't enough to pull me from our schedule in one of America's best food cities.

And the result was, well, about what you'd expect. The burrito itself - I ordered chicken - was not bad, although the thin, light green sauce that the poor kids behind the counter claimed was guacamole was pretty laughable. The chips, rice and beans were salty and perfectly acceptable for this sort of food. It's better than Taco Bell, whatever that's worth. It's multiple orders of magnitude better than that godawful Taco Bell in Canton.

However, these tacos here are just absolutely pathetic. I've never seen something so sad. They just drizzled a few crumbs of ground beef into the bottom of a shell, added six or seven shreds of lettuce and a baby's handful of cheese and served it up with, literally, two fingers' width of space remaining between the cheese and the top of the shell. I ordered two tacos and I very much doubt that I got as much filling as I would have in just one from Taco Bell. Now, whomever is in charge of quality control here needs to step in and do something about this. They hired a simply terrific high schooler to take our order, but whomever is in the back actually making the food needs to go build ships in bottles if he's that obsessed with very small things.

My curiosity has been sated. The food here is pretty good. "Better than Taco Bell" isn't much of a recommendation, especially when it's still not even close to being on par with Del Taco. Still, it's nice to enjoy something new, isn't it?

The Festival of Nitrates, 2011

When Marie learned she was pregnant, she did some research and found that nitrates are really bad for carrying babies. So she excised hot dogs and sausages and salami from her diet, and suffered silently without some of her favorite foods. She consoled herself with hamburgers when we visited America's Top Dog, and when we were in Nashville in November of last year, we did not make the requisite stop by Noshville for a big salami to pack for the ride home.

Now that the baby's with us, I took her out for a little splurging. Over three days, we had hot dogs at what I would argue are the three best hot dog places in the city, and we picked up some salami to make some terrific sandwiches for dinner. We've been to all three of these places before and love them all. First up, on Thursday, just as soon as she was discharged and we kissed byes to the baby (who stayed in the hospital for 24 more hours), was a lunchtime trip to Brandi's World Famous Hot Dogs.

As ever, there was a mob here, and the topic of conversation around the counter was why in the world Guy Fieri had not featured this place on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives yet. Heaven knows it qualifies. Marie had two dogs, one with slaw and one with chili. The chili here is really finely ground beef in a devilishly hot sauce. I prefer to eat them with chili and slaw together. The slaw cools the burn of this firey concoction somewhat.

On Friday, the baby now safely home and he and Marie napping peacefully, my older son and I ran out to get some meat. We drove over to Austell's Patak-Bohemia, an incredibly popular meat market located in the middle of nowhere, down past some industrial blight. Sort of an all-purpose European-styled butcher shop, guests can order more than a dozen varieties of salami here, along with everything from kielbasa to bacon, and fill their basket with imported treats and sodas like hazelnut Kit Kat bars and fizzy lemonade.





We went home with three bags of salami, enough for several sandwiches. I had enjoyed their house version the last time we came here, but they didn't have any on this visit, offering the tourist salami instead. I felt faintly disappointed by the name. My son enjoyed the Hungarian salami the most, while I liked the spicy Durango salami. A small stack of that on a bakery bun with mustard, horseradish sauce and a slice of Havarti cheese was quite excellent, and we used not even a third of what we purchased that evening, leaving us plenty of salami for the next week.

On Saturday, we took our baby out for his first visit to a restaurant. Marie suggested that we go to America's Top Dog first, as she was already familiar with our other destination. We arrived just as they were opening and had a short wait as the grill warmed up.

We each had a half-smoke, and I'm glad to say that my hype of this remarkable little beef and pork sausage didn't overwhelm the reality. Marie agreed that this was completely amazing. I top mine with brown mustard, Cincinnati chili and a small pile of cheddar cheese. It's just unmissably good. I also had an original top dog with Texas chili and giardiniera relish and it was also as wonderful as I hoped. The fries were just a little bland this time out; they seem to have been sitting for a few seconds longer than they should have been, but with dogs this great, we weren't all that interested in the fries anyway. Besides, the onion rings are even better.

For our final stop on the tour, we came back to I-75 and Windy Hill for the wonderfully good Barker's Red Hots.





Barker's is another of our favorite places to visit, although we haven't gone very often lately, in part because they are no longer open for dinner and in part because I've been enjoying their beef on weck sandwich even more than their dogs. Oh, and Marie being pregnant. The staff greeted us like old friends and asked where we'd been, and you've just got to love service like that. ATD might have the best dog in town with their half-smoke and topping bar, and Brandi's might win on chili and charm, but really, for overall quality, Barker's is indeed something special. Asking me which of the three is my favorite will net you a different answer any day of the week.

Marie and I each ordered lightly grilled red hots. They cook over charcoal here and the results are never less than excellent. She had hers with slaw and I had mine with mustard, thick hot sauce, onions and pickles. Since we had the fries at ATD, we went with onion rings here. Marie and I differ on this point; I think we flat out got them backwards. Barker's fries are so darn delicious it's sinful, but their onion rings, while excellent, are not quite as good as ATD's. Marie loves the sweet crisp to Barker's rings, and prefers them to the fries. Whichever, a meal here is a genuine treat, and we wouldn't think of eating here without a cup of loganberry punch.

The baby seemed to enjoy the day out and his first real look at this weird world of ours. He didn't enjoy being changed in the teeny restroom at ATD, and one day down the line, he'll probably give me an earful for not sharing any chili with him. Kid's got plenty of time for chili, though, and we've got a lot more of it to eat.

Marietta Diner, Marietta GA

So the day after our new baby boy was born, I wasn't going to rest on my laurels and have any more lousy hospital or chain food like I did on the day he arrived. I still had two other kids to take care of while Marie recuperated in the hospital, and so I came back to Marietta to give them some more attention and some supper.

My daughter chose to go out with friends, so my older son and I went over to Marietta Diner for the first time in ages. I have mentioned this place a couple of times before; this is the flagship location for a group that runs some of Cobb County's most well-known restaurants. We've covered their sister locations Marietta Fish Market and Cherokee Cattle Company in this blog before. While each of the other stores pick one style of cuisine and does an efficient, if sometimes larger-than-sense job of it, the Marietta Diner elects to do everything, and do it pretty well.

One thing that potential guests need to know is that there is always a crowd here. I've never had to wait for more than a few minutes, and occasionally, like last Wednesday, not at all, but I've never seen the place without plenty of people and an almost full lot. That's any hour of the day. The Atlanta area is home to quite a few neon-and-chrome diners, but this place is easily the most popular and beloved of them all. Somehow, the army of staffers employed here manage to provide quite excellent hands-on attention to detail, fixing errors instantly and providing really prompt service while being pulled in many directions. The difference in customer service here and at any equally busy place - say, last month's trip to La Fonda Latina - is like night and day.





I told my son up front that I'd allow him a gigantic treat from the gigantic dessert menu if he would keep his dinner selection on the cheap side. That's never easy to do here. With a menu the size of a small phone book, and with a list of daily specials longer than many other places' entire offering, it's hard to narrow down what you want and find the right price. Reveling in humongous portions, some of the offerings are somewhat pricier than I might like.

We came, incidentally, because for some reason a few hours before, I found myself having the oddest craving for a gigantic deli sandwich, the likes of which are best found at The Square Bagel. That place is not open for supper, but I found a reasonable facsimile of what I wanted at the Marietta Diner. Called a Sloppy John, it's a huge stack of corned beef, melted cheese and cole slaw served with Russian dressing and fries. Already satisfied by the spanikopita and the bread they bring to each table, and the salad that I enjoyed, I ended up having half this sandwich for breakfast the next morning.

The salad was a good example of the staff proving how on the ball they are. I had asked for the Greek-styled side salad, but they brought me this unbelievable thing that was assuredly priced higher than the $4-odd on the menu. It was served in a bowl the size of a basketball, featured a towering leaf of lettuce positioned like the feather of a garish headdress, and included several grape leaves and anchovies. It looked terrific, but far more than I could eat! I pointed out the error and it was corrected almost instantly.

My son had a burger, served with fries, a side of slaw and a couple of onion rings, and for dessert, he went up to the showcase and wasn't seen again for several minutes. Slices of cake here are priced around seven dollars each and are just tremendous. He finally decided on Butterfinger flavor and could not finish it. We ended up taking three boxes home for leftovers the next day.

This place isn't really for people who are looking for something inexpensive, or sensible portion sizes. It's all about conspicuous consumption here, and the restaurant's enormous popularity proves they're doing right by their crowd. It's genuinely good stuff, and while I'm hardly a regular here, I've certainly never had a bad meal.

Mo Ribs Bar-B-Que, Canton GA

Man, I'm glad I found this place. I don't know where else I was supposed to eat.

Well, since the last time I actually composed an entry here, we had our baby! He is a precious little boy that weighed six pounds and twelve ounces at birth, and evidently had such a good time at the showers thrown for him and Marie that he decided to come two weeks early, just a couple of days after all our out-of-town guests left. This sort of left me unprepared for going to get anything to eat at the hospital that we used in the Cherokee County town of Canton other than Mo Ribs. A couple of weeks previously, we had driven past this place on our way back from Chatsworth and I said then that I would have to stop by while we were in the hospital.

The quick succession of events meant that I ended up having wretched hospital cafeteria food for breakfast and for lunch, and the baby came at 3 pm. Four hours later, I drove back to Marietta to pick up his older brother and sister to go meet him and, first, get some food. We went by Mo Ribs, but they're only open for lunch on Tuesdays. My daughter remembered enjoying Jiffy Freeze, which isn't far, but it turns out they're not open at all on Tuesdays. So, not knowing where else to try, we settled, I'm sorry to say, on Taco Bell, which my children, being middle schoolers and thus the target audience for that "food," find agreeable. But this, this was the worst Taco Bell in the state. Even the kids thought it was horrible. This, three awful meals in one day, was no way to celebrate this baby's birth. Heck, I remember that day in 1997 when my older son was born, I got a package of New Avengers episodes in the mail. Now that's how you have a good birthday.

So the next morning, I made darn sure I got back over to Mo Ribs for something good to eat. Darned if I was going to settle for a mediocre lunch after the day before.





I was the only person here when I stopped by at eleven on a Wednesday morning, but don't take that to mean this place shouldn't be hopping. This is very good chopped pork, with a really awesome smoky flavor. I neglected to ask for my meal dry, and it came already sauced with a thick layer of deep smoky red sitting atop the meat. My palate was certainly starving for something great, particularly in light of all that garbage that I ate the day before, and so I might not be very objective when I say that this really hit the spot.

The fries didn't strike me as being anything unusual, but the stew, soupy and very heavy with tomatoes, was quite nice. But oh, my. This sweet tea was so darn good. At its core, this is a pretty good meal, but the tea genuinely elevates it, in a way that the tea at the late, lamented Carrithers of Athens did. My!

The location really works against them, I think. I like the building, tucked into a fork in the road, but there doesn't seem to be much parking, and it's a pretty fair ways off the interstate. Nevertheless, it's definitely a good destination for people in the area or students at Reinhardt University, and travelers taking a barbecue tour up I-575 should certainly add this to their list of stops.

Joe's Mexicana Grill, Austell GA

A couple of Saturdays back, I had one of those fluid days where everything kept changing based on traffic and other people's plans. Marie had an excellent baby shower thrown for her by our friend Samantha, and some of our friends from Nashville came to attend. Later, David and I took our Nashville buddies out for a couple of hours shopping for records and for yarn, and while time didn't afford us the chance to go enjoy a great dinner in Atlanta, we did, at least, stop by King of Pops at their usual location at North Avenue and North Highlands and have some awesome handcrafted snacks. Still no Arnold Palmer flavor for me - I'm optimistic that I'll try it one of these days - but I can confirm that their orange basil is just about better than you could imagine.

Later in the evening, after our friends made their way back to Tennesee, David and I spent a little while trying to figure out what to eat around his place. We finally settled on Joe's Mexicana Grill, which is a quite new place - it opened in March - on the East-West Connector in that same strip mall as the wonderful Miyako. A very good chicken place called Famous Yardbirds had briefly lived and died in the space now occupied by a package store. Joe's itself seems, if memory holds, to be in the space where a Moe's Southwestern Grill once was. This, in itself, was surprising. Despite the inescapable reality that you cannot spell "mediocre" without M-O-E, I didn't think those darn places ever closed down.





Joe's follows the same template as Moe's and Willy's and Hollie Guacamole! and the like. It's assembly-line burritos, tacos and nachos, made with smiles on the other side of a sneeze guard. However, there are a pair of extras here that none of their competitors offer, which warrant commentary, even though I did not sample either. First, there's the surprising and notable choice of artichoke as a primary ingredient. Somehow or another, I just plain misread this on the menu, said to myself that I'd rather have spicy chicken than what I thought was avocado, and when I left, stuffed from an enormous burrito bowl, I was kicking myself for not trying an artichoke taco. Further investigation is required here.

The other thing they have is a really impressive dessert counter. Their competitors work under the assumption that all anybody ever wants for dessert after a burrito is a chocolate chip cookie. Joe's suggests that you might like a big slice of cheesecake or something exquisitely decadent. Again, I was too stuffed from a burrito bowl and some chips to even have a taco, much less a slab of chocolate cake this large, but it sure did do my eyes a favor to look at what was on offer.

Joe's might not be destination dining, and its unfortunate interior design doesn't really lend itself to quiet evenings out. With very high ceilings and piping and ventilation above, the sound is terrible and loud here. One television was on Nickelodeon and one was on Faux News and we couldn't make out a word from either. Sounds just turn into howling noise here; TVs should be shut off and lower ceiling tiles installed. But for its neighborhood, it's a pretty good addition, and the quality of the food is infinitely preferable to Moe's.

And for those of you who noted with sadness my inability to land an Arnold Palmer-flavored pop earlier in the afternoon, you can breathe a sigh of relief that I mixed myself one to drink with my burrito. It probably wasn't as good as a frozen popsicle on a nice spring afternoon, but it was still pretty good.