Nifty Fifty's, Philadelphia PA

(Honeymoon flashback: In July 2009, Marie and I took a road trip up to Montreal and back, enjoying some really terrific meals over our ten-day expedition. I've selected some of those great restaurants, and, once per month, we'll tell you about them.)

So a month ago, I wrote about how Marie and I stopped by the terrific Little Hut Sandwich Shop for lunch before going to visit her aunt Bertie and uncle Bruce in Ridley Park. There was one other stop that we wanted to make before we went looking for their house, though. We asked the staff at Little Hut whether there was a Best Buy in the area. We were having a small issue with Marie's laptop that required a little help from the Geek Squad.

Happily, one was not far away at all. They directed us to take a left at Lincoln, and travel in the direction that we were heading anyway, and go about three miles to Baltimore Pike, I think, and take a right. So we enjoyed that tremendously good sandwich and resumed our drive. We noted the place where we'd turn to get to Bertie and Bruce's on the way back, and then saw a remarkably neat building on our right. I didn't know what we would be doing for supper - it turned out that Bertie had some wonderful curried chicken salad waiting for us - but I knew exactly where I wanted dessert.

This was Nifty Fifty's, and they have a few locations, apparently five, in the area. Basically, it's a neon-flooded fifties-style diner, extremely popular with teens, and they do desserts worth driving a hundred miles for. I'll have to disagree with the otherwise excellent review at Burt's Food Blog about the feel of the restaurant. It's fifties-style in the same way that the Johnny Rocket's chain is, filtered through 1985's window of nostalgia into the past.

I'd really like to try the burgers and fries at Nifty Fifty's, because the drinks and desserts are just amazingly fun and decadent and delicious, and the service first-rate, suggesting that the kitchen might be relied upon for some more successes.

Amusingly, they claim to be the world's largest soda fountain, on account of their willingness to mix flavors and give you everything from Lemon Dr. Pepper to Cherry Chocolate Cola to, errrm, Toasted Marshmellow Soda. I tried this one, against our server's advice, and can confirm it was every bit as gloriously awful as I hoped. But the chocolate ice cream soda was more than worth the trip. Bertie had a big ole ice cream sundae and Marie had a chocolate banana shake, and we were all very pleased and stuffed. If the road ever takes us back towards Philly, I hope that we can return to Nifty Fifty's.

We took lots of pictures, but, well, we're in all of them. We hadn't formalized taking pictures of our meals yet, so you'll just have to imagine a crowded, bright interior with a pink neon glow illuminating everything. It's not authentically 1950s, but it's delicious all the same. I strongly recommend travelers stop by one of these places for a meal. They're open all hours, serving their giant milkshakes and burgers.

Brick Store Pub, Decatur GA

For lunch a few Thursdays back, I treated myself with a little trip over to Decatur to finally check out Brick Store, a really nice pub that quietly boasts one of the most remarkable beer menus in the southeast. Well, the restaurant itself boasts quietly, and beer lovers rave from the rooftops. Between what's on tap and what's in bottles, there are something like 200 or more available here at any given time, rotating regularly. Even a lightweight like me who rarely drinks is in heaven here. There's something at Brick Store for everybody.

When I lived in Athens, I would often drink at the downtown Mellow Mushroom, which was famous in town for its "Hundred Bottle Beer Club." I was well on the way to making that century mark when one evening, a server decided to play a particularly ill-judged practical joke on our friend Matt that left him fuming. Electing solidarity with a justifiably outraged friend, I didn't go back, but I had some fine evenings before then. I understand that Brick Store was opened by some former employees of that Mellow Mushroom who loved their place's beer selection, although, in a pleasant surprise, the Athens pub that it most resembles is the lovely Globe. There are no TVs and no bad mass-produced beers. It opened in the summer of 1997 and has been racking up awards for its beer selection ever since.





The service here is genuinely first-rate. I was lucky to have an excellent server who settled my inability to choose between two beers by bringing me a taste of each. The imperial stout from Denver's Great Divide Brewing that I sampled was indeed lovely, but I went with a Highlands oatmeal porter, from Asheville, as I had never had an oatmeal porter before. (My all-time favorite beer, incidentally, is Samuel Smith's oatmeal stout.) The porter was completely delicious, and it went really well with my meal.

I enjoyed a simple burger, named "The Brick Burger" on the menu, and it was incredibly juicy and delicious. It came with some house-cut wedge fries, and I followed the suggestion of Dine With Dani, who advised getting a little cup of red pepper mayo on the side as a fry dip. It was so good.

For real beer aficionados, Brick Store is a definite destination. If you live anywhere in the southeast, you need to come see this place. For lightweights like me who've spent most of the last eleven or twelve years sober and start to get a little goofy after just one pint, it might not be quite so imperative to get down here, but with food this good and beer this wonderful, it is definitely worth a visit for a snack and something to drink whenever I'm around Decatur. I'll definitely be back sometime soon.

Sausalito West Coast Grill, Atlanta GA

I felt a little rotten about David. The last time we went out to eat with him, he wasn't all that enthusiastic about going to Johnny's Bar-B-Que and Steaks, and while I enjoyed my meal and was curious and excited about this very localized style of barbecue, I couldn't help but notice that he only said that his steak was pretty good.

Now, some of you dear readers have commented about what has been perceived as my tendency towards damning with faint praise. Naturally, of course, body language is invisible in blog posts, and you can't hear my often excited voice gushing with praise. I have a tendency, it's been noted, towards hyperbole. I try to temper that a little, but basically, when I say that something is pretty good, you can usually read that as though italicized and emphasized, with a silent "damn" in the middle. Unfortunately, when David says that something is pretty good, he might well be saying it with all the enthusiasm of Eeyore offering thanks to Pooh for reattaching his tail. His manners are impeccable, but I've known him for a decade. He didn't want to eat here, and he wasn't pleased by his supper. Clearly, I needed to make this up to him.

So when we next had a free day in town, I suggested to Marie that I make myself scarce and make that meal at Johnny's up to David. I didn't know where we'd go or what we'd eat, but wherever he wanted to go was absolutely fine by me. Happily, David's taste is just about as impeccable as his manners, and I was comfortably assured that I'd enjoy wherever we went, and get a nice experience to share with you all.

We went to Sausalito West Coast Grill, which is in midtown on Peachtree near 17th Street, sort of catty-cornered from the High Museum of Art. I'm reasonably sure that once upon a time, there was an ice cream place in this space, and on the side of the building, there was a delightful neon sign for it. Next door to Sausalito, there's a Subway. How anybody can eat at the Subway with Sausalito sitting right next to it and still look at themselves in the mirror is a mystery to me.





The menu here is pretty dense, ranging from the usual Cali-Mex burritos, tacos and nachos to dishes from Chile, which is where the owner was born. He greeted David like he was his oldest and closest pal. David works just up the road and has lunch here two or three times a month. Noticing how I was lost in the menu, the owner asked whether I like chicken. I said that I certainly do, and he sliced a little taste, about the size of your index finger, and grilled it quickly, offering it to me with a toothpick and a tortilla chip. It was really wonderful, seasoned just perfectly and cooked just right. A taco filled with this meat would indeed be something else.

However, I did not get to try that. I enjoyed something even better. David insisted, quite rightly, that I order a sandwich called the Sausalito Lomito. This is sliced, marinated pork sirloin served on a bun with lettuce, tomato, guacamole and a really good chipotle mayo. Oh, heaven, was it ever good! It comes with a heaping pile of yellow rice and black beans and all the chips-n-red sauce that you care to eat and a small salad. I had the blackberry habanero dressing, which you simply must try. Four alarm and fruity, how nice!

The prices here are admittedly on the high side for this style of food, but budgeting eaters - as I often am - can just get a taco or two for two bucks and change each. This is one of those occasions where the price tag is definitely worth it, though, because they do such a good job with their grilled meat. Heck, if I worked at the High, I'd be over here all the time. The design is interesting. It looks extremely corporate, thanks to signage and table wraps paid for by Coca-Cola. I think this must be the modern, intown equivalent of the old white grocery store signs that you sometimes still see around the south, with little red "Coke" squares on either side.

David certainly picks good places to eat. I'll give him a holler next time I have a free afternoon and let him pick again. You should probably get to know him and let him recommend some places for you, too.

LaBella's Pizzeria, Marietta GA

I don't mean any disrespect - here, I'm in the very first sentence and I'm already channeling Jon Stewart from that pizza business in June - but, I'll tell you good readers truly, when Marie suggested that we try to find a real New York City pizza in Marietta and came up with Baby Tommy's Taste of New York, I had to ask, "Are you kidding me?" Don't get me wrong; she made a great choice, and it's a very good pizza place, one that I happily recommend that anybody in the area visit, but I just could not believe that she needed to look around for a New York pizza. You know what's the only restaurant - seriously, the only restaurant - to have a menu on our fridge? It's LaBella's Pizzeria, which is over on Sandy Plains within walking distance of Sprayberry High School. It's remarkable. It's one of my five favorite pizza places in Atlanta. (Presently, the other four are Vingenzo's, Varasano's, Fritti and Fellini's.)

Of course, such is the nature of our hobby and always trying new things that it had been a year and a half since we had a pie from LaBella's. And I'm sure Marie had a perfectly reasonable motive in looking around for someplace new. We already know that LaBella's is wonderful, so why not try somebody different and see what they can do? That's fine by me, it's just a strange equation. Looking for the best New York pizza in the region is simple. Look for the guy who used to own a pizza place on Long Island. He should know what he's doing.





We first visited LaBella's about three years ago with our friend Mandy, whom we don't see enough, and I was just knocked down. The crust is just perfectly thin, the cheese isn't too stringy, and the sauce is really tangy. It's a tiny little place with maybe five oddly random tables and chairs all shoved together to give people just a little room to eat.

You know what makes this feel like a proper New York pizza in my fantasizing mind? They're not afraid of anchovies. Seriously, around these parts, if they're on the menu at all, they are hidden. Here, if you order a house special, you're getting anchovies, as you should. Marie and my daughter both hate anchovies. Of course they do. My ideal slice of New York-styled pizza simply has anchovies and pepperoni. Even though we got out of the habit of visiting when we started the blog, there have been many times over the last year and a half when I was oddly peckish for anchovies and wondered whether we could get a pie from here.

The three of us stopped by one Friday evening at the beginning of the month - yes, the delay between a meal and a blog chapter is getting mighty long - for a nice, hot pie. The huge pizza oven takes up most of the room in the restaurant's small space. It's not very comfortable in the summer, but on cold nights, this is a fine place to be. We arrived just as Rick Sorrentino, who co-owns the business with his son, Stephen, was leaving, and only had a couple of words before he left. They're terrific people here. Most of their business is take-out - come to think of it, most of the pies that I've had here, I've carried home - and it's such fun, watching regulars come and go, greeting the staff like old friends.

There have been a couple more Sundays when I've phoned on my way home from work to ask whether they've still got any zeppoles. The answer's usually no. They only do these little doughnuts on Sundays and they go fast. But a couple of times, I've brought home a paper bag full of greasy, fried deliciousness and, whatever Marie's cooked for dinner, these make a great dessert. I need to call about zeps more often. We're missing out.

Nam Phuong, Norcross GA

Nam Phuong is a good restaurant, and possibly an excellent one, but I'm certain that I did myself a disservice by lunching alone here. It's been on my to-do list for quite a few months, just waiting for me to be in the mood to sample it. I figured that I needed to give it a try after reading Jennifer Zyman's fascinating review of it. Zyman, who writes under the nom de blog The Blissful Glutton, is among this region's best food writers, and one with a number of followers and fans. She could wax eloquent about a McDonald's in Fairburn, and I'm pretty sure somebody would be trying to explain to his wife what the hell he's doing stumbling home from south Fulton with Big Mac on his breath.

Anyway, I had not found reason to look around Jimmy Carter Boulevard in Norcross for simply ages, and I amused myself driving up and down. Once upon a time, a terrific store called Eat More Records was located here; they once bought quite a few bootleg CDs that I found myself possessing. It is a deeply ugly, sprawling mess of a road. I'll never forget riding around with my good friends Dave, who now lives in Toronto, and Kevin, who now lives in Washington, spending miles of gridlock on that damn road trying to get back to I-85 and realizing, across fifty-eleven stupid jokes, just how very much like its namesake this road really is. "Jimmy Carter Boulevard means well," Kevin said, "but it's mostly ineffective in accomplishing its goals."

In the early nineties, a good chunk of this corridor evolved into a Spanish-speaking neighborhood. Today, Asian families have started opening businesses and several strip malls are entirely Asian-owned, like a smaller version of much of the commerce along Buford Highway. There are still several Hispanic-focused businesses - one of the region's two Pollo Campero restaurants is along here - but you can see the decline in the number that have shuttered. Perhaps most amusing is a former nightclub located right in front of the strip mall where Nam Phuong is found. It was called El Imperio, and its crumbling "castle" facade, with the front entrance built to look like guests entered through a dragon's mouth, looks like something to excite eleven year-olds at a mini-golf.

This doesn't look like a neighborhood where elegant, upscale dining can be found. Appearances are deceiving.





This is a really nice restaurant. Everything about it is classy and genuine. The servers were really nice and nothing felt artificial or phony. They did a great job making me feel welcome.

I had an order of bun chao tom, and that probably wasn't what I wanted. It was ground shrimp with sugar cane served in a bowl over rice vermicelli with lettuce and carrots, sprinkled with crushed peanuts and with a small bowl of a fish sauce on the side. I never had sugar cane before, so I ordered this instead of the bun tau hu ki cuon tom, which is shrimp wrapped in bean curd. I'm certain that I would have enjoyed that more. Ordering sugar cane, I've since learned, is a polite way of eating scraps of wood in public.

I also had an appetizer order of bi cuon, which are shredded pork rolls. These do not come in those crispy, fried, golden brown shells that you see in all the sweet-n-sour Chinese places in the suburbs, but a slightly moist, white rice paper. These were quite tasty.

Everything was good, but I do think that I shot myself in the foot by trying this place by myself. Nam Phuong's menu is huge, and jam packed with dishes that I've never heard of. My experience of Chinese, Korean or Vietnamese cooking is, sadly, still limited to the Golden-This-Happy-That school of red sweet-n-sour sauces. I've grown to loathe eating at those sorts of restaurants, and I just sing with the opportunity to try something so different and so interesting as this. While my meal was good, I would really like to return with a large group and sample many different things from everybody's orders. Doesn't that sound like a fun evening out?

Mountain Man BBQ & Grill, Dillard GA

Coming back from our trip up to Asheville, I had hoped that we might stop somewhere for a barbecue snack. We were disappointed, after all, to learn that Fiddlin Pig had closed, and a weekend is just incomplete without some barbecue. Of course, traveling on a Sunday through western North Carolina, it's a little hard to actually find a barbecue restaurant that's open. It's not until you're back in Georgia that you get a few options.

The towns of Dillard and Rabun Gap are much more traveler-friendly. Here, I count three barbecue joints within about four miles of each other, all serving up on Sundays. The first of these that travelers will meet on the way back to Atlanta will be Mountain Man. This might very well be the northernmost barbecue restaurant within Georgia's boundaries. You can probably lob a tennis ball into North Carolina from here.

This restaurant originally opened, under different ownership, in the 1980s, but it has been run by the Fotopoulus family for almost fifteen years. When they moved down from Chicago, Mountain Man was just one storefront in a small strip mall, but they have grown the business so that various dining rooms line the entire length of the property. Architecturally, it's a real mish-mash. The food that they serve is just terrific, and a real traveler's delight.





We arrived around 2:30, and the dining room was about a third full. Not bad for a Sunday, I'd say. We kept our orders simple. Marie and I each had chopped pork sandwiches, served with excellent homemade potato chips and, sadly, not-at-all-excellent slaw. Our daughter had a bowl of Brunswick stew, thick with lots of chopped and ground meat. We thought it was pretty good stew, but it was improved by adding some barbecue sauce to the bowl. There are mild and hot varieties of the usual brown ketchup-vinegar mix. The mild was too sweet for my taste; the hot was really good. The pork was nicely smoked and just a little moist. I found it tastier than the justifiably popular stuff available down the road at Oinkers in Clayton.

I was interested to learn that the family started serving Chicago-styled pizza as well. Apparently, they started baking them for the friends that they made when they moved down here, and were persuaded that they should add the pizza to the menu and sell it in the restaurant. The growing success of the restaurant has resulted in a sprawling building with multiple dining rooms and a large menu. Honestly, though, the pizza would have to be pretty amazing to distract me from the barbecue. I can't deny, however, that I'm awfully curious.

West End Bakery & Cafe, Asheville NC

So we had a cunning plan to finish up our trip to That Town Where We'd Like to Live with a late morning Sunday visit to the extremely popular Sunny Point Cafe in West Asheville, followed by a return to Bele Chere to see the Stereofidelics before returning home. Nothing went right. I zonked out Saturday evening to a terrible TV movie on Lifetime - I do so adore terrible TV movies on Lifetime - feeling dehydrated despite my efforts, exhausted, sore and congested. I slept horribly, in little fits and starts all through the night, and seemed to spend more time shuffling through the corridors to the lobby to waste time online than in bed. It was a fine, comfortable hotel, but I was too uncomfortable to be happy anywhere.

We made new plans after sampling the hotel's free breakfast, which, in my case, was about forty pounds of melons, grapes, bananas and orange juice. We would go out to West Asheville, then return downtown, let Marie and my daughter out to pick up our order of caramels from The Chocolate Fetish, and just head on home. My daughter was disappointed, but it would be some hours and several gallons of water before I felt better again. So we drove over to West Asheville and were stymied by the mob at Sunny Point, which was an even larger mob than the one with whom we waited the previous night at Papa's & Beer, waiting for tables in a much smaller space.

That's how we ended up a little further down Haywood at West End Bakery and Cafe, which seems to provide a similar experience to the better-known Sunny Point, only without the fried green tomato sandwich that I was looking forward to trying. Still busy and still requiring a longer wait than my grouchy, dehydrated self wanted to endure, this place was very satisfying and, for a second choice, served us extremely well. The food here is just wonderful and I was so pleased to have my spirits lifted by a lunch so nice.





Marie had a tuna melt, my daughter had a grilled provolone sandwich and I had an excellent chicken salad, just piled on French bread and then buried under incredibly tasty tomatoes and organic lettuce. Despite all the juice, water and fruit that I'd packed in earlier that morning, I could easily have eaten another one of these sandwiches. I did have so much water that I felt I could splurge and enjoy a bottle of the locally-brewed Uncle Scott's Root Beer.

Like most of the city's better restaurants, West End has a commitment to all the necessary goals: sustainable agriculture, composting, low water use, locally-sourced foods from area farms and a commitment to treat their employees right and pay them a living wage. This place was pretty packed, with a line from the counter to the door, and some of the guests were getting disagreeably nasty. Some smarmy-looking girl at the table next to us honestly started waving her number sign around after about three whole minutes, looking to catch a server's eye and say "Hello! D'ya forget about me?" But I saw the same infectious love of the job that you see in the very best restaurants. This isn't feel-good slogans from advertising, it really feels like the people who work at this restaurant believe in their work and love doing it, and give everybody who visits attention and excellent service.

West End was among the businesses that kickstarted this neighborhood's resurgence about eleven years ago. It's a long, single row of old buildings, most of them dating to the 1920s, and many were deteriorating and vacant when it opened. As evidenced by the gas station and quickie mart across from Harvest Records, and its roaring trade in prepaid phone cards, not to mention all the coin laundries, it's still not the area's nicest side. But things are improving, and most of the storefronts are in use now. Behind West End, its parking lot packed with license plates from as far away as Vermont and New Hampshire, the restaurant's own small garden is growing some of the vegetables that they use in their food.

It's yet another Asheville place we really wish to revisit. Looking over their desserts set us all drooling. Visiting their Facebook page, I see that they occasionally offer homemade Oreo cookies. Oh. I really, really hope that they have those the next time that we can visit.

(That's it, sadly, for us in Asheville in 2011. We'll be back in the spring, though, and hope to make a little food tour of Charlotte in a few months. We love you, North Carolina!)

Ultimate Ice Cream Company, Asheville NC

As we wrapped up downtown during our trip to Asheville and the Bele Chere festival, the last little bit of shopping that Marie and I did was walking around the food trucks parked along Pack Square for the Taste of Asheville "food court." There's a more traditional, carny-style food court right in the middle of things, around that little park on Patton across from Tupelo Honey Cafe, which reminds me that Marie did stop into that beloved little restaurant to buy herself one of those wonderful rosemary lemonades that they serve there. So anyway, you've got all the funnel cakes and the Dippin' Dots at that one food court, and then a few blocks away at Pack Square, you've got nearly a dozen Asheville restaurants serving some of their menu from trucks. You've also got the incredibly funny sight of desperate, overheated teens crouched underneath one of the unusual, circular sculptures in the center of the park, hiding in the shadows with bottles of water.

I wouldn't have noticed the teens had I not needed to tie my shoe. Marie continued making the rounds and saw an Ultimate Ice Cream Company truck and a line fourteen deep. She looked over the menu while I cracked wise with some shirtless young hippie. "They have goat cheese and bing cherry flavor," Marie exclaimed. "I wish that line wasn't so long, because I don't want to stand around in this heat to try some of that."

Well, I couldn't make the line go away, but it did occur to me that most of the other food trucks whose names I recognized had companion brick-and-mortar stores somewhere in town, and that perhaps I could find it. Actually, it later transpired that we had already passed one of them. There's a little Ultimate stand in the alleyway that leads to Creperie Bouchon, but that's not the one that we ended up visiting.





Our hotel was located on Tunnel Road, across from the city's first Cook Out store. The original plan had been for us to stop by for dessert after we had supper at Fiddlin Pig, but as mentioned in the previous chapter, we learned that good barbecue place had closed. I liked Cook Out a pretty good bit when we stopped by in November, but my daughter - whatever she was expecting - didn't like the little order of chicken strips and decided she doesn't like the place. I figure, judging a restaurant by its chicken strips is kind of like judging it by its napkins. They all come off the same truck, so why complain? She seems to have forgotten that she claimed to have really enjoyed the orange push-up milkshake, because all she had to say, when we drove past Cook Out as we pulled into the hotel, was "No."

So we checked in, crashed and took naps. I woke first, as I do, and wandered down to the lobby to use their computer. I checked Urbanspoon and learned that Ultimate Ice Cream has a store just a few miles further down Tunnel, in an area of town that we had not seen yet. Then I resolved to keep our new dessert location a secret. This always amuses me, because Marie absolutely loves surprises and the girlchild cannot stand them. "We're not going to Cook Out for dessert," I said. "Good," the child replied, "but where are we going instead?" All that I had to say was "It's a secret" and she started pulling out her hair in tufts. "Argh! Tell me! Tell me now!"

Everybody was very happy when we found the place. Well, everybody except me. I'd overindulged at dinner and had no room for dessert! The store is in a small office strip mall behind Pomodoros, a popular Greek and Italian place that I would like to visit, and crowds arrive like crashing waves throughout the evening from all over the area. Whether guests have had supper at some place nice and local or at a big chain, everybody in town knows to make their way to Utimate for a scoop or a sundae for dessert.

The two staffers on duty that night were incredibly helpful and seemed to be having a ball and loving their jobs. They let Marie and our daughter try several samples of the forty-odd flavors available and they loved them all. I enjoyed the nibbles that I took, although I felt the key lime was just overpowering. I'm certain that I couldn't eat a whole scoop of that. Marie settled on the goat cheese and bing cherry that first caught her eye, and my daughter had mint with flaked chocolate. They both absolutely loved them.

The vanilla sample was also wonderful, and I also liked the mystic chai. As with Atlanta's Morelli's and Moo Cow down on Saint Simons Island, it's a place with a fun, vibrant, independent, community-loving spirit and a desire to serve up some silly, unexpected flavors. For the Harry Potter fans, they've got butter beer and "Every-Flavor" jelly bean.

They get their blueberries and blackberries from the local Imladris Farms, and they even offer a - get this - hibiscus tamarind strawberry lime sorbet. Somehow, probably because I never look at the sorbet section of menus, I missed that. And here we are, not really able to get back to Asheville until 2012, and when we do make it back, we probably won't get to try more than one or two new restaurants because all the ones that we love are calling our hearts, and any potential "new" dessert place is going to be sidelined by a return here!

Papa's & Beer, Asheville NC

Not every restaurant in Asheville is a farm-to-table, low-footprint indie, although quite a few of the places in the city's wonderful downtown are. As you get away from the downtown area and into the sprawl, you'll find the fern bars and the chains, although there are actually a couple of decent places to eat alongside the Olive Gardens and Red Lobsters on Tunnel Road. One of these had been Fiddlin Pig Bluegrass and Blues, which had shared a parking lot with an Outback Steakhouse or something. Marie and I had eaten here on our honeymoon and we were looking forward to a return visit, but were disappointed to find that the business had closed quite some time earlier and nobody had yet updated Urbanspoon with the news. Then again, it was on Tunnel Road, and most restaurant hobbyists are not interested in what happens on Tunnel Road.

We had, by this point, been completely exhausted by Bele Chere and checked into our hotel on Tunnel Road for a nap. Somewhat refreshed, we went out for supper and were stymied by Fiddlin Pig's closure. We didn't want to return downtown to fight for and pay for parking and yet we still wanted to visit someplace new for the blog. Electing the quickest solution, we drove across the street to the oddly-named Papa's & Beer, a huge, very popular barn with a big crowd and a wait, to try our luck with their California-styled take on Mexican food.

There are three Papa's & Beer locations around Asheville and Hendersonville. The first opened in 2003, and they are always packed. Unfortunately, they're so well-known that they might have drawn unwelcome attention from a really big chain of nightclubs in California; the blog Ashvegas recently reported rumors that the Asheville restaurants might be forced to change their name.





Serving families, frat boys and bikers in equal number, this place is known for its margaritas and its enormous portions of food. I don't know that I have ever seen quite so many people waiting happily and without complaint any time recently. There was a mob, but everybody was patient and pleased to kick back and enjoy each others' company and the fun, mission-style decor - it's Zapata's Mexico by way of Six Flags - and the half-hour passed in a breeze.

I was expecting the usual snack of chips and salsa, but the restaurant surprised me. Instead of a bowl of the usual red stuff, they brought a small bowl of bean dip and invited us to try out their salsa bar. This had ten different dips to try, and my favorite was the pumpkin jalapeno.

The portion sizes here are past enormous and well on their way to ridiculous. None of us finished our meals, though everything was pretty good. I had a burrito with pork in an arbol sauce and about half of it was enough to leave me stuffed. A couple of tables over, two girls were sharing a margarita in a glass so large that it looked like a movie prop. You can see why the college students adore this place. It's all about conspicuous consumption. They've even got one of those twenty-dollar burritos about the size of our three-month-old, and if you can eat it in half an hour, they'll give you a T-shirt. I enjoyed it, and I wouldn't mind a bucket of that pumpkin jalapeno salsa, but with so many amazing restaurants in Asheville, this doesn't seem like a place that we'll be revisiting too often.

Chai Pani, Asheville NC

I've only had a single meal here, and it was something that I've never tried before, but I have finally found an Indian restaurant to replace the dearly missed Moksha in my affections. Shame the darn place is all the way up in Asheville. It's called Chai Pani and it is thunderously unlike any of the legion of boring, rule-following, horribly-serviced, tableclothed Indian restaurants that drive me nuts here in Atlanta. This place is completely wonderful, and I really am looking forward to digging into their menu and trying a few more dishes!

This place, happily, is a no-frills take on Indian street food, as opposed to the forced, artificial, laminate-peeling-from-the-menus places that aggravate me so much. It's a tiny little restaurant on Battery Park that caught my eye last year and I knew that wherever else I managed to have a small meal during Bele Chere, this place was definitely on the agenda. It was actually where I headed first when we arrived around 11 am, but they did not open for lunch until noon during the festival. So Marie and my daughter and I split up and did other things, and Marie came back with me a little after two to try it out.

I ordered the vada pav, which the menu describes as a "spicy potato and peas dumpling fried in a chickpea batter, served on a warm bun with house pickled garnishes and chutney." Oh, my heavens, they were like two great big sliders of spicy awesomeness, and they were magical. Marie said that it was a little spicier than she liked, but it was just right for me.





My sandwiches came with a small salad - I chose that over the fries, figuring there was starch enough in the meal - and those were some of the freshest vegetables I've had in a salad in ages. I really liked what beets that I got to enjoy after Marie got finished pilfering them from me, and the dressing, thin and green, was really nice. I enjoyed everything so much.

The prices aren't much less than what you'd pay at one of those restaurants that serve Indian food, but I'd much rather get my own silverware in a business that genuinely seems glad to have me there, with excellent service, and which is offering food unlike the standards seen on every other place's menu.

Chai Pani is one of quite a few restaurants that we've visited in Asheville that tries to live by a farm-to-table creed, something sorely lacking in Indian cuisine in Atlanta. Looking over the menu reveals so many more interesting things. I'm really intrigued by the ground turkey "sloppy jai," but all the savory utthapams and daily special thali meals are also tempting. We won't be back in Asheville until the spring, and I will definitely be returning here then and reporting back on my findings.

The Green Sage, Asheville NC

I'm not going to better one of my peers in his description of downtown Asheville's Green Sage. Asheville Foodie calls this place "part restaurant and part ecological statement". That's definitely the case, and I think a guest's experience here will mirror precisely how they feel about that statement. I think that's an incredibly neat concept, and the more that I have read about the restaurant's goal of minimizing their environmental footprint, through solar-powered heating of the water, through waterless urinals and through composting, the more impressed I am. We actually enjoyed very little food here, however, and I look forward to returning and trying some of the interesting things on the menu. I understand that the black bean burger is really something else.

I left my daughter with, I thought, very specific instructions when we parted ways at Bele Chere. I gave her money to buy some bottled water, and I would text her in a couple of hours when I was ready and free to buy her lunch. In the meantime, she was to have fun and find a place where she wanted to eat. She was not free when the call came, as she was "watching a magician." Marie and I found her enjoying the antics of a motormouthed escape artist street performer called Bobby Maverick, who roped me and another fellow in to chain him up in a straitjacket. I can honestly say that I've never chained anybody up in public before this year's Bele Chere. Fellow earned his tips, I'll say that, even if he probably did have to spend it all on Powerade to replace what he sweated away.

So I asked my daughter where we were eating and she had no idea. She was having so much fun watching nutballs in straitjackets and dogs jumping into pools and hippies yelling at street preachers and the beautiful Silver Drummer Girl doing her schtick that she completely forgot to look for someplace to have lunch. Every so often, I worry about this kid. I suggested the Green Sage by virtue of it being close by and she gave the menu a once-over, agreeing that it looked promising. Then she didn't order much of anything.





She was content with a glass of lemonade, a pumpkin muffin and a bowl of cold tomato basil soup. Now, granted, that is an excellent and sensible little meal to enjoy in the middle of a heat wave like this, with the humidity and the pavement making it feel like a hundred and ten. After all, I'm the stubborn nutcase who insisted on a piping hot meal at The Noodle Shop in the middle of last year's Bele Chere, so I clearly have no idea what the heck I'm doing. But check out this amazing breakfast that the blogger behind Ahimsa photographed a couple of months ago. Even accepting that her boyfriend didn't enjoy it, that looks so much more interesting than a muffin and a bowl of soup! Or how about a reuben, made with either corned beef or tempeh, with Russian dressing, sauerkraut and Swiss? I hear that's pretty amazing, too. I mean, locally-sourced corned beef? Doing that correctly takes some effort, which is why most restaurants get corned beef from Boar's Head or someplace.

Then the terrible truth came out. You know what that rotten daughter of mine did with the money I gave her to keep her hydrated out there in the baking sun? She went straight down Biltmore to the two downtown places that she enjoyed the most from her last visit, in November. She went to City Bakery for a cupcake, and then walked across the street to Double D's, met the owner, and had herself a great big milkshake to wash that down. She only had the muffin and soup because she knew that I wanted to visit another restaurant and didn't want to let me down, and then protested that she was too full to move.

Of course, after that, we split up and Marie and I went in search of another meal. About ninety minutes later, we tried to check back in with Little Miss Too Full To Move, and she didn't have time to chat. She was too busy dancing at some other wild and wonderful Bele Chere event.

(It should also be noted that my daughter took the photograph of the building for the blog, which we've not allowed her to do before now. Not a bad little job, is it?)

Creperie Bouchon, Asheville NC

This is Marie, providing an overview of a cute little place called Creperie Bouchon in Asheville. It's one of the places we stopped for our recent trip to Bele Chere. Bele Chere is a great festival for eating in Asheville, as there are more good restaurants in town than you can shake the proverbial stick at.

Bouchon itself is among downtown Asheville's most celebrated restaurants, and one that we need to visit one day. It is a French bistro, and many food bloggers report on how friendly and welcoming it is, and how delicious their meals are, and how deep their wine list is. Creperie Bouchon, their recently-born sister restaurant, is an oasis. It's located inside a little courtyard off the main street, Lexington, with flowers and trees and ivy-coated walls. Apparently we found the place just after a major renovation. It had moved from a smaller location (very nearly street food) and added air conditioning, extra seating, and umbrellas. It was so nice to sit in a quiet place in the shade and feel like we'd stepped into a little piece of Europe. The air conditioning struggled a bit against the rather extreme heat so it was just about as cool outside as in, and the view was better. On a chilly day, though, it would be great to sit on one of the bar stools inside and watch the crepes sizzle. They have regular chairs and tables too, I just think the bar is neat. And their Dinner and a Movie night sounds like a lot of fun.





I chose the simplest crepe on the menu, a ham and swiss cheese with the cheerful name "The Paris Sidewalk." My opinion is that for certain foods, the less fancy it is the more likely you are to sit back in your chair after the last bite with a smile. This is definitely one of those sorts of meals where, even if you are really hungry, you slow down to savor each bite.

You can see some additional pictures here at their web site but they are not quite up to date. The old location has been taken over by an Ultimate Ice Cream stand, about which, more in a chapter later this week, and the main restaurant moved back into the courtyard location. They have been there a year now.

We had planned to go to quite a few more places as we grazed our way through the festival but the trip was tragically cut short by mutual consent due to a combination of old-fogeydom and missing the baby. I am very glad this was not one of the places we skipped. We'll need to come back, though. I want to try some of the sweet crepes, and Grant really wants a basket of the fries.



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Havana Comida Latina, Asheville NC

At the end of July, Marie and I made our first overnight trip without the baby. We made our annual trek to Asheville for Bele Chere, a festival of music, artwork, street performers and overindulgence. This was our third trip and we're already looking forward to next year's Bele Chere, in part because our visit didn't allow us time to see the acts that we most would have enjoyed this time around. Last year, the act that I most wanted to see - Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - was scheduled for Saturday night and we only booked a room for Friday. This year, it was the other way around and we missed The Whigs on Friday night, darn it.

So, with record heat and humidity for the second Bele Chere in a row, and about a quarter of a million people celebrating and sweating, Marie and our daughter and I split up to go shopping and enjoy the chaos. My first order of business was to get something to eat. There are about five restaurants in downtown that I have wanted to try, and I knew that I would be visiting at least two of them. My first pick, Salsa's, left my list after I actually looked over their menu and got sticker shock at the prices. So I walked over to Havana Comida Latina on Battery Park. I've been curious about this place for some time. Until recently, an amazing used bookstore was in the space next door, but it has since moved to the nearby arcade.





I'm afraid that Havana courts considerable controversy over the authenticity of its menu. Admittedly, I've not tried very many Cuban restaurants, and can't weigh the experience against too many other contenders, but you won't have to look far online to find Cubans and South Floridans expressing displeasure over this place's recipes. Not knowing that there was even some dispute over where the owner was born, it did not occur to me to just ask him, but to hear online reviewers tell it, it was any randomly-selected republic south of Guatemala.

For my part, I had a simple Cuban sandwich and, honestly, I did not enjoy it quite as much as the ones at Papi's here in the Atlanta area, or Kool Korner in Birmingham. That's not to say it wasn't good. It was filled with juicy pulled pork between ham and cheese, with mayo and mustard and pickles on a pressed roll. It was certainly a really good sandwich, and came with a curious little side of chips and salsa.

Now, the salsa was nothing special, just standard red stuff, but the chips were not at all like the usual stuff-from-a-bag. Looked to me like they fried these thick chips up in the back. I added a couple to my sandwich for a yummy extra crunch.

Now, whether or not this place is really all that authentic, there's an extra touch in the back that I thought was really cute. There's a little shop that sells coffee and cigars, and a smoking room with leather couches and a big screen TV, with decorations of Marilyn Monroe along the walls. There are several framed photos and a poster of one of her films. Personally, I don't smoke and don't want to be around it, but if I did, this looks like an incredibly comfortable room to kick back and get away from the chaos.

But that was the last thing that I wanted to do. There was a whole crazy festival to enjoy, and I had to catch up to Marie to take her to lunch. More about that on Sunday!

This is the 300th chapter here at Marie, Let's Eat! We'd like to thank all our readers for making this so fun and such a success. Happy eating, y'all!



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Pappy Red's BBQ, Atlanta GA

Once upon a time, I wrote a letter to Pappy Red, though I am pretty sure he never saw it. No, I just left an open letter on a blog I once wrote, thanking him for the many good meals that I had enjoyed at the since-closed location up in Cumming, but sadly informing him that while I enjoyed the barbecue a good deal, my pipes were no longer processing it right. Something about it was giving me quite unbelievable heartburn. Oh, it was rough. Well, I'm in a little bit better shape than I was nine years ago. I eat better, drink less and walk more. Plus, I keep a small supply of antacids in the console of my car. Maybe I could try this barbecue again?

Of course, Pappy Red's isn't quite what it once was. A decade back, there were a few more locations, including the one in Cumming, one in Roswell, and one on Georgia-140 between Crabapple and Canton, each with the distinctive, lovely and ridiculous affectation of a "crashed" airplane protruding from the building's roof. Those are all gone now, but last year, they opened their first location inside the perimeter, just north of Howell Mill Road on the ugly, industrial corridor of Chattahoochee Avenue. I double-checked my antacid supply and headed that way.

Incidentally, there is a little confusion about this restaurant's name. Both the main sign and one of the two neon ones in the window call it "P.Red's," but the fellow with the sandwich board up at Howell Mill and the other neon sign read "Pappy Red's." I double-checked with the owner, whose grandfather was the "pappy" in question, and he confirms that the signs are only spelled that way to save space. It is still "Pappy Red's." Desperately glad we got that critical point cleared up, aren't you?





While the stretch of Howell Mill just below it has a reputation for being one of Atlanta's most celebrated food corridors, the roads that connect it with with Marietta Street are some ways off from being brought back up to code, as it were. Both Chattahoochee, and Huff, about a mile south, are old and ugly eyesores, full of direct-to-the-public warehouse distributors and moderately interesting old bridges above railroad tracks. The asphalt is worn down by heavy industrial traffic. Pappy Red's moved into some old, long-unused restaurant space with bars on the windows and a celled box around the air conditioning unit.

The counter service here is sharp and friendly. I ordered the pulled pork sandwich on jalapeno bread, making sure to ask for it dry. They don't cook in the sauce here, but they will drown your meat unless you specify otherwise. The pork is pretty good, and, arriving a few minutes before they opened and sitting outside with the windows down, I drank in the wonderful smoke from out back, proving a tasty appetizer.

The jalapeno bread was almost as much a treat as the pulled pork. Ordering barbecue on this bread is a must; it is chewy, spicy and delicious. While the pork is still a little greasier than I would prefer, the lower slice of bread seemed to soak up a little bit of it and made my meal taste that much better. There are two table sauces, mild and hot varieties of a brown ketchup-vinegar mix, and both are very good.

I had some Brunswick stew and was really pleased with it. It's heavy with onions and pepper and comes out extremely hot, so guests may wish to dip saltines in it as it cools. It reminded me of the peppery concoction that I enjoyed at Lively's Owens BBQ in Cedartown a couple of months earlier.

It is a shame that Pappy Red's couldn't find a space on Howell Mill itself, where it would be more likely to get more attention and notice, but honestly, whether you're either working in the area or wanting to sample inside-the-perimeter Atlanta barbecue joints, it is definitely worth a visit. And wouldn't you know, I didn't have a drop of the old heartburn and didn't need an antacid after all? Either they're doing something better than they once did, or it's a testament to better living and healthier eating that a meal here didn't leave me gasping. Either way, I was very pleased.

Frankie & Johnny's, Atlanta GA

Here's an incredibly interesting restaurant. It's not worth knocking over anybody to have breakfast here - in fact, if you go looking for good grits, it's not worth visiting at all - but I swear, this place fell through a crack in time. It looks and feels like a place with no relationship whatsoever to the modern world. Social media? Twitter updates? Not this place. Nobody talks about it, least of all on that "internet" thing. Don't believe me? Google it. You'll see an Urbanspoon listing with votes from eight people, and me over at Roadfood.com asking whether anybody knew anything about it, and a bunch of Yellow Pages and Yelp listings with no user reviews at all.

The parking lot does to your car's alignment only slightly less damage than falling off a cliff. The sign - a beautiful, rusted anachronism - has fallen apart and is no more. This weird, vintage thing is what caught my eye the first time that I drove past it. A little more than a year ago, I stopped by and photographed the sign just for my own sake. Had I known then that the silly picture of the nice young couple in the roadster was going to fall out and crash into the potholes beneath it, I would have taken more care not to capture part of a Taco Bell billboard behind it. Well, I never claimed to be a good photographer.



Inside, it is as quiet as the grave. It is a classic roadfood stop for truckers and utility company drivers. It's where you can go to get a cheap, enormous breakfast. I had bacon - fantastic bacon - eggs, grits and toast for four bucks. Well, the grits weren't worth eating. That bacon was amazing.

From 10:30 until 2, they serve lunch in a buffet line. Looks like they offer lasagna, meat loaf and the like, with all the trimmings. Then at two, this place shuts down and returns to the other side of 1967, to decay and rust and rot away further. It's the most authentic - if that word means anything right now - breakfast experience I've had lately. I can imagine my late father eating here four times a week for years and never mentioning it to anybody, because it wouldn't occur to him to do so. It is what it is, and does not aspire to more. But this isn't destination food. The young crowd that "rediscovered" Pabst Blue Ribbon has not found this yet. This is for local workers, men who do not mind destroying the alignments of their company's trucks.





I asked about it. I learned nothing. The owner, an older Asian man, said that he'd been open for seven years. I said that the business must be much older. He agreed. I suggested that the building must have been there a long time. He said that it had. I asked him what happened to his sign. He said the sign was still there. I laughed and said that once, there had been a picture in the middle, where there is only a hole now. Not laughing, he agreed that yes, once, there had been. And then he went to work setting up the lunch buffet.

I left, and time didn't march on. It froze.

Gigi's Cupcakes

This is Marie, returning to the traditional dessert entry, this one about cupcakes. Specifically, Gigi's Cupcakes.

When Grant was planning the itinerary for an afternoon together, he included Gigi's because of my taste for sweets and our daughter's more specific adoration of cupcakes. Sadly, neither of us showed much enthusiasm. The girlchild was under the weather and wanted to sit out this food trek, asking only for a comfort snack of Krystal to be borne home to her after we were done. In my case the problem was the memory of another dedicated cupcake store in Nashville. When I reminded him of that visit, Grant diplomatically replied that he understood I had been "underwhelmed" by that place. So I figured I would hold my enthusiasm until we went to his selection. More on that later.

Gigi's is a small chain currently in 17 states, according to their web site, and they are hoping to add more franchisees to grow to about 100 stores. They have a rotating selection of flavors, so each day's menu is different. The store plan for the franchise is cute, with just a handful of tables for those who want to eat in.





The special of the day had sold out by the time we got there after lunch, which was sad because I wanted one as soon as I saw the listing. The only flavor that goes better with chocolate than banana is malt. The sold-out special was not terribly surprising since the place appears to be popular; during the brief time we were there savoring our treats, we saw two small lines collect. However, despite that disappointment I was quite happy with the selection I made, hot fudge sundae, and likely would have enjoyed my second or third choice just as much. Grant's cake was an orange creamsicle. He also pointed out that one of the other three Atlanta locations of the chain was on Hammond Drive, within walking distance of my work, and that he would like to have a cherry limeade (Mondays and Thursdays) at some point when it was convenient. According to the website this is one of their newest flavors.

The story of the chain as relayed by the site is quite charming - you should go read it yourself. However, since the first location was in Nashville, which is where the unimpressive cupcake store was located, I got curious and did a little Google map street view search in the general area where I recalled my visit a couple of years ago. We had, then, walked up to this cupcake store with our friend Brooke after shopping at The Great Escape, near Vanderbilt. I was horrified to learn that it was actually the original store in the chain! I will say that must have been an off day, as we have now bought a total of five cakes from two locations here in Atlanta, and all have been tasty.

They have a really clever flyer available by the register which has a picture of each of the season's cupcakes with a description, so I picked one up to show to the girlchild and let her see what she'd missed. She drooled over the pictures and seemed quite enthusiastic about the idea of having one of these treats on a day when she felt better. We made plans for me to stop by the place close by where I work in order to get her the make-up dessert.

We'd had quite a cheerful day and the baby was exceptionally good, but had gotten a little overstimulated. While I was settling him down for a nap the Gigi's flyer happened to be lying by the chair. It seemed appropriate to read each of the cupcake descriptions to the baby. This appeared to amuse both husband and daughter immensely, as they each wandered by my chair grinning during the reading. The baby smiled at Kentucky Bourbon Pie (I have to count that as his grandfather's genes coming through - the gentleman actually owned some Kentucky bourbon) and laughed gleefully outright at the description of the S'mores flavor. With any luck the selection will be around for him to have one or the other as a first birthday cake so he can sputter over the candle, smash his cake with a spoon and put frosting in his ear while the rest of us eat our selections undisturbed by the damage. He might even get one of those flavors that seemed to please him so much, but one can never tell. The menu will have changed at least twice by then!


(I had the orange dreamsicle here, and it was completely awesome. --grant)


(My cherry limeade was from this store and it was good, but a little overpoweringly sweet for my taste. --grant)


(And this is the original store, which "underwhelmed" Marie a little on our visit, but is worth a return now that we see what they're capable of.)

Smokejack Blues & Barbecue and The Taco Stand, Alpharetta GA

I have a little goal here to visit and report upon one hundred barbecue restaurants before the end of 2011. I'm not sure whether we will make it - we're almost three-quarters there - but any opportunity to grab one for the blog is one that we'll try to take. Two Saturdays ago, I looked over the map and decided that we hadn't trucked up GA-400 in a while, and I was curious what new restaurant developments could be seen on Windward Parkway. Alpharetta is the home of Smokejack Blues & Barbecue, a business seven years old which has expanded to a second location a little further north in the town of Cumming. Smokejack's not getting quite all the press and attention among barbecue restaurants in that area right now - there's a place called 'Cue that everybody's talking about - but I remembered having a pretty good, albeit pricy, meal there a few years ago.

When I worked in Alpharetta, there was one perk that certainly beat any that I have at my current job. To celebrate birthdays, our department would take all the staff out to eat once a month. She wasn't with the company for really long, but I did have the pleasure of working with a girl named Kristi who was a completely fun trip, just overflowing with silliness, light, Southern slang and malapropisms. She chose Smokejack for her birthday and I remembered enjoying it greatly, even if the restaurant's prices kept it out of my regular rotation of places to visit. Marie and I had lunch here for just under $30. That's a heck of a lot to pay for barbecue for two, but in their defense, the restaurant tells guests up front that theirs is less a traditional BBQ place and more an upscale eatery that focuses on smoked meat.





Marie and I hoped to have our daughter and our good friend Samantha join us for lunch, but each of them asked for rain checks in the end, not feeling well. So Marie and I made it a quasi-date day, with the baby bundled in the back seat and spent a few hours enjoying each other's company and eating pretty well.

Smokejack, located in Alpharetta's small, but very cute, downtown, offers the usual assortment of pulled pork or chicken dishes. Most of them apparently are sauced just before they send them out of the kitchen, but they'll serve them dry if you ask. I noted that they have a chicken sandwich with white, north Alabama-style sauce, and while normally I might be expected to give that a try, I was really in the mood for another order of burnt edges.

I had these for the first time a couple of weeks previously at Woodstock's Bub-Ba-Q and was curious to try another restaurant's take. I had the sauce, a delicious black, sticky-sweet Kansas City-styled goo, on the side. The beef was so good that no sauce was necessary, and I strongly advise anybody curious to order this dry. I had the burnt edges with baked beans, which were pretty ordinary, and a very tasty corn pudding that Marie and I shared. She ordered chicken thighs from the appetizer menu. These came with an orange habanero glaze and were served on a bed of pretty good slaw. She also had a side of wood-roasted vegetables that she mostly enjoyed. Brunswick stew is available, but, sadly, with a small additional charge as it is not technically a "side," but rather a "soup."

A little driving around town didn't convince me that I was missing very much, foodwise, by leaving my job in Alpharetta. We got back on GA-400 and made one more stop in the area, though. Two days previously, I had visited one of the wonderful Taco Stands in Athens. They had opened a store in Alpharetta several months earlier. I had stopped in and was pretty disappointed, but chalked it up to opening week catastrophe. I was curious, now that they've hopefully got their act together, how they compare to one of the originals.





The honest answer is that they compare poorly, but are still pretty good. It's a very different sort of restaurant to the Taco Stands of Athens, or even to the since-closed Buckhead watering hole. It tries to be a lot - upscale and family-friendly, even offering X-Box games for children - but it's all so unnecessary. The prices are disagreeably higher than the originals. Seriously, a taco, $1.39 at Barnett Shoals, runs you $1.99 here. If I'm wanting Taco Stand, I don't need an airlock and hostess station, I don't need my tacos served in a little IKEA basket, and I don't want to tip a server. I want my name called and I want my tacos on a tray.

That said...

There are certain realities of eating that trump fancy-shmancy considerations. Admittedly, the prime ingredient in the Taco Stand is nostalgia, but you can't deny the awesomeness of the chicken enchilada and its wonderful dark sauce. On the other hand, while the tacos are good, they are nevertheless different, and in fact, inferior, to the tacos in Athens. They're served on grilled flour shells rather than hard corn, and the beef is markedly different. The sauce tasted the same to me.

As much as I like the food, I really just don't feel like the Taco Stand transfers well to this type of environment. I'll forgive a lot for a good chicken enchilada like this, but in much the same way that a Burger King Whopper doesn't gain anything from being served on a nice white plate, remaining, at it's core, fast food, this "upscale" store doesn't make the scruffy, tasty, wonderful food any better. It just makes it more expensive.