Chicken and the Egg and Canvas, Marietta GA

A couple of weeks ago, I indulged and treated myself to two lunches out at places new to me. One has recently opened and one has been around for a few years. I picked Chicken and the Egg, a new restaurant in a huge space in a strip mall on Whitlock, based on several glowing reports. Amy on Food has been there twice and has been quite complimentary. It's a farm-to-table place where the owners and chefs are striving for sustainability and a sensible approach to fresh eating.

Last week, I wrote up our visit to Angie's Subs in Jacksonville Beach and compared its tacky, cluttered, wonderful look to the no-frills, austere design of many modern American restaurants. Chicken and the Egg is exactly what I was talking about. The interior is so boring and uniform that it actively bothered me. The one exception was a design choice that was tacky in its own unpleasant way. Some years ago, my former boss, the since-urban-evacuated Melissa, who has joined me for a couple of chapters of good eating here, went to peruse the wares at downtown Atlanta's AmericasMart. When she returned, I asked what it was that people actually sold there. She thought for a minute and said "You know those vases full of broken branches? They sell those there." And now I know who buys them.





Well, while the creepy nothingness of the design got under my skin, the food, mercifully, was very good. I had a burger topped with delicious pimento cheese and a tasty fried green tomato and enjoyed it very much. The service was impeccable. I was the first to arrive and was surprised by both the size of the place and the number of servers, but the restaurant filled up quickly, and I found myself deciding against a dessert, which I didn't need anyway, to free a table.

Chicken and the Egg is hoping to become a destination for businessmen and families in West Cobb by preparing meals that evoke great big events at Grandma's table, but done with a devotion to sustainability and fresh food. To that end, my very good burger was not at all representative of what they are said to do best here; I certainly encourage the curious to visit, but if this were a proper review blog, I would not mention it at all until I had tried their meat-and-two blue plates, which is where they are really said to shine. Guests who are interested should be aware that the menu changes quite regularly. The copy online on the morning that I visited was already outdated, with several changes and, sadly, higher prices waiting for me when I arrived.

I tend not to report on the resumes and prior jobs held by the chefs of the restaurants that I enjoy, but I did get a smile noting that Chicken and the Egg's executive chef, Joseph Ramaglia, is said to have started his career working as a chef at a restaurant called Blossom, in Charleston. I was briefly pleased and happy to read that, because I have been there and enjoyed it hugely, but then I realized that I've been to a place called Blossom in Charleston, West Virginia, and Ramaglia worked at a place called Blossom in Charleston, South Carolina. Never mind, then.





Many months ago, I got a kick out of reading a report by Tom Maicon at Food & Beer Atlanta about the Hell Burger at Canvas, a nice place in the shadow of Kennestone Hospital that I have driven past for years and years. I told myself that I just have to try one of those, but when I pulled into Canvas's lot after failing to find parking on the square downtown to get some pizza for lunch, I was totally disinterested. I figured that the burgers here probably wouldn't be as good as the burger that I enjoyed the day before at Chicken and the Egg, and I think that a Hell Burger is best enjoyed in the company of friends, anyway. It's always amusing to have witnesses who can confirm how hotdamned stupid you looked trying to eat something so violently ridiculous.

I am surprised, however, that this has not received more attention. Canvas seems pretty far off everybody's radar, but you'd think that, in a burger-happy town like ours, something as outre as this would get people outside the perimeter to sample it.

Canvas reminds me of Alon's Bakery in the best possible way. Fresh breads and wonderfully eclectic sandwich combinations usually make for a good lunch, and this was a winner. I had the Thai red curry chicken salad, and it was very pleasant, mild with just a little kick. It's made with almonds and raisins and served on a huge croissant with mixed greens, along with a bag of Zapp's chips. It's a little more expensive than I could justify for regular visits, but I'd like to return and try a few other sandwiches. Might round up some of the fellows and make a spectacle of myself with that silly burger one day, too.

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Fincher's Barbeque, Macon GA

I don't know that I've ever heard of a restaurant that divides opinion quite the way that Fincher's does. It would be churlish to deny that it has its very vocal detractors, and even among loyalty-splitting food like barbecue, people either love it to their core or hate it like something on fire. Surprisingly, chief among the nay-sayers is the wonderful 3rd Degree Berns, of whom I have frequently spoken. When he wrote up his visit in 2009, 3DB pulled no punches, giving the venerable original location in Macon one of his extremely rare one star out of ten ratings. (The only other restaurant to rank so lowly with him is Atlanta's long-past-its-prime Old Hickory House, where polite nostalgia for locals is the main thing on the menu.) 3DB is by no means the only one to turn both barrels on Fincher's, yet the small chain - presently at four restaurants: three in Macon and one in Warner Robins - does command a following, and is one of those legendary spaces that campaigning politicians are required to visit.

3DB's loathing is matched by the love of a (mostly inactive) blogger based in Cincinnati, who goes by the handle pFoody, and who gave it a big thumbs-up. His wife is from the Macon area, and his in-laws bring a big care package to Ohio when they visit. On his side is a legion of very loyal diners who have loved the place for years. This is a place that people who move away from Bibb County make it a point to revisit. This is food that means a lot to a whole mess of people. I didn't remember where I lay along the loyalty line, because I couldn't remember much about the food that I had. In point of fact, I was not certain until this month that I had eaten there at all.

See, in 2004, I went to meet this friend of a friend in Macon. She was studying at Mercer and lived in a great big house in the historic district that might have been haunted, and suggested that we meet face-to-face for the first time at Macon's other very well-known barbecue joint, Satterfield's, for an early supper before going to see a movie. Satterfield's, as you might know, isn't open for dinner, leaving me in the awkward position of sitting around a parking lot, early, without a cell phone, twiddling my thumbs in a strange town I'd never visited. Once she arrived, she drove me to some other place just a few miles north. I couldn't tell you what I ate, then. I was, you'll understand, substantially more interested in the business of talking to an attractive redhaired law student than I was in barbecue at that moment. I do remember the cute surprise of having an enormous praying mantis make her way into the restaurant, and entertain us for a few moments before we caught her and released her outside. The mantis is about the only bug that I don't object to sharing a table with.

I saw her a couple more times - the law student, not the mantis - and nothing ever got started, and once my thoughts turned back to barbecue, I started wondering where in the heck it was that we ate.





For our fourth new restaurant on this trip up from Florida, we stopped at the Fincher's location at 5627 Houston Road, about four miles south of the original store. That first location has a lot of history, having opened in the 1930s, but here, parenting needs took precedence over restaurant lore. I read that the original store has, to be blunt, terrible restroom facilities. I cannot confirm whether that is true, but I do know that after two hours in the car, the baby was going to need changing and feeding, and even if 3DB turned out to be completely wrong about the quality of the food - he was - I trusted his description enough to know that we'd want something a little more sanitary and baby-friendly for our son.

We found the place with no problem and stretched our legs and ordered some snacks and some tea. Marie and I each had pork sandwiches and I also had a cup of stew. This was all quite good food. I was not knocked out by the chopped pork, but I enjoyed it, and I quite liked the sauce, which was the usual red-brown tomato-vinegar mix. The stew was the high point, though. This was magnificent, nearly on par with Speedi-Pig's and Harold's, and certainly among those I'd consider for the silver medal tier in Georgia. I would not have thought to compare it to Cincy chili as pFoody did in his report, but he's quite right. It has that wonderful, thin, mealy consistency like diners find at a Gold Star or a Skyline, neither soupy nor thick.

We enjoyed talking with our server, who agreed with our compliment that this was some of the best sweet tea around, and I also spoke with the fellow at the register about my little barbecue experience with the law student in 2004. I described the restaurant as best as I could remember it. I didn't mention the mantis, thinking that perhaps I might spark a little defensiveness if I were to say something like, "I'm trying to think whether I've ever eaten at your restaurant before. See, there was this great big bug on the window by our table..." He confirmed that it certainly sounded like it could have been their store just north of I-16 on Gray Highway, just a short walk of the most interstate-convenient Nu-Way Weiners.

Come to think of it, that particular Nu-Way doesn't have public restrooms at all. What the heck is with this, Macon?

Anyway, of these four new restaurants that we visited in south and middle Georgia, Fincher's was our clear, runaway favorite. As far as collecting great new memories and wonderful tastes, the trip was not among our most successful, and my daughter's sourpuss attitude on this day certainly didn't help the car ride. Fincher's, though, met my expectations with good food and a terrific staff. Maybe this location is just more reliable than the original store, but it was a great stop and a good meal.

We had one last visit to make in middle Georgia before going home. We got back on I-75 and made the transition onto I-16 from the south, which we had never had cause to do before. From there, we hopped off at exit 1A onto the Gray Highway that the gentleman had mentioned, and drove twelve miles north of town to Old Clinton Bar-B-Q, which confirmed its place in my affections as my favorite barbecue in the world.

Along the way, we passed by the Fincher's store that I had visited that time. The mantis is long dead, the former student is successful in her field and fantastic, albeit disagreeably Republican, and Fincher's, eighty years young, is still excellent.



The location that I visited on my first trip to Macon, years ago, is just a stone's throw north of I-16, and probably the easiest location for travelers to visit:

The Barbeque Pit, Moultrie GA

Sometimes, dear readers, tenuous little coincidences that nobody else either notices or cares about take on a supernatural charm with me. These meaningless little patterns of life tantalize and amuse me more than they do anybody else, and sometimes they inform the resulting writing in this blog. Be aware that I know very well that these chances don't mean anything at all, that they don't reflect a larger pattern, and don't imply anything beyond simple smiles and a chuckle. But what good is life, without sharing smiles and chuckles?

Here's an example of a restaurant that I'd never heard of before we planned our trip back through southwest Georgia. The plan had been to get back to I-75 after visiting Thomasville and make our way to the town of Cordele, to visit the legendary, and much-loved Smoakies Barbecue. I've wanted to stop here for several months; I consider it the last of our state's most celebrated barbecue joints* that I have not visited, but the darn place is closed on Mondays. So I cast my net a little wider and looked for someplace else to try.

I traced a route from Thomasville to Tifton via the town of Moultrie, figuring there might be something there to eat. I couldn't find any background to the place, but Urbanspoon did locate a restaurant called The Barbeque Pit, and so we just went there with fingers crossed. The meal that we enjoyed was not bad, and I am glad that we stopped, but I think that we should have made this destination as a backup plan, and actually talked to some locals at a gas station or something, and found a place that generated some enthusiasm from somebody. As it is, all that I can tell you about the Barbeque Pit is that it occupies what was apparently constructed as a pizza restaurant in the late 1960s, that Colquitt County has thrown three or four construction crews into work to dig up streets and rebuild bridges between our route and the business, and that it is only the second barbecue place that I've ever heard of with a salad bar.





Not mentioned in the chapter last week about King's Grill in Valdosta was an amusing moment of jealousy sparked by my fellow hobbyist, Dustin of The Georgia Barbecue Hunt. When I cleaned up that city's barbecue listings in Urbanspoon, I noticed that not one other Urbanspoon-affiliated blogger had written a post about any restaurant in that region. Not one. All that it required, therefore, was for us to make it to Valdosta, have breakfast at King's Grill - heck, have breakfast anywhere and write about it - and we'd have the Valdosta leaderboard all to ourselves until somebody else hit the area, or a local blog started up. (Surely some student at Valdosta State wants to write about the food in their town, right?)

Saturday afternoon, in the hotel on Saint Simons Island, a day and a morning before we were due in Valdosta for breakfast, I opened up Google Reader to see what was new, and learned that The Georgia Barbecue Hunt had beaten me to Valdosta. Dustin had been to one of the city's measly five 'cue joints, the interstate-friendly Smok'n Pig, and given it a write-up. I had a great laugh, feigned outrage, and read the very peculiar report that this restaurant has a salad bar. I am forced to agree with my learned friend from Texas. I cannot imagine what a barbecue joint needs with a salad bar. I have wracked my brain trying to remember if I've ever seen such a thing, and if I have, I've forgotten. Two days later, there we were in Colquitt County looking at one.

Compounding the curious coincidences, I have mentioned before that I greatly enjoy playing Where's George, the currency tracking game. Before we left on this trip, I entered a great big stack of marked singles, intending to spend them all through southwest Georgia. I had hits in 84 of Georgia's 159 counties before we left; unsurprisingly, southwest Georgia is poorly represented in my hit count. (I should point out that only three people are known to have hits in all 159 Georgia counties, and none of those people actually live here. There is no solid evidence at all that spending a marked bill in a county will increase its chances of being hit in that county, but it makes me feel better**.) Anyway, would you believe that no sooner did I get over my mock outrage about Dustin beating me to a restaurant in Valdosta than one of my months-old bills got a hit from Colquitt County, two days before I was due to enter its borders for the first time, ever, with the intent of leaving new marked bills there?

It is perhaps telling that I am writing so much more about meaningless little coincidences than about the food that we purchased. Well, it was not bad, but it was a long, long way away from being worth a long detour to try. The pork, according to our server, is smoked over oak and served sliced. She did not believe that any rubs or sauces are used. The resulting taste is quite mild and, honestly, a little blander than any sliced pork that I can recall.

Many of my fellow hobbyists have suggested that chopping pork risks cutting away the flavor. I seem to be in the minority of writers who actually prefer barbecued pork to be chopped, noting exceptions when the results are too dry and disappointing, but this sliced pork tasted to me like what my learned friends accuse chopped pork of becoming in the wrong hands. Tomato-based sauces are available. They are agreeable, but lack character. This is barbecue as comfort food. It is tame, safe, and, accompanied by frozen fries from a truck, evidence of a place that does not wish to stand out at all.

That sounds, perhaps, harsher than intended. The food is good; if Marie and I lived in Moultrie, then I'm sure that we could come to love it. But we have enjoyed so many striking examples of standout barbecue, of places that pleasantly surprise us, that finding something reliably humdrum so far from home is a little disappointing. This was our third meal of the day in southwest Georgia, and nothing was much better than "okay." A fellow can't help but wish for better. In Thomasville, we would, perhaps, have been more thrilled taking Victoria's suggestions and trying Izzo's or that pool hall. Here, we might have been more excited by bypassing Moultrie in favor of Tifton's Shady Lane Drive Inn. I read about this place not long after returning home, and have been grumbling "Next time, if there ever is a next time..." ever since.

If there ever is a next time, it won't be on a Monday, either. I really do want to try Smoakies one day.



*(For the record, in no order and not making considerations as to taste or personal preference, I think that a list of Georgia's most celebrated-by-writers, popular among the public, and, perhaps, legendary barbecue shacks would include these ten: Smoakies, Fincher's in Macon [about which, more Wednesday], Vandy's in Statesboro, Country's in Columbus, The Georgia Pig in Brunswick, Sprayberry's in Newnan, Old Clinton in Gray, Harold's and Fat Matt's in Atlanta, and Zeb's in Danielsville. Given another ten or fifteen years of press and memories, we might could add Fox Brothers in Atlanta, Sam's BBQ-1 in Marietta, and Southern Soul on Saint Simons Island.)

**(Just one day after posting this entry, one of the bills that I spent in Lowndes County on this trip was hit there. So, once in a while, it does work. The coincidences continue!!)

Henderson's, Thomasville GA

I had two very good reasons, I thought, for picking Henderson's as a place to visit in Thomasville, but neither of them were enough to sway our friend Victoria about the plan. She grew up in Thomasville and assured us that there were many better restaurants*. She said that we were certain to enjoy a much-loved pool room that serves awesome chili dogs, and I must agree that does sound like fun.

As I have mentioned many times over the last few months, not very many bloggers seem to use Urbanspoon Georgia. The Atlanta service gets a fair amount of activity, the other nine major metros in the state a little less, and rural Georgia's catch-all only a trickle, but enough for me to notice a very entertaining blogger, Sweet Tea and Bourbon. He's based in Tallahassee and occasionally makes his way north. He's covered Thomasville better than anybody else with a blog, and I wanted to stop in someplace about which he had already written. A few of of his selections stood out to me, but Henderson's won out over Grandaddy's Barbecue (which he did not like) and Izzo's Soda Fountain (which he did) on the biased basis of that being Marie's father's family name. So now we have visited both a Marie's and a Henderson's. At some point, we might have to track down a restaurant with one of my names.

Henderson's opened in 1949 and is still family-owned, although the current Henderson in charge, Ralph, seems to be doing things a little differently than the classic and simple nature of how the restaurant was when it opened. For breakfast and lunch, this place serves up basic fast food-style burgers, fingers and fried chicken. A good comparison point for Atlantans might be The Varsity or Zesto's; the burgers taste about like those, just classic, basic food at very agreeable prices. This is what I ordered, and it was fine for what it was.





But while Thomasville may be a pretty fair drive from any thriving big cities, they're obviously aware of trends. While the basic burger is just a common fast food patty, they are experimenting with a more expensive selection, made from local, grass-fed beef. This is the standard at many of Atlanta's newer and best-known burger places and it seems to do extremely well for restaurants like Farm Burger, among many others. I honestly didn't see the little signs that highlighted this special, but they did have the good sense to advertise it with a small flyer in our bag. The lunch crowd on this Monday was pretty huge, and I expect more than a few of them are probably willing to shell out a few more dollars to try out this hormone-free beef. I hope that it does well for them.

Speaking of the lunch crowd, there sure were a lot of high schoolers getting carry-out orders here. I suppose that Thomas County has pretty slack policies on leaving campus to find something good to eat.

In the evening, after closing for a couple of hours, the restaurant reopens as a nice, upscale place called Richard's Grill. I was reminded of how Blossom Deli in Charleston, WV did things under their old ownership. The menu includes nice-sounding things like salmon, either grilled with pecans and sesame asparagus, or with sauteed vegetables and cauliflower mash. I suppose they are trying this to catch some of the frustrated people who don't wish to wait for two hours for a table at either Liam's or Jonah's. I'm not sure that I can believe that Henderson's very basic, 1960s LPs-on-the-wall decor goes all that well with the fine dining of Richard's Grill, but I like the sound of it.

Thomasville really is a heck of a ways off the beaten path for us. It is quite a detour to get over here from I-75, and I don't imagine that, even if we are again in a position to come back from Jacksonville via Valdosta, we can really justify going this far out of the way, but I am certainly glad that we made the trip to see the place, and I am glad to have had the chance to visit something in Sweet Tea & Bourbon's coverage area. Should the road ever happen to actually send us back, however, we drove past that pool room that Victoria told us about, and darn if that doesn't look tempting. Actually, there's a similar place in Monroe, come to think of it, and that's a lot closer. Hmmmm.



*Victoria dropped me a line shortly after I posted this review, clarifying her position, or rather, reversing it entirely: "For some reason I thought you were talking about Chandler's which is a much more ghetto place to grab a bite in Thomasville. I actually lived a few blocks from Hendersons and used to swear by their bacon, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwiches. Might need to revise your review now cause I actually would have recommended them! Haha. Blame Mommy brain." We'll remember this incident the next time that Victoria recommends anything whatsoever.

King's Grill, Valdosta GA

In retrospect, it's almost funny that I told Chris that we might see a little bit more of north Florida on this last trip down to visit him. We left after sunset. We didn't see anything. Well, as Marie and the children slept, I did see a really funny series of signs along I-10. Heading west, there's a sign that reads "Lake City: Next 3 Exits." Then there's an exit for US-90, and then you enter the Osceola National Forest and spend about twenty miles driving through the darkness. Then you exit the forest and a sign reads "Lake City: Next 2 Exits."

Returning to Georgia, we stopped for the night at a terrible motel off exit 2, about fifteen miles south of Valdosta. Traveling with babies, parents must be used to the reality that sometimes, they're going to have awful nights' sleep and keep you up until dawn, and that you're going to leave your hotel and get halfway to breakfast before turning around, remembering that you left a pillow behind. One of those nights and mornings, you see.

Valdosta is a very pretty town, but I get the impression that it was once so much more gorgeous and we visited as some needed improvements have already occurred. It probably wasn't so pretty five years ago. The economy's been bad everywhere, but Valdosta seemed particularly hard-hit by restaurant closings. I have mentioned in previous entries that I have been cleaning up the listings at Urbanspoon. Before I got started, there were more than thirty restaurants in Urbanspoon Valdosta in the barbecue category. Once I changed categories for all the erroneously-listed wing places and noted closures, only five remained. Five. Two of those were Sonny's. A derelict old Fina station between the interstate and downtown is a bitter reminder of how things have deteriorated. Personally, I was excited to see an old Fina sign, having forgotten that it existed. Fortunately, downtown is a little more vibrant. If we had come a little later in the day, we certainly would have stopped into a combination record store and hot dog shop, but as it was, we had breakfast in a fantastic old greasy spoon that has weathered the tough times well for more than sixty years, the King's Grill.





Places like this, the atmosphere means as much if not more than the food. Honestly, the breakfast was not much better than okay. It was cheap and it was filling, but the impression we get from every source is that this is a place best experienced at lunch, when the kitchen is putting together some tasty, fresh, blue plates and other meat-and-three concoctions.

We were the only guests for a little while, and talked with the staff for a short time before two other guests arrived, and then they really impressed us. I love seeing how well places treat their regulars, and this couple was greeted like old and priceless friends. "Where have you been," the owner called. "We've been worried about you!"

The building was actually constructed in the 1890s, and as far as anyone can remember, the restaurant's space had been an ice cream parlor in the 1930s. Today, there are elements of very cute design left over, from the tabletops to the old fixtures behind the counter and a number of hand-painted signs with sassy slogans. Somebody made a half-hearted effort to make the interior otherwise look like "a fifties diner," and longtime readers know how I feel about doing this the wrong way. There are some old 45s on the wall, but otherwise no genuine treasures, just latter-day repackaged nostalgia like the typical I Love Lucy posters and one of those obnoxious prints of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe hanging out at the malt shoppe. Diners did not actually have these things in the 1950s.

Downtown Valdosta is full of lovely old things to see, including an old jewelry store with an awesome retro sign, and the gorgeous Dosta Playhouse, built in 1941. Some of the old news clippings on the walls inside King's Grill make for fascinating reading. There's a great story from the 1960s about an anonymous good samaritan who used to make his way around Valdosta giving strangers ten dollar bills.

It's a neat place. Should the road take us back one day, I'd like to see that record store and have a hot dog. If only somebody would open some more barbecue restaurants...

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Brewer's Pizza, Orange Park FL

Readers with quite long memories might recall that Brewer's Pizza was the place that our friend Chris wanted us to eat when we were in Jacksonville one year ago, but we ran afoul of their hours and wouldn't have time during our brief visit. Brewer's is actually located about an arm's length outside the Jacksonville / Duval city and county limits, in suburban Clay on the southwest side of the metro area. Clay County has stricter policies about the times that a restaurant may serve alcohol on Sundays, and, consequently, Brewer's doesn't bother opening up until 2 pm, missing out on the possible revenue of the early NFL games. Now that I've been here, and seen the reasonably-sized crowd watching football and spending money, I remain baffled as to why they chose to open in Clay.

So, a couple of Sundays ago, we dropped Marie's sister Anne off at the airport and made our way back down through the sprawl to Chris's place, and spent an agreeable few hours hanging out with him and his friends. Much of this time was spent playing Illuminati, a simply fantastic strategy game to which I was introduced in college and have played off and on whenever the rare opportunity has come. I still think that the game is best played with a chess clock, but if you enjoy games that require manipulation, cooperation, backstabbing and planning three turns ahead, then I strongly recommend you find a copy of this game and between three and five friends. It's made by Steve Jackson, and any decent hobby store should either already have it in stock or can order it. I got stuck playing the Gnomes of Zurich, my least favorite group, but still ruled the world anyway.

Unfortunately, both time and the needy baby prevented Marie from playing any, which was a shame as she's meant to be the one in the family who likes games the most. I feel bad that she missed out, but not so bad that I'm going to volunteer to play Carcassone with her. I just don't get that game. I'd have more fun painting ceilings in the dark.

Eventually, time came for the group to decamp to Brewer's. Chris had phoned ahead and booked a table for the eleven of us. The restaurant, whose exterior I forgot to photograph, is in a small strip center just outside I-295. It's a brewpub first, a sports bar second, and a pizza place third, and while the crowd included plenty of locals in Jaguars jerseys and faithful in Bucaneers tops, that game was long over and just about every eye was riveted on the Broncos game, where, once again, local hero Tim Tebow was leading his team to yet another improbable fourth quarter comeback and overtime victory. Earlier in the day, Anne had reported a conversation with some friends in Memphis. "It just doesn't seem right to hate that guy, because he's so darn nice. But we hate him anyway." I'm sorry, Jacksonville. Perhaps you'll never understand.



According to Chris, Brewer's Pizza only serves food at all because Clay County's regulations require that they have a kitchen in addition to their brewing facilities, and that we're fortunate that they've hit on a good thing. I think that he was trying to stem any possible disappointment, knowing that neither of our previous trips to his city had resulted in any raves from me. Honestly, though, this is quite good pizza. A couple of months previously, we stopped into Columbus, Georgia's Cannon Brewpub, and their pizza is not fit to be mentioned in the same breath as these big square treats in Florida.

The specialty here is on individual-sized pizzas that are called Florida Growlers. These are baked, Detroit-style, in a deep dish square pan that gives the edges of the crust a satisfying crunch but leaves the interior thick and chewy. Since Chris, a Michigan native, doesn't drink beer, it's the pizza that brought him here, and I agree, it is a whole lot better than many I have had. I enjoyed mine with tomatoes and green olives, and I enjoyed it a lot. Detroit-style pizza has an entry at Wikipedia for those curious to know more about the distinction between it and other varieties. Having been lulled into complacency by chain delivery pizzas and their give-each-version-a-trademarked-name varieties, I suspect that most of us in the Southeast probably never knew that delivery-deep-dish originated in the Motor City.

The beer is just downright excellent here. This is another of the great bars that I've found that doesn't sell the boring national brands at all. They have six different house brews available at any time from a lineup of eleven, and I tried the Tribal Rite, an incredibly satisfying oatmeal porter. I absolutely loved it to bits. Amusingly, my daughter has been making a really tedious pest of herself lately, asking, "Hey, Dad, whenareyagonnaletme have a BEEEER?" I offered her a sip, she looked at the black, mean-looking brew, curled her eyebrow and passed. Chris's roomate Joey shared some of his selections with me. He had some beast with an 11.8% ABV that went down about as smoothly as old transmission fluid, and a much, much lighter Southern Pecan Ale that was so smooth that I wouldn't think twice about offering some to the baby. I certainly preferred the house offering and would have liked to have also tried the red ale, had I not needed to drive on through the evening to get a hotel in Georgia.

Chris is very excited because the 7-11 convenience store chain is finally about to open some stores in Jacksonville. They have several locations in middle and south Florida, but otherwise they seem to be completely absent from our usual travel radius, with the nearest one somewhere between Raleigh and Richmond. We joked about how Chris goes miles out of his way to feed a Slurpee addiction, and once 7-11 finally gets settled in town, he'll be making Slurpee runs the way many people take their debit cards to a Starbuck's.

He is quite emphatic that, even though the machinery is built by the same company, Slurpees are not the same as Icees. Apparently, Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory concurs, although he foolishly comes down on the Icee side of the debate. I agreed that the next time we come down to Jacksonville, we'll have to arrange for a blind taste test.

Angie's Subs, Jacksonville Beach FL

When the opportunity came to revisit Jacksonville and spend a little time with our friend Chris, I didn't have to look very hard to find a place to get a little lunch first. Angie's Subs seems to be incredibly popular and is ranked fairly high - it is the # 3 restaurant in Urbanspoon Jacksonville at the time of writing - and since we're only realistically able to pop down to northeast Florida maybe once a year at this time, I'd like to take these rare opportunities to say that I've been to one of the area's most loved places.

Our previous two visits to Florida had seen us going to Saint Simons, then visiting Jacksonville, returning to Saint Simons for a last evening and going home the next day. This time, though, we were going home from Florida, and it's almost the same distance to go back the I-10 / I-75 route as it is I-95 / I-16. So, since we were going to head back through a part of Georgia that we never, ever see, this gave us the chance to schedule a pretty fun set of detours through cities and towns new to us. Marie did request that I rein in my enthusiasm just a bit and not end up in Pensacola or Mobile - "But it's the same interstate!" - but it turned out that Angie's became the first stop of several that I will share over the course of the next week. Perhaps, should our schedule bring us this way again, we might try going home via Waycross on US-1.

We left Saint Simons around ten, with Marie's sister Anne joining us. Conveniently, she needed to catch a plane home from Jacksonville's airport, and we were headed that direction anyway. Angie's Subs is a pretty long way from the airport, but we didn't mind backtracking. Or we wouldn't, if the stretch of US-90 on the east side of the city wasn't so utterly hideous with identical single-story strip mall sprawl for such a long time. At least getting there included a trip over a beautiful, very high bridge and a gorgeous view, and once drivers get past the nasty sprawl and enter the city limits of Jacksonville Beach, the road finds a soul again. If Angie's is any indication, it's a funky, eclectic and laid-back soul.





Jacksonville Beach is a separate town of 21,000 from the city/county conurb that mostly stays inside the I-295 / FL-9A perimeter. While most of the rest of what little we've seen of north Florida made way for the Wal-Mart, it looks like this place never will. The sub shop is inside a Frankenstein's monster of a building that was probably erected in the late 1950s. Then, there was a gas station on the right side, with two storefronts. Eventually, Angie's opened in the center, and a coin laundry on the left. Over time, the business expanded as the gas station and the laundromat closed, and now the whole building provides a very awkward home for Angie's. What had been their front door is now closed off. Dozens of signs attempt to direct guests over to two registers on one side to place sandwich orders before your group shuffles down to a different cash register to collect payment. The sensory overload is enormous, in part because nothing is very clear at all; the sloppy, cluttered signage looks like a bored middle school girl threw it together.

It takes a little work to take it all in, but I loved it. It's a loud and wonderful million miles from the minimalist austerity that informs much of the design of contemporary modern American restaurant experiments. This is tacky and garish and huggable. When I ordered a "Volcom Special," named for a surfing-and-swimwear company, from a little sign by one of the registers, I wasn't even a hundred percent sure what I was getting, just that the collage-and-glue cardboard sign screamed loudly enough at me. Turns out it was turkey and salami on a toasted bun with a liberal coating of the shop's "Peruvian Sauce." This is a sweet and very zesty mustard sauce that Angie's sells in bottles from a hard-to-see shelf by the register, and which is available from gigantic squeeze bottles on each table. Everything here is gigantic. The sweet tea is dispensed from a thirty-two gallon bucket.

The food was just fine. We've said before here that it's very hard to go wrong with sandwiches, since there is so little variety in delivered deli meats or their preparation. As long as it's good meat, it'll be a good sandwich. But the toasting and the sauces and excellent sweet tea, in a silly and tacky mess of a restaurant all added up to a very fun lunch. The staff seemed to be having a terrific time, the music was loud and the regulars, ready for some football, were looking forward to one of the NFL season's rare victories, over Tampa Bay. Sadly, Angie's had actually retired one of their sandwiches a couple of weeks before we arrived, as Jack Del Rio had been fired as the Jaguars' coach. I think that they might have renamed the thing after the interim coach.

Anne was kind enough to buy our lunch as thanks for the ride to the airport, about which, I have to say, that is a spectacularly easy airport for commuters dropping off family to use. Good on Jacksonville for making that so simple. We hope to see Anne again in the spring; we've penciled in a trip to Memphis before it gets nasty hot again.

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Bennie's Red Barn, Saint Simons Island GA

Marie and I had been dating for long enough that her father had asked whether I was thinking of making an honest woman out of her. This was something that I intended to ask him about a couple of months later. Getting the parents' permission first, that sort of thing. That came in time, a few months down the road. But she was still living in Athens and we were enjoying an agreeable long-distance relationship for a little more than a year at that point. I don't remember whether we rode down from Athens or from Atlanta, but it was Christmas four years ago, and her dad took us to supper at Bennie's Red Barn, which is the oldest restaurant on Saint Simons Island, and one of my favorites.

Again with the nostalgia, this is a place that I'll always associate with thinking about getting married. It's the restaurant's contention that many couples make that decision here around Christmas, with fellows going down on one knee in front of the gigantic fireplace and the applause of all the guests. For our part, we made it a little more private, a few months down the line.

The restaurant opened to the public in January, 1955 but it kept a pretty low profile for forty years. There wasn't a sign out front or an advertisement in the annual tourism magazines until Bill Clinton was president. This was an old-fashioned supper club, with a small menu recited by the waiters. I don't think that they even had a printed copy of the menu until a few years back when they finally conceded to have one printed in the "Menu Books of the Golden Isles" things in hotel nightstands.





We were back on the island two Saturdays ago for an early Christmas, since this was the best opportunity, with everybody's schedules and plans being hectic, to assemble Marie and her brother and sister at the same time. Part of the festivities included a trip to Bennie's Red Barn. As the name suggests, it's a big, red barn with a soaring roof, tall enough inside for a huge Christmas tree in the center of things. All of the wood in the building was cut from Saint Simons oaks. It's very noisy inside, with the holiday season bringing in a stream of huge parties, and a staff of some of the best, most professional servers of any restaurant that I've ever seen handling the chaos with precision and professionalism.

Bennie's greatest reputation is with their steaks, but I prefer to have the seafood, since we're on the island and all. They start everybody at the table with a salad of wilted lettuce and a strong vinegar dressing, which is completely wonderful. The soups on this most recent visit included French onion and Brunswick stew, which was served piping hot, black as coal and, unusually, full of green peas. I had the scallops and bass, and they were succulent and completely wonderful. I like this place a great deal, and I'm glad that the food is good enough to justify the many happy memories that many couples and families certainly have.

Fox Brothers Bar-B-Q, Atlanta GA

Well, of course Fox Brothers is the best barbecue in Atlanta. Everybody has known that for years.

Since we started the blog almost two years ago, we have been asked once or twice when we were going to feature the city's most popular and praised barbecue place. The honest answer is that we were in no particular rush. After we tried the place in 2009, we knew that anything and everything else was shooting for second place, and that we'd come back to Fox Brothers on some special occasion or other. The occasion turned out to be my fortieth birthday, and so we invited a host of friends in town to come join us. If you're going to do this, I'd make sure to do it on a nice day when everybody can sit outdoors. We had a party of thirteen, and since Fox Brothers neither takes reservations nor really has the space to handle large groups like ours inside, it was a little challenging and frustrating getting everything together.

Also, using a new, still-unfamiliar camera outdoors in the bright sunshine leaves the photographs looking worse than usual. Oh, well. You live and learn.





The restaurant opened in August 2007 in a space on Dekalb Avenue that was once home to a popular place called Gringos. Their lot is quite small, and so guests may end up parking on Elmyra instead, especially if they come during peak times. The brothers are Jonathan and Justin Fox, formerly of Fort Worth, Texas, and they started as a catering business that also served up from the kitchen at Smith's Olde Bar in Decatur. Within four years, they've made themselves very well known as the essential barbecue destination for travelers with time enough to make just a single stop in our city.

If I may break away from the fulsome praise that this good food deserves, I would like to say that I don't know that this is at all fair to Georgia barbecue, to have its predominant, best example for travelers be something imported from Texas like this, but nevertheless, visitors like the awesomely readable Full Custom Gospel BBQ and the Chicago Tribune's Kevin Pang and Keith Claxton just singled out Fox Brothers for a breeze through our city, when its Texas style is nothing much like the Memphis-by-way-of-Alabama style that informs the huge majority of our restaurants. It is excellent, but visitors to Atlanta should never think that it is our ambassador; rather, it is a most distinguished guest. The next time any out-of-towner in Atlanta wants to see what Georgia barbecue is like, I would recommend Harold's, for the history and the stew, or Williamson Brothers, which I personally do not enjoy, for the style that dominates most of our restaurants, or Hudson's Hickory House for the juicy, drowned-in-thin-red concoction that is very popular in the city's western suburbs, or Heirloom Market, for the shock of the new and the exciting fusion with Korean sauces.

That said, look, if you're just in town for a day and want one of the best barbecue meals you've ever had and don't care what it represents, by all means, come and gorge yourself here. It is fantastic food.

There were thirteen of us, and heaven knows what everybody ate; I was not keeping track, although it did seem that many people tried the Carolina-styled pulled pork, which was one of the specials on this afternoon. Among the many things that I love about Fox Brothers is the way they keep their specials exciting and unpredictable. There's always something neat here. This sandwich, served drowned in mustard sauce, won raves from everybody who tried it. Another special was a green chili, which was so neat and tasty that David waved me over to his side of the table to sample it.

I had a combo plate - look, it was my birthday, and darn right I was going to indulge - of sliced beef brisket and pulled pork. For my sides, I selected a Frito pie, served in the bag with a traditional, bean-free Texas-styled chili, cheese and onions, and the Fox-a-Roni, which is Brunswick stew served over mac and cheese. I don't know that I've ever had so much protein in a single meal before. When we left after a couple of hours, to the delight of the people in line waiting patiently for us to vacate our four tables, Marie and my daughter and I went to the museum, to let our newly mobile baby crawl around the infant play area for a while. I laid down on the floor with him and let all that protein turn me into a thoroughly immobile, exhausted lump. It was awesome, and it all tasted unbelievably good, particularly the brisket. You can get some darn good brisket in town - Bub-Ba-Q smokes some very, very good brisket - but nobody comes close to this. Certainly, the next time that I order a combo plate here, I'll get vegetables for sides, but I can't imagine a visit without the brisket.

By my count, Marie and I have written up thirty Atlanta barbecue restaurants for the blog. That's ten inside the perimeter and twenty outside, and there are certainly more to come. There's Barbecue Street, Daddy D'z, Spiced Right, Rib Ranch and that damn fool place where all the Gators fans go, for instance. But when it comes to barbecue, absolutely everybody is in the shadow of Fox Brothers, our most distinguished guest. I hope they keep smoking here forever. It makes me want to spend a month on Full Custom Gospel's turf and see whether anybody else in Texas is as distinguished as this. Anybody want to sponsor a month's research in Houston and Austin?

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Chicago Delights and The Cuban Diner, Marietta GA

The good people at Not Fooling Anybody might get a kick out of a little intersection in Marietta between the Big Chicken and I-75, where, once upon a time, three different national fast food chains once stood. These days, all three buildings house local ventures. The most obviously visible - you can see it below you from the interstate going south towards Atlanta - is a former Long John Silver's that now looks like somebody attacked it with an eight-pack of Crayola markers and trades as Supreme Fish and Chicken. Opposite this place on either side of Chert Road is a former Hardee's that's now called Presto Latin, and, facing that, a former Arthur Treacher's. The building was constructed in the early 1970s and probably wasn't a Treacher's for all that long before the chain retreated northward. Wikipedia suggests that, as of 2008, Treacher's only existed in eight states, but the corporate website is such a chore to navigate that it isn't worth my time to see whether even that's true anymore. Southern Subs opened in the space in, I believe, 1977 and it lasted here until perhaps 2001, at which point Chicago Delights moved in a truckload of sports memorabilia and quietly began serving some very good hot dogs.

I'm not kidding about the sports memorabilia. I mean, there are any number of Chicago-themed pizza and hot dogs places around town with a Blackhawks banner and a Bulls jersey on the walls, but I'm talking about photos of the '85 Bears and freaking autographed Gale Sayers footballs, along with antique tins and bags of Jay's potato chips. This is an impressive collection of treasures.

Oh, yeah, and the hot dogs are wonderful. They have a great special where you can get a dog and a Polish, a bag of Zapp's chips and a drink for seven bucks and change. Sold! I had mustard and tomatoes on my dog with some Giardiniera relish, and had the Polish Chicago-style, with all the fixings, and both were excellent.





I ate here once before, in 2004, when I went through a little fad of trying many of the Chicago-themed hot dog joints around Cobb County. About half of those seem to be gone today, although I really don't know that I was paying very much attention. Like Hot Dog Heaven in Woodstock, almost all of their food comes from the Vienna Beef Company, with the signature buns, baked by Rosen's and repackaged by Vienna Beef, making a strong case for being the best-tasting hot dog buns of any in the world. Sure, the bread is one or two days old before it makes it here, but, steamed, the buns are just terrific. I didn't want to leave a crumb.

But having said that, this is really all the same sort of food available at many places in the city. What makes it great at Chicago Delights are the prices, the fun staff and the real effort put into making this place feel like a genuine celebration of the Windy City. The homesick are guaranteed a good time here.

I decided to have lunch here because, a week previously, I enjoyed a meal a little ways up the road without my camera. I learned the hard way that my cell phone simply does not work as a substitute and so I needed to stop back by and redo a shot of the outside, and wanted to get a lunch in the same neighborhood. Honestly, I don't know why I bothered. It's not like you get art, or even something mildly intriguing, from a photograph of a space in a suburban strip mall. I guess my desire to provide an illustration for you good readers overrides common sense.



The Cuban Diner is located in the East Marietta Shopping Center, which, if you're traveling east away from the Big Chicken, is that strip mall located down a whacking great hole on the right. I'd say that the only way to avoid scraping the underside of your car, which is a dead cert if you're trying to climb back onto Roswell Road, is to go out the back entrance, onto Powers Ferry, but even there, you'll have to contend with speed bumps like small mountains. You can't win.

Anyway, the week previously, Matt and Kelley made the trek from their home in Gainesville up to Chattanooga to do some shopping at McKay Books. This is a trek that all of our Atlanta readers who enjoy bookstores should definitely make, and if you have not been reading about our trips to Tennessee to do this, then click that label on the right-hand side of your screen for Chattanooga and read about my frequent expeditions up here, pronto. So they needed to get some lunch along the way, and we went by Cuban Diner, which Matt had suggested. I read Atlanta Restaurant Blog's short-but-sweet review of the place and decided to try their lunch special of a half Cuban sandwich with two sides. I must have been in a yucca mood, because I had the "Cuban fries," thick beasts made from yucca, along with the yucca con mojo, where the potato-like root is boiled and served with sliced onions in a thin mojo sauce. This little dish was terrific, but I wasn't keen on the fries.

The sandwich was much as one would suspect: ham, pork, swiss cheese and pickles with, mustard and mayonnaise on pressed Cuban bread. It was nothing wild, but it was satisfying, and the service was impeccable. They messed up Kelley's order, and were not about to let her leave unhappy, correcting the problem with smiles and the speed of light. A staff that cares to do the right thing and correct their errors is just about the greatest thing in restaurants, and guaranteed my goodwill.

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Your Pie and The Royal Peasant, Athens GA

A growing little pizza business that started in Athens has been on my radar for ages, since they started getting lots of press and regular notices from one of that city's best food writers, the wonderful Hillary Brown of Flagpole. Unfortunately, at the time that I'm writing this, that newspaper's web site archive is unavailable, thanks to an alleged attack of "spam monkey trolls," so I can't look back and refresh my memory about anything, but if I remember correctly, Your Pie sort of arrived fully-formed, corporate and ready for franchising in 2008. There are already eight stores in Georgia - it was spotting the lone Atlanta-area location, in Roswell, that reminded me to try these guys out - along with two stores each in Florida and South Carolina. There's a thirteenth coming to Murfreesboro, near the MTSU campus, pretty soon.

The owner got the concept together when he was working for the nearby Moe's Southwest Grill. This must have been back when Raving Brands owned that business, and, since every one of their restaurant "concepts" were pilfered from existing successes, I can imagine this would be the sort of idea that one should keep under a hat until striking out on one's own. This much was explained to me by the manager on duty when I swung through Athens a couple of weeks ago. He also said that the idea came when the owner was visiting his wife's family on the island of Ischia, near Naples, and figured that a build-yer-own personal pizza business, designed with an assembly line like a sandwich shop, was something unique and original.





I've mentioned before that Athens just doesn't have any really good pizza places. Transmetropolitan remains my favorite among some pretty disappointing offerings. Your Pie is certainly better than most of the competition, and miles ahead of the chain delivery joints, but I think that the novelty of the place is still a little more entertaining than the food itself. I'm sorry if that's damning with faint praise, but if you're in Athens, then this is a great choice for a pizza. If you're in Atlanta, it is not. That said, I am pleasantly surprised that Athens (and nearby Watkinsville) can somehow support four of these stores. Admittedly, parking for the Beechwood store, the original of the chain, is such a bear during lunch that people on the clock might be better off with nearby options rather than circle endlessly waiting for a space.

At Your Pie, guests can choose one of seven "favorite" combinations or start from scratch and build one to specifications for a pretty decent price, starting at $6.19. This will get you all the vegetables that you want on it; each of the meats, along with some "premium" ingredients, are available for a fifty-cent upcharge. There are four doughs available, eight sauces and ten cheeses, so there's a whole lot of room for experimentation. The ten-inch pies are cooked in a brick oven and brought to guests in about six minutes, and they've got one of those Coca-Cola Freestyle machines. I just can't resist Fanta Lime, darn it.

I thought about getting one more thing to eat or drink before leaving town, and figured I'd grab a little dessert from a place called Menchie's that's just a few doors down. One of Athens' newer food writers, Hungry Dude, gave it a mention the other month, noting that the town seems to have more than its fair share of yogurt places. That said, I think that Hungry Dude is too young to know that, 25 years ago, the space that Menchie's has now was home to a TCBY, the grandaddy of frozen yogurt shops, but he's right to note that this trend has turned a little silly. I just had a very small cup to sample the taste of the strawberry, which was creamy and satisfying, avoiding the temptation to add any of the forty-something toppings. Were I in the mood, I could have gobbled a very large cup of this, and spent a stupid amount of money. No, I really just wanted a beer before leaving town, and so I headed back over to my old stomping grounds, where the Mean Bean stood for many years.



Longtime readers might remember that the Mean Bean was my favorite restaurant of all time. I miss that place so darn much it hurts. I spent more happy memories there than anybody should be allowed to have. From meeting Coach Richt a couple of times to all the drawings that my children colored to the comfort burritos that salved my soul in troubled times, when the downtown store moved to Five Points, it brought me with it and kept me its cheerleader and champion for life. When I heard that some fool English pub moved into its vacant space, I was briefly incensed, as only the irrational are. They should have enshrined it as a museum.

Well, time heals all wounds, so I made my way in for a pint of Boddington's. I have to say, they use the interior space far more sensibly than Tony did, with the kitchen in the back, and a bar that is smaller than the Mean Bean's gigantic counter. The decor is dark wood and anything English they can find on the walls. There is no single football loyalty on display, but scarves from several teams. Not seeing one for Liverpool FC, which I only support because my longtime celebrity crush, Melanie Chisholm, does, I was momentarily mock-incensed again. (Arsenal? Who likes Arsenal?!)

I spent a few minutes at the bar, reading and sipping on my Boddington's, and thought of the Mean Bean some more. About five years before we started dating, Marie decided to take a joke seriously and brought me a deluxe bean burrito with extra cheese. I said before and I'll say 'til my dying day, I would have saved myself a lot of nonsense had I just asked her to marry me then and there. I raised my glass to Tony, wherever he is, knowing that his priceless old space is in good hands.

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Trappeze Pub, Athens GA

My older son has been largely absent from this blog lately, on account of him, miserably, choosing to live with his mother in the end. But before he went up to Kentucky the first time, he and I had a very neat visit to Trappeze Pub on Washington Street in Athens. The wonderful artist Sergio Aragonés, best known for his work in Mad and his lovable character Groo the Wanderer, was in town to receive an award from UGA's art school, and our friend Patrick gave us a heads-up that he and some of the other local comic artists and cartoonists were hoping to have a beer with him before the ceremony. So my son and I went to Athens early and were at Bizarro Wuxtry when the call came, and, after getting turned around and not knowing where the heck Trappeze was, we found the group, met some new acquaintances and enjoyed Sergio's company. I had a beer and asked for a Sprite for my son, joking that he was my designated driver.

I still think that my son missed a trick, when Sergio asked him whether kids his age still actually buy comics, not replying, "Well, I bought that hundred dollar collection Mad put out of Don Martin's stuff, so some of us do, and when the heck are they gonna give you some big hardcovers like those?" but my son, apparently thinking that all of Mad's artists are ultra-competitive death warriors who begrudge each other even the slightest acclaim or success, later whined that he would never have said such a thing, for fear of offending Sergio. But it was a terrific day - heck, I got to meet Jack Davis at the ceremony, too! - and I'll always treasure what Julian said to Marie when he phoned to let her know we were on our way home. He said "Dad had a beer with Sergio Aragonés! And I had a Sprite!"

Perfect days like that completely envelope restaurants. As I've often said, the number one ingredient in elevating a restaurant to greatness is neither the food nor the service, but nostalgia. Just knowing that something wonderful happened somewhere can turn a good restaurant into a wonderful one. Trappeze Pub is indeed a good restaurant, and a quick lunch here that allowed me to remember that happy time with my rotten kid is a pleasure. That the food is pretty nice is just a bonus.







Trappeze was actually on my itinerary for my next trip to town. I had intended to get lunch somewhere else on Washington on this jaunt, but the darn place decided to inconvenience me by not having any lunchtime hours in December. So, already parked on Washington in the coin meter slots - Athens has begun installing receipt parking on other streets, allowing commuters to move their cars should they pay and find that they need to alter their plans, but they haven't made it over to this road yet - I figured that I might as well grab a beer here.

Trappeze has an excellent reputation as one of the country's best beer bars. It has been named in the top hundred in two different national magazines, and they certainly have a stunning beer list. I went with a pint of the locally-brewed Terrapin Wake-n-Bake Imperial Stout. I believe that I have confessed to my readers that I am much more of a lightweight than I once was. High-gravity beers like this keep me away from the steering wheel for an hour after a single pint. I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. Perhaps the real tragedy is that I came on the Thursday morning; the following evening, they had a special event where they tapped a cask of this stout which had more than a pound of spiced bacon added to it. That sounds vaguely ridiculous, but they do it every year and have a blast, so I suppose that I should try it sometime, just to horrify my beer-and-bacon-phobic wife.

Much as I enjoyed the stout, most of the food was just okay. Since I was having a beer instead of a glass of water, as I normally do, I opted for the less expensive diner burger. My server suggested that the $11 pub burger, made with better, all-natural beef, was certainly the better of the two, but the wallet reminded me that I planned to make two other stops in town, and that I had funnybooks to buy down the road. This was actually a second choice; I recalled that a reviewer at Urbanspoon had recommended a roast beef sandwich, which was not on the present menu. Well, the beer was terrific and the burger was okay, but the amazing fries, cooked with rosemary and garlic, were what sold the place for me. I could have eaten more than anybody's share of these. Honestly, for an evening sampling wonderful beers from around the world, a big order of these and some of their boiled peanuts would be mighty fine.

As I stood to leave, lightweight me was instantly reminded that an evening sampling those beers would not be a very lengthy evening. The coin meter was full and I needed the exercise anyway; I walked to the comic shop.

JD's Bar-B-Que, Woodstock GA

I'll tell you, friends and readers, it is always a pleasure when a new, good, local barbecue blog sets up shop and makes an effort to use Urbanspoon to connect with readers. I've mentioned previously that there are a few awesome ones in the region, such as Buster's BBQ Blog, Chopped Onion, and Where's the Best BBQ?, that just don't have any interest in connecting with readers through Urbanspoon, and I think that's a shame. It's easier for readers to catch updates, and it brings them extra eyeballs and traffic with very, very little work. Seriously, scroll to the bottom of this entry. See the little blue and yellow box with the restaurant address? It takes fewer than five seconds to add to each entry, and it brings me more than a thousand visitors a month. Everybody wins.

Happily, when The Georgia Barbecue Hunt started writing his fun blog, he used Urbanspoon, allowing me to become a regular reader very early on. This is a great blog, and one that all of our local readers should definitely be checking out. The writer is a Texas native, living nearby, here in Cobb County, and he updates about once a week with his take on how the regional scene stacks up against the expectations he's brought from the Lone Star State. I knew that it wouldn't be long before he uncovered a place that I did not know, and, sure enough, in September, he gave a very nice review to an unfamiliar place about ten miles up Bells Ferry Road, between Eagle and Towne Lake. Now, I disagree with Dustin pretty strongly from time to time - I think that Smyrna's Thompson Brothers is much better than the review that Dustin gave it - but a 4-star rating like the one that he lovingly gave to JD's Bar-B-Que is enough to get my attention. I resolved to check this place out.

JD's opened in 1999 as a take-out window in a nearby farmer's market and moved to this building in the summer of 2003. They opened a second location in Acworth earlier this year. The owner's name is Chip; the J and the D of the restaurant's name come from his late brother, Jeff, and father, David. He does his family proud with this food. I mostly agree with Dustin's feelings about this place, with only the mildest quibbling. I did like the chopped pork more than he did, but I didn't order the brisket, which is what had him really raving. Marie and I definitely had a solid and enjoyable dinner here and would certainly recommend anybody in the area give this a try. Here's what my plate looked like before I dropped the table's paper towel dispenser on it and scattered chopped pork everywhere:





You want to talk about mortifying? We had the baby in his car seat on the table, and I reached around him to bring the paper towels over to our side of the table, didn't have quite the grip on the wood that I should have, and it looked like somebody set off a bomb. I wasted two or three good forkfuls of my supper!

The chopped pork is dark and dry. It has a very similar texture and taste to The Georgia Rib Company in Marietta. Well, maybe not that similar. Nothing outside of a desert is that dry. There are two sauces here, a sweet brown that the meat really needs for best effect. It's a good combination, and quite tasty. There is also an allegedly spicier version of the same, but the difference is barely noticeable.

I had my plate with some Brunswick stew, and the server talked me into trying their fried corn on the cob after we determined that both their fries and their onion rings are, sadly, not house-made but frozen. This corn was completely delicious, and I certainly recommend it. On the other hand, had I known that the stew here was packed quite so heavily with corn, I would have passed on it in favor of the cole slaw. There's only so much corn that a fellow needs! That said, it was still good stew, nice and oniony, but just more of one particular vegetable at a sitting than I would have liked.

Marie had slaw and baked beans along with her ribs, and enjoyed the meat much more than the sides. They were really excellent ribs, with barely a nibble of fat, and the pork was incredibly tender. I thought that my chopped pork was just fine, but the ribs were much better. The only downside were the baked beans, which were really packed with garlic, to the point that neither of us could enjoy them.

It was a good, inexpensive Friday night supper, punctuated by the amusing sounds of the pinball machine near the door. I apologized for the childlike mess left behind by my idiotic paper towel bomb and we drove back south. Between Black Friday shopping and work and the baby getting extremely cranky and upset in the middle of the afternoon, we were spent and exhausted and called it a night at something ridiculously early like nine. Every so often, as a group with the silly name of Balloon once sang, after we've lived each minute as three, we end up feeling our age.

Ringside Franks & Shakes, Atlanta GA

The day after Thanksgiving, I spent the morning exhausting my baby boy. He started crawling the day before, and, with his day care closed and potential baby sitters out of town, I took him to work with me. It was one of my short shifts and he got appropriate levels of admiration and tickling, and really showed off some crawling. We then drove to Dunwoody to visit Marie at work and allow her to nurse him and visit with her co-workers, and then he and I went to lunch. He missed it entirely. He fell asleep on the way there, and snoozed all the way through the meal, only waking when we returned home to the suburbs.

Completely overshadowed by the celebrity-driven launch of Hd1 has been the debut of a great little place right at the northern end of Buckhead called Ringside Franks & Shakes. It's another hot dog joint and, if I might be bold, one quite superior to the flashy and expensive place down in Poncey-Highlands. With the closure of the barely-inside-the-perimeter America's Top Dog - mercifully, its Duluth location is still with us - Ringside makes a good case for being one of the best hot dog options ITP.

It's owned by Mike Nelson, Clay Harper and Jeremy Kelly. Nelson and Harper also own the locally popular chains La Fonda Latina and Fellini's Pizza, and this is located in a building right next door to the La Fonda and Fellini's on Roswell near Wieuca. In a refit worthy of a spotlight at Not Fooling Anybody, the building looks a whole lot like it was a Taco Bell in the 1970s before spending decades as a Wolf Camera. Nelson and Harper briefly played with a frozen yogurt stand in the building before settling on hot dogs and sausages. The result is inexpensive and very tasty.





Other hobbyists and bloggers have slowly been finding this place and enjoying it. I quite liked reading Spice's Bites' writeup. She helpfully included photos of the menu boards, one of which assures guests that their meat includes "NO MSG, No Fillers or Animal Byproducts added, No Artificial Flavors/Colors, No Corn Syrup Ever, No Irradiation Ever, NO JUNK EVER." I sure do like the sound of that. The meat comes from Wienerz in Marietta and the bread, reports Foodie Buddha, is delivered daily from Entemann's Bakery in Norcross. Food & Beer Atlanta's Tom Maicon notes that, if you pay attention to the costs of your desired toppings, you can feed your family here for under $20.

Charging for some of the toppings puts this pretty far behind America's Top Dog, in my book. There's nothing here remotely like that place's awesome 40-item topping bar, although almost everything that they serve up is still really good. I had a chicken sausage with spicy mustard and neon green "Chicago" relish along with a side of chili cheese fries. I wasn't mad about the chili, but the fries that it covered were very good, hand-cut and cooked in peanut oil. The sausage was terrific and the bread, grilled to give off a little pattern of char across the top, was just wonderful.

I added a mixed vanilla-strawberry milkshake, made with Breyer's ice cream, and happily drove home with that. The milkshake was a payday indulgence; without it, my meal would have been only eight bucks and incredibly filling. When Marie and I had supper many hours later, I still really wasn't very hungry.