Blue Moon Pizza, Marietta GA

A couple of Saturdays ago, we made some plans and, helplessly, watched them get derailed by everything that could go wrong over the course of an afternoon this side of a car fire. Part of those plans included getting some supper, but as the sun went down, neither Marie nor my teenage girlchild nor I really felt like driving inside the perimeter to our original destination. The baby didn't have any objection to what we did. He squealed and laughed and bellowed regardless of what went on, at least when he wasn't snoring, anyway. Two days before, I had visited our friend Rebecca, who writes the wonderful Atlanta Foodies blog. She had recently written about her visit to the latest location of Blue Moon Pizza and made it sound incredibly tasty. So this was on my mind as my family considered and debated what we might do instead of our original plan.

I was hesitant to suggest pizza; Marie was, at the time we did this, just a few weeks away from the frequently-mentioned forthcoming indulgence of the Festival of Dairy. Now, Marie is strong in ways that would startle her oldest friends, but she's only human and she really loves cheese and misses it a lot. I knew that she has the willpower to turn down a nice pie with lots and lots of extra cheese, but it's getting to the point where she doesn't want to fight it any longer. Would it be cruel to suggest going to Blue Moon? Rebecca really did make it sound good.

"There's always... pizza," I said.

"BOOM! OH yeah," said my daughter. "You KNOW you want some!" There were some sort of hand gestures. Did I mention that she's a teenager?

Marie looked at the floor and almost imperceptibly shook her head a little. After a beat, she quietly replied "Maybe we could go to a pizza place that has salad?" Indeed, Blue Moon does offer salad, and, neatly, theirs is served on a little "bowl" of pizza bread. Marie had the house salad, which is mixed greens tossed with tomatoes, red onions, carrots, and artichoke hearts in a vinaigrette dressing, and didn't even notice the two insensitive clods gobbling down on cheese next to her.





Blue Moon offers a variety of specialty pies with some very neat recipes, and, even in the small, 10-inch personal size, they will do half-and-half pies. They are called, of course, "Half Moons." I went with the pie that Rebecca recommended, splitting a Santa Fe with a Luna. The Santa Fe comes with black beans, chicken, jalapeno peppers, red onions, spicy ranch, cilantro, fresh avocado, and a gooey yellow "house cheese," and the Luna has chorizo sausage, carmelized onions, spicy ranch, black olives, cilantro, more jalapenos, and more of that gooey cheese. The house cheese really is peculiar. It has a similar consistency to Cheese Whiz. There is no way in the universe that this should be any good on pizza, but it actually works surprisingly well in combination with the chewy crust and all the toppings.

Incidentally, doing a cursory bit of research for this writeup, I see that Malika of Atlanta Restaurant Blog recently enjoyed the same half-and-half split of a Santa Fe and a Luna. So there, three out of three food hobbyists agree that this is a good pie. The specialty pies are sort of their own little unique darlings, not quite like the pies at any other pizza place in town, but the basic single-topping slices that my daughter ordered have a more traditional taste, not unlike the dozens of New York-style varieties around town. These are not bad, but the specialty moons have a chewier texture, and the strange mix of the yellow cheese, the herbs and the seasoning brings out a more interesting flavor. The curious should go with one of those over slices, easily.

Marie enjoyed a nibble of one of my slices and pushed it away. "No more," she said, her willpower dented but still mighty.

Blue Moon recently opened their fourth store in Sandy Springs, but the one we visited was the original on Windy Hill. Mandy and Kelvin Slater opened it in 2003 and have been slowly growing their concept, with other stores in Vinings and Buckhead. I like their "life less ordinary" philosophy, and they certainly inspire their servers and staff to go the extra mile. I enjoyed the experience so much that as we were leaving, I noticed R.E.M.'s "Pop Song 89" was playing and decided to bellow along to it. Well, that was in part because we had a good night out, our disagreeable afternoon salvaged by a good meal, and in part because I enjoy mortifying my daughter in public. The same teenage hormones that lead to silly pointing and gesturing and the constant reminder that we KNOW that we want whatever it is that we just said that we want result in it being almost comically easy to embarrass the poor child, but you can't say that, as parents of teens, we haven't earned that right.

Dough in the Box, Marietta GA

I continue to be pleasantly surprised to find successful restaurants in the suburbs that mostly avoid online notice or raving. Now, it's certainly true that I do have one of my fellow bloggers, Blissful Glutton Jennifer Zyman, to thank for bringing Dough in the Box to my attention when she gave it a writeup for Creative Loafing last year, but, heck, everybody should be talking about this place. Marie and I drove over there to bring home some breakfast last Saturday and these are really excellent doughnuts. Certainly, Sublime Doughnuts does everything oh-so-right with their carefree and vaguely ridiculous creations, but these basic and simple no-frills creations, quite reminiscent of the Great American Donut Shop in Bowling Green, Kentucky are just about as good, and really nicely priced at $7 for a dozen.

They are thriving despite a really awful location that doesn't make any sense with the flow of traffic for breakfast pickup. Jesus and Dannia Balestena bought the four year-old place in 2010 and have dozens of devoted customers who manage a really rush hour-unfriendly drive to get here. Commuters coming into Marietta from Austell and Powder Springs have to navigate an awful median, making a U-turn to return here and another one to get back into the flow of traffic. Since we were coming from Marietta, past all the bail bondsmen and the remarkably-named Austell Hicks strip mall, we only had to handle one of the two, to return, and, of course, Saturday traffic is much milder than the gridlocked mess of Austell Road during the week.





Last year, the Balestenas participated in a fundraiser for the nearby MDAA elementary school, helping to educate students and parents about buying local by offering a ham and cheese croissant to sell for the school's fifth grade trip for less than a national fast food chain charged the school for their product. The Marietta Daily Journal did a story about the enterprise, although, sadly, the comments below descended into stupid even faster than these things usually do, so don't break your heart by reading about such a positive idea derailed by yahoos. I appreciate any attempt to bring the idea of buying local to a community.

As for our own visit, we sampled several different doughnuts and Marie was pleased to see that they added some holes to our box to fill the empty space. Everything was delicious, especially the chocolate cake, although the wait to enjoy them was unbearable. We needed to stop by the grocery store and buy some milk, because we forgot to get some the night before. Doughnuts just need dunking in milk, I say.

Satterfield's, Macon GA

This is Marie, contributing a brief article about a place I stopped to eat (and exercise the baby) on my way back from a trip to visit my folks. Anyone who had done road trips with me in the past 20 years may be rather surprised at the hobby I now share with my husband, in that it involves stopping at places and taking routes other than the most direct. However, it was good training for driving with baby, especially since on this trip there wasn't anyone to take the shift in the back seat for soothing and entertainment. So anyway, Grant was kind enough to suggest one of my stopping point for this journey, Satterfield's in Macon.

If we get a chance to visit again he will regret having sent me rather than waiting for us to go together. I did not do as good a job as he would of speaking with the staff about the place. I learned that it's been around since the early '80s; I learned that the folks there have their own secret recipe for sauce; I learned that the servers there are complete suckers for a cheerful baby. None of those things are terribly surprising. Rather more to the point, however, I learned that they have the most completely amazing potato salad ever.





The good thing about the restaurant is really the sides. They do their own french fries, which is generally a sign that the rest of the sides will be good. After Grant's post about the deep soul-satisfying contentment of eating too much potato salad, I just had to try theirs. I like potato salad with egg and mustard and without a lot of crunchy bits. It was just how I like it, but it kind of overshadowed the sandwich.

The meat comes with sauce already in it, which is fine because it's quite tasty. Not in the potato salad's league, but tasty. There is always the possibility that I liked the stuff disproportionately to its value, in that I waited rather longer than I should have for lunch. I'd probably want to try something else on the menu just to see what else they do, but if I lived in the area I'd go pick up tubs of potato salad and eat them secretly in my car like an addict. Anyway, this is a long and rather circuitous way to say that I have mostly forgotten the sandwich. It had a pleasantly mild and slightly sweet red sauce, solidly in the middle of Memphis tradition. Don't get me wrong - I do remember that I liked it - it was just overshadowed.

There are a few other interesting things on the menu, such as the pimento cheese sandwich. I would want Grant along to critique that, as he likes the stuff more than I do. (Or, possibly, more than anybody else does. --grant)

I also should have tried the Brunswick stew, as that's a comparison point that we've used in the past. It's more fun to talk over the food while you're eating it, with someone who speaks English. While Daniel did get a small, pre-mushed bite of the sandwich and appeared to find it quite acceptable, he isn't the most discriminating of palates and he didn't say much about it. It's also possible I was missing Grant a bit by this point. Luckily I was almost home.



The interactive map at the bottom of each of our pages displays every restaurant featured on this blog. A separate map of just the barbecue joints can be viewed here. Have fun with it!

Don't Ask Me Why

Dear Krystal,

We've been together a long time, and exclusively for a few years now, haven't we? It's been a good time, and I have no complaints, honestly. But I find myself in the awkward position of having to write you an unhappy letter now. Well, just remember that I love you, and maybe always will, and let me tell you the whole story.

You see, somebody from my past came back to town last week. You might have heard me mention her once upon a time. She's called Del Taco and, well, I went to go see her.

I know, I promised it would be you and you alone as far as fast food goes, but Del Taco and I have a long history. I even posted about it last year. On Valentine's Day, no less. I have heard for several months that she was thinking about coming back to town. People were talking about Snellville being the site of the first store, and that is, honestly, far enough away that I could in good conscience see the both of you. I don't think Snellville counts as local as far as fast food goes. But I talked to the manager when I went to see Del Taco, and he said that they're planning to open sixty units around the region between now and 2022. The next two are under construction in Kennesaw - one of them's almost done and just one exit north of me - and the fourth one is supposed to be coming up in Smyrna.

And I'm afraid that my friends just can't be trusted to keep me loyal to you, Krystal. I've been following the reports on various sites about Atlanta real estate openings and announcements, and on Friday of last week, Matt wrote me to say that the Snellville Del Taco had opened two days previously.

Don't hate him, Krystal. He's a good guy.

So I drove out to see her. It actually kind of made sense to do so, because I needed to photograph the Fellini's Pizza ON PONCE for the blog, because when I went to eat at the Fellini's ON PONCE, I had forgotten my camera. So I was on US-78 already, and it was just a straight shot out to Snellville from there.

I'm sorry, is that kind of a feeble and pathetic excuse? Please don't be hurt. Would it make you feel better to know that there are nine thousand, two hundred and twelve traffic lights between Stone Mountain and Scenic Highway, and every man jack one of them stopped me? No? Because I got there in the end, right?

Yes, I did.





I ordered a combo meal with a chicken burrito, a chicken soft taco and one of those regular tacos that I love so much. They came with fries - fries, Krystal, that, I'm sorry to say, I love just as much as I love yours - and I had a Cherry Coke. I loved them, Krystal. I loved the flavor so much. And I love the sauces. This location has a salsa bar with the hot sauce in the to-go packs in little pump stations. I put Del Scorcho on the tacos and filled a little cup with the hotter Del Inferno as a dip for the burrito.

Was it worth it? Did it compare? Well, sure, compared to, say, Bell Street Burritos, these didn't rate. But these are apples and light bulbs. It's like enjoying a nice basket of your chili cheese fries that I like so much, Krystal, and churlishly complaining that it isn't good poutine. This was a good meal. It wasn't just childhood nostalgia, this is really good, flavorful fast food.

It was so good that... well, let me put it this way. Even though it was Del Taco, I didn't honestly want to go all the way out to Snellville and come back with only one restaurant to report, so I resolved to swing by a barbecue place out that way. But when I finished my meal, I sat and read and then talked to a manager and... well, I ordered another couple of tacos instead.

Then I came home. I took the long, long way, because I had some thinking to do. And because I made a stupid right turn and ended up in Dacula, that, too. I knew I had to justify myself in some fashion. When Marie and I resolved to cut out national fast food - and I'm not sure that Del Taco qualifies, as she is only in seventeen states - I kept a place in my heart for you, Krystal, because I love your taste and I love your memories. Do you remember that time when I was in high school, and Dave and Dave the Third and I went to your Buckhead store on Piedmont to order five dozen Krystals? The girl looked at our wild hair and trenchcoats and asked whether we were in a gang, and Dave said, "Yeah, we're the Purple Gougers, and we rule the South Side." I've stopped at that Piedmont store I don't know how many times and thought about the Purple Gougers.

I do love you, Krystal, but if I'm going to be exclusive to a single fast food chain, then, I'm sorry, but as soon as that Chastain Road store in Kennesaw opens, then it just can't be you. You've done nothing wrong, although I suspect that your steamed patties are thinner than they once were. That first love, though, I think she's just too hard for me to shake. She's just that good.

Maybe I'll see you again. I think that you're in Asheville, and Del Taco isn't, and if we move there sometime, then maybe I'll look you up. Maybe we'd both like that. No, don't cry, Krystal. You're amazing in your own way, and this isn't what you did, I promise.

It's not you; it's me.

Love always,
Grant

Gnats Landing, Saint Simons Island GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about Gnat's Landing. Gnat's Landing first came to our attention because of the 3-point VW bus that sits in front of the place with the vanity place "GNATZ." That had a lot to do with how I chose the place. It was what sold the place when I was doing a search for kid-friendly places to eat when I brought my son to the Island to visit his grandparents. I also looked at the backstory of the owner on the web page and was amused and pleased that he'd been a toy store owner. Since my husband works in a toy store, that just made the choice more fitting.

Regarding the VW bus and what made that important requires a brief diversion. We have a family game of punch-buggy with a lot of house rules. Classic and New Beetles, PT Cruisers, and Mini-Coopers are all 1 point each, unless they have faux-wood sides or flames, in which case they are two points. VW microbuses, known in the game as "hippie vans," are the holy grail, because they are worth three points. In-town trips are capped at 5 points per game, at which point victory is declared; one of these days I'm going to see a microbus with flames and faux wood siding and just pummel Grant silly with 5 punches. It's also permissible to snap a cell phone picture of a car and send it to someone to get points. I fully intend to claim the three points for the hippie van in this picture, so any readers who also use the vehicle in your punch-buggy games - my apologies but I have already claimed them. There is also one of those cement bulldogs with the custom paint jobs squatting near the door; it's decorated to be a canine VW bus.

The place is cute, with signs and memorabilia up on the walls that look like at least a significant part of them are collected rather than ordered from a vendor. The only indoor portion of the restaurant is in the bar area, but it's not excessively loud on a weekend lunchtime, or wasn't when we were there. The outdoor deck area was enclosed for the winter but I still felt more comfortable sitting in the warmer area.





Although I didn't know it at the time, the restaurant's owner, who goes by "Boz," is very ill. The restaurant's blog has had daily updates on his health in the past week. In fact, the very day that I went down to visit my family was the start of his ordeal. The server who took care of us could very well have been one of the folks in the blog, and I wouldn't have known - she did a good job.

Gnat's Landing is, oddly enough, a chain of two - with the second location in Athens, GA, run by relatives of the owner (according to the blurb on the web site). It appears they share Athens bands with the St. Simons location. They also have a relationship with the Bubba Garcia's restaurant that we did a piece on during a prior visit. The two restaurants have, put together, won the "most unique" category in the 2010 Red Hot Rotary Chili Cookoff.

I ordered a snapper sandwich because it looked interesting, but also because I knew better than to to leave the island without having had some kind of seafood. Grant says that one should eat things that an area is good at for some reason! My father had the best thing on the table, however: something they call a Vidalia Onion Pie. It's an incredibly greasy but lovely-tasting cheese and onion bowl. My sandwich was tasty although not much out of the ordinary. The fries were good and hot. I would eat there again, although I'd want to see who might be playing before deciding whether to go. I suspect my husband will want to check out the Athens bands on occasion if we happen to have a weekend visit that coincides with that schedule.

Fellini's Pizza, Atlanta GA

As I've grown up, I've watched the staff at Fellini's get younger and younger. It's been an amusing experience.

Fellini's must surely be the last of the bizarre absences from this blog, a place where I have eaten many, many times before but which fell by the wayside when Marie and I made it a point to try new restaurants. (Well, about two years ago, I had a notion to write up Martin's, which is sort of the northside-OTP counterpoint to the southside-ITP Zesto, but that would require actually eating at one again, which isn't a chore, but isn't something I've been in a hurry to do, either.) Anyway, I've had lots and lots of quasi-New York-style slices at Fellini's, at several of their locations. They presently have seven restaurants in the Atlanta area; there have been as many as ten. When I first visited Fellini's, it was in the mid-80s in Little Five Points, back when Wax 'n Facts was half its present size. They had a store in the plaza which morphed into Little Five Points Pizza many years ago. That place was so wonderfully grungy, full of cigarette smoke and punk rockers.

When I graduated high school, I talked my parents into taking me to dinner anywhere in the city, and chose this Fellini's location. That was also, in part, because I had some graduation money that I wanted to spend on records. So we shopped for a little, my parents marveling at - slash - recoiling from the recently-expanded Wax 'n Facts and its remarkable collection of vinyl and junk, and then walked to Fellini's. My mother stuck her head in the door and said that I'd need to pick someplace else. We ended up at the Fellini's on Peachtree in Buckhead. There were far fewer punks with funny hair and piercings in that one. She still didn't like the pizza much.

I call Fellini's "quasi-New York-style" in deference to two different New Yorkers that I have known who just flat out don't think that they do it right. One of those two admits that it's pretty good, but somehow "wrong." Another tells me that the crust is the problem, that it is far too chewy and with no crispness. Fellini's does slices in the New York fashion, but evidently they have more water in the dough than is acceptable among the faithful, who suggest LaBella's or Baby Tommy's for authenticity instead. I defer to others' expert opinions, but the results are still incredibly tasty to my mind.

Towards the end of the nineties, Atlanta was home to a popular "alternative music" radio station called 99X. They're actually still around on some other FM frequency, just irrelevant and backwards-looking. Anyway, in their heyday, they had just about the last morning drivetime crew worth listening to in any city. They were called The Morning X, and they were hilarious, much more entertaining than the umpteen thousandth spin of "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum. Every so often, one of those knuckleheads, Jimmy Baron, would just tee off on how he didn't like Fellini's at all. It was great radio. I used to pick this up and yell back at my car stereo, as you're supposed to do. "Maybe we can get Fellini's to send us some free pizza," Steve Barnes would say, and Baron would mock, "Maybe they can send us some good pizza?" A thousand listeners shouted back at him. One or eight were dumb enough to call the station and complain, ensuring at least eight people would stick around through the next ad break.

Since the closure of the Little Five Points store, the one that I've visited most often has probably been the one on Roswell Road in Sandy Springs. In 2001, when Roxy Music played Chastain Park, I co-hosted a pre-show party for members of a fan mailing list at that location. It's absolutely perfect for a quick meal before popping over to Chastain, to the point that I've done it regularly since. I ate here before seeing David Bowie in 2004 and before seeing Bob Dylan in 2006, for example. I took my errant teenage boy to the Bowie show; he raved and cheered, but I think that he liked the pizza before the show even more.

In point of fact, the boy found himself loving Fellini's so much more than the owners' sister restaurant, La Fonda Cantina, that it became routine in the middle-00s for him to decamp for a couple of slices while the rest of the family enjoyed La Fonda. This is usually easy to do, as several places in town have a La Fonda right next to a Fellini's. We were at the Peachtree La Fonda this one time, which, back on my graduation night, had actually been the Fellini's. They built a big new building with lots of outdoor seating for the pizza place, and moved the paella into the old corner shop. Whatever we ordered at La Fonda had not been what I wanted in the end. That boy had two huge pepperoni slices. I ended up with menu envy over an order from another restaurant entirely.



Last Sunday, with Marie's avoidance of pizza absolutely breaking my heart and my will, I took advantage of her being out of town with the baby to finally treat myself to a couple of slices. I went to the one ON PONCE, in deference to a very old joke that I doubt that anybody else present that evening in the early nineties remembers, but every time I've driven past the Fellini's ON PONCE, I remember that this place is ON PONCE.

Nostalgia isn't Fellini's prime ingredient yet, but it's up there. I had one slice with tomatoes and pepperoni, and one with tomatoes and extra cheese. I have to say, I really do like that extra cheese isn't some sort of "premium," double-priced item here. Two giant slices and a Cherry Coke that I did not need came to eight bucks and change. The place was packed with families from the neighborhood. There are always kids here, at all hours. It's a great place, with one of my favorite pizzas in the city, no matter what Jimmy Baron said.

Cafe Agora, Atlanta GA

Quite a few people have mentioned Cafe Agora in Buckhead to me over the years, most recently a commenter called Chef Helen, who recommended their awesome baba ghanoush. When I told the fellow working the register that I'd heard theirs was the best baba ghanoush in the city, he lowered his brow as though I'd belittled him. "Everything here is the best in the city," he insisted. Big words for such a small restaurant!

Last month, as I did a little writeup on Mediterranean Grill, I thought about how easy it actually is to not end up eating at this local chain, on account of Marie, strangely, not being all that taken with traditional Mediterranean fare. Seems that I can always suggest two or three things for Marie and she'll usually not go for the place where I can get a gyro. It works the other way around with David. With Marie out of town for the weekend - her report to come later - I rang David up to see whether he was free. I told him I was thinking about this place, or that, or Cafe Agora, and, as predicted, he chose that. You just have to know who to ask, I guess.

The restaurant is in a teeny little place on East Paces Ferry in Buckhead. There are three spaces out front - $2 for an hour - or you'll need to find a pay lot, but don't let these discourage you, oh suburban buddies, because this is a really terrific meal. Plus, if it isn't too cold - it certainly was last Saturday! - it is within walking distance of Pie Shop, but I think the desserts at Cafe Agora are honestly so darn good that you may not want to go.





It seems that every person who comes here for the first time has the same experience. The staff wants everybody new to try an appetizer plate called a mezze. It comes completely loaded down with hummus, baba ghanoush, tabouli salad, kisir, piyaz and lots of other things from the rotating bank of daily specials. Everything was delicious. It's hard to mess up tabouli, so I could say with some confidence that would be pretty good, but everything else pleasantly surprised me by how rich and vibrant it was.

And yes, indeed, the baba ghanoush is the best in the city.

David ordered the mixed grill. This is a huge plate with a salad, rice and, buried underneath some pita bread, a big pile of meat. The bread was brushed with an interesting red sauce made from olive oil, tomato paste, red pepper paste and paprika. I've never seen anything like it before. The big pile of meat included chicken and lamb kabob bites, gyro meat, and more lamb prepared both adane and kofta style. David keeps things pretty low-key, so the amount of praise he heaped on this meal surprised the heck out of me. We got the chance to talk with Al, the famous and gregarious owner before we left, and David told him that this was the best meal he'd had, anywhere, in months.

Personally, I won't go quite that far - I'm still raving about the chopped pork and mull at Midway BBQ in South Carolina - but my gyro plate was still quite fantastic. I got a little sticker shock when it was time to pay - the $8 sandwich that I thought I was ordering turned out to have been prepared in the back with a side salad and extra meat for about four bucks more - but the food was so darn good that I did not wish to spoil things by quibbling over such a small amount. The salad itself was a simple and beautiful pleasure, with flavorful greens, cucumbers and the freshest tomatoes that anybody has ever had in February enlivened by a little balsamic vinegar. I had to know who on earth was able to deliver tomatoes that good this time of year, and Al said that his wife gets them from one fellow at the city's farmer's market.

The gyro meat itself was certainly among the best that I've ever had. I'd say that it's about equal with Papouli's, which is up in Alpharetta and has been calling me to come back for another visit for years now. The meat was so tender, and seasoned so perfectly, that I'll be comparing everybody else's attempts to Cafe Agora's for a long time to come.



For desserts, Al would not let us leave without trying both his rice pudding and two different varieties of baklava made with pistachios. These were also very, very good, incredibly rich and sticky. No, pie was not on the agenda after these, but after we thanked Al for the meal and made our way, David was in a mood to drive around Atlanta for a while. The road eventually took us to the Zesto on Piedmont, home of the greatest light fixture in the world, where I asked him to stop so that I could indulge in a vanilla malt.

I believe that Marie and I might be stopping by a Zesto in a couple of weeks during her planned "Festival of Dairy" for a chocolate-banana malt, which she's put off for months and months since the baby, now in his last weeks of transitioning from breast milk to solids, doesn't react well to dairy. The chocolate-banana malts at Zesto are her favorites in the city. I can name one or two that I honestly prefer, but what they do, they do well enough. There are certainly places in Atlanta that charge more for an inferior milkshake, and I do love Zesto's effortless evocation of the 1950s and simple, old-fashioned fast food. I'm always happy to spend a little money here.

Dean's Barbeque, Jonesboro GA

So the other week, I was talking to Jimmy Dean, younger brother of the retired Roger Dean -- yes, that's right, same names as the sausage guy and the Yes album cover guy -- about his late father's barbecue sauce recipe, and I had to raise an eyebrow in appreciation when he said that his father got the recipe from the actress Vivien Leigh. This is Clayton County, after all. Just the day before, a fire at a nearby public storage facility made the news by wiping out priceless and unique Gone With the Wind memorabilia that had been archived there. Google even sent me down a road called Tara Boulevard to get here. It's part of this region's lifeblood to talk big, and if that means evoking that movie, then you're probably in either Clayton or Henry County. Jimmy might well have been talking the same line of bull in which his brother excelled, but it would be churlish to challenge the legend. His restaurant is the same building, after all, where, if you time it right and you're in the ramshackle corridor that connects the counter and the dining room, you might make eye contact through the window with a mean-looking cat outside who hangs out on the air conditioning vents. How could you complain about anything, other than the drive to get down here?

It's been nearly a year since Marie and I stumbled upon Dean's Barbeque, which is just south of the Jonesboro city limits. On that occasion, we were bound for Griffin and the reliable Southern Pit, and, stymied by the logjam of Spring Break traffic on the interstate, elected to trust navigation and use back roads to get over to US 41. Our route took us past Dean's, which I recalled from the writeup at Chopped Onion, and I resolved to pop back by sometime.

Having said that, I did wish that I had retraced my steps back from wherever it was that we gave up and left I-75, because Tara Boulevard has, on each of the three occasions I've used exit 237, devolved and degraded and turned into one of the city's nastiest and ugliest corridors. This stretch of Clayton County made way years before for the Wal-Mart and all the attendant sprawl, and then looked the other way as all the national fast food chains shuttered and left behind empty shells for payday loan places and "we buy gold" joints. It's an unhappy and ugly road. I made my way down to a very good meal, but there are much brighter ways to get there. If Google directs you this way, past Southern Regional Medical Center, find yourself another route.





Fortunately, things improved after leaving Tara Boulevard. I even got to drive past a house with a front yard full of folk art dinosaurs made from rusting old radiators and things! Jonesboro itself is charming - I loved the old railroad station - and Dean's, located a few miles south of the city, has its stretch of road mostly to itself. The restaurant has been running since 1947 and is believed to be the oldest family-owned business still in operation in the county.

I had a chopped pork plate with slaw and stew. For decades, this place only did chopped pork, but Jimmy, who bucked the old tradition and started taking credit cards, is now doing ribs and chicken in small quantities. The prices are a little higher than many suburban shacks, but lower than most in the city or the northern 'burbs where we live, and they certainly give customers a frankly enormous pile of food.

Jimmy really surprised me with his opinion on the meat and sauce. I found the pork to be smoky, but dry and not really remarkable, until I added the sauce. It's a thin, very dark and peppery vinegar-based mix, and quite unlike most in the area. The closest that I can come up with is the dark vinegar of Zeb's, north of Danielsville, which is certainly nowhere near Jonesboro. It is amazing, and it turned some pretty good meat into something extremely good. I loved it completely, and told Jimmy that it really did bring the meat to life. That's when he said something quite unusual. He said, "Anybody can smoke meat. Good barbecue's all about the sauce."

His, flatly, is not a majority opinion anywhere. In the case of his meat, he is probably right, but I don't think that any reader will have difficulty finding online discussion which states the opposite: the best barbecue stands just fine on its own, dry, and a good sauce complements it. Here's a meal that really needs the sauce. I don't know that this will go over well with many of my fellow travelers. For my part, I think it's terrific. It tastes wonderful to me, and I look forward to visiting again one day. I love that the Dean family does things their own way, without considering convention.



The interactive map at the bottom of each of our pages displays every restaurant featured on this blog. A separate map of just the barbecue joints can be viewed here. Have fun with it!

Henry's Louisiana Grill, Acworth GA

I'm a sucker for attention and personalized service from owners of good restaurants. Chef Henry Chandler either saw me walking along Acworth's main street, looking in windows and snapping photos of the beautiful old buildings and figured me for some loudmouth with a web page, or he treats everybody who comes into his place as a valuable guest, because I hadn't been in his restaurant for fifteen seconds before he took me by the hand, welcomed me with a roar and thanked me for coming. Chandler is an LSU Tigers fan, but he has this remarkable mane of hair that makes him look like a lion. It wasn't just me, though, much as I'd like to pretend that I have any import in the world. I kept an eye open as I enjoyed a long and leisurely lunch at Henry's Louisiana Grill last Thursday and saw him visit darn near every table with handshakes and thanks. The man's in the right business. He creates extremely good food and he really wants everybody to enjoy it and tell all their friends.

I had business a couple of miles down the road that morning, otherwise I might have put off trying Henry's Louisiana Grill even longer. Barbecue, I can get around to a heck of a drive any old time, but higher-priced Cajun-style cooking - similar to what you might find on the menu at the Copeland's chain - is always hit or miss with me, and so I was a little hesitant to head up that way. Neal pointed out that there's a value-priced little creole place in Smyrna on South Cobb Drive, where a Huddle House used to be. I might try that sometime soon, but I wonder whether it could be as good as Henry's.

Downtown Acworth has been quite beautifully restored over the last few years, and looks like the prototypical Main Street USA, only with just the one row of storefronts, with railroad tracks on one side. It was the principal location for that remake of Footloose that you probably already forgot happened. Henry's, in the old Armstrong Building, is one of a few nice restaurants and sandwich shops among gift shops and sporting goods stores, with the city hall and library on the street immediately behind them. It feels a little artificial - the paint on the two or more Coca-Cola brickwork billboards still looks wet - but it also feels laid-back and comfortable.







Regular readers know that, a few weeks ago, Marie and I took a road trip through South Carolina and Augusta. I had six small meals on that trip, and I was not as stuffed at the end of the day as I was after a single lunch at Henry's. The portions here are really large, and the food very heavy and rich. Since I read up a little before coming by, I knew that I wanted the "Ooh La La," which Malika at Atlanta Restaurant Blog recommended back in '09. I ordered mine with shrimp, and it was completely packed with little fried babies in a thick, mildly spiced cream sauce over angel hair pasta with a little spinach. It was excellent, but I bet that more than a few pennies of the price goes to keep the restaurant stocked in take-home boxes. Who finishes this?

I certainly couldn't finish my order, to be honest. There was just too much to eat, especially after I'd enjoyed a small salad - the ginger citrus dressing really is special - and some amazing hush puppies. These are spicy and sweet and fried just to the instant that crispness is obtained and not a second more, and then served over greens with a tangy remoulade. These are as far from being an afterthought tossed into a basket of fish as is possible.

I knew that I was indulging, but I also knew that I would have a comparatively low-cost weekend, with Marie and the baby taking a long weekend down on the island for a getaway. I could afford to splurge, and, with no particular place to go, I could also afford the time to just sit in my car for a few minutes to recover, and then a few minutes at that county park, Kenworth, that I passed on the way up, getting a little light exercise. After that fabulous and heavy meal, some was definitely needed.

A few days later, I wanted to indulge a little more and try some similar cooking, so I stopped by J. Gumbo's, one exit north of us between I-75 and I-575. This is a small chain based in Ohio, with about thirty stores in seven states. It's not even close to the personal, individual attention of Henry's place, but for a reasonably priced and spicy lunch, it was not a disappointment.





The local J. Gumbo's store, apparently the only one in Georgia, regularly shows up at the regional "Taste of" festivals, with its gaudy Mardi Gras decor and plastic beads. The interior is a small and serviceable fast food design, spiced up by paintings of jazz players on the walls. The staff are quick to offer samples of all their lunches to guests. Most of their meals are served over rice in a big white bowl, and priced under $7. Their most popular dish is the drunken chicken. Like the spicier voodoo chicken that I enjoyed, these felt like a strange melange of styles. True, there was no curry evident in either, but it had a similar consistency to what you might get at an Indian restaurant in town: a bowl of tender, pulled chicken in a thick gravy, served over rice. That wasn't at all bad for a quick lunch in the area.

Beetles BBQ, Woodstock GA

A local blogger who goes by the handle Maple Lane dropped me a line, noting that Beetles BBQ in Woodstock had not made its way onto our pages. This wasn't entirely an oversight; I visited once, many years ago, when Bill Beadle still owned it, and didn't have a really great experience, but, in fairness, that was more to do with a personal disagreement at the time than with the food. I've mentioned here before that it's never, ever, ever a good idea to try a new place when you're not happy about something or with somebody. It overpowers your memory of the food. So, hearing that Beadle had sold his business to a fellow named Satterfield, who's lowered the prices, and remembering that it's only fair to give places another try, I agreed that I should get back over here.

Around the same time, an old friend named Kristal got into a brief online scuffle. I never saw enough of Kristal and her husband Jeremy when they lived here, and even less now that they are in Winston-Salem, where she is working on her master's. You might have heard about the proprietor of an Atlanta barbecue establishment acting like an ill-mannered donkey online last month, attracting the attention of everybody from CNN to Chelsea Lately. Kristal was among those whom that owner elected to grace with some four-letter words, which is why that establishment isn't going to get any of my money or time. Naturally, the incident being barbecue-related, she thought of me.

So she and I decided that the next time she was in town, good barbecue was required, especially as, picky eater that she is, she genuinely doesn't know very much about the good stuff and needs some experience. A couple of Saturdays ago, we went up to Beetles, which is incredibly easy to find. From I-575, you take the Towne Lake Parkway exit and go east, towards downtown Woodstock. You can't miss the old yellow bug with the smokestack out front. No, it isn't just a curious and silly bit of roadside advertising; it is actually a full-service smoker.





The "beetle" smoker is only used now for overflow and catering prep, but it gets hitched up and towed into service from time to time, where it looks a fine sight on the interstate, I'm sure. There is a larger smoker next to the building in a covered porch area, where pork, beef and chicken are typically smoked over white oak for at least 26 hours. They do whole hogs here, eastern Carolina style, and serve the pork pulled. Marie had a pork sandwich. Kristal and I each had brisket with stew and fries, and Jeremy had a half-rack of ribs with fried okra. At one point, the baby reached over and helped himself to some of Jeremy's okra. We forced the issue, and made him stick to a saltine.

Sadly, the brisket was the least of the three meats that we sampled, forcing me into menu envy yet again, but happily Kristal was pleased with hers. The stew, thick with lots of corn in its tomato sauce base, was inarguably excellent, and the pork that Marie shared was just perfectly moist and with a fantastic flavor to the bark. I thought that the ribs were the best of all, and our awesome server complimented Jeremy on his fine choice, but Jeremy himself wasn't completely thrilled with them, finding them fattier than he was expecting. What he shared with me, however, was really succulent and tasty, and the sweet sauce worked very well with it.

There are three table sauces. The thick and sweet cowboy sauce went best with the beef. There is also a thin vinegar sauce and a spicy mustard. Our server was kind enough to bring me an additional sample of the pork and I just drowned it with vinegar, finding it quite heavenly. I expect, now that she's had a little introduction to barbecue basics, Kristal will find this the dominant style around the restaurants of Winston-Salem and Greensboro. But that could change; they may be on the move soon and could be in Huntsville, Alabama before the fall.

I know that if I only had seven months in Winston-Salem, I'd eat an awful lot of barbecue. That is an awesome launching pad for trips to all sorts of nearby places. Lexington, Greensboro, Raleigh and Fayetteville all within 120 miles? Heck, I might even find time to work on a master's.



The interactive map at the bottom of each of our pages displays every restaurant featured on this blog. A separate map of just the barbecue joints can be viewed here. Have fun with it!

How Goldberg's Derailed My Potato Salad Willpower

Goldberg's flies under a lot of people's radars, but they really are a special little place. The business is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year, with half of that time under the ownership of Wayne Saxe and Howard Aaron, who purchased it from the Goldberg family in 1992 and began growing it to six locations in Atlanta. I think that their Toco Hills store is the most recent. It is not, to my surprise, related to a larger chain called Momma Goldberg's, which is based in Auburn and has sixteen stores in Alabama and west Georgia. No, this place is a little older and hasn't left its home city yet.

What you get here is a fairly typical New York deli experience. Its adherents swear that these are the best bagels in the city, and they have all the expected New York deli accoutrements like lox, capers, matso soup, and Dr. Brown's soda, with sandwiches piled overpoweringly with more freshly-sliced meat than any jaw can comfortably manage. Or you can get a Po Boy like I did, and have a little less meat and a whole lot more bread.

Also, I was bad and ordered potato salad. What minimal control I have over my weight has come from increasing my exercise, drinking far fewer beers and far, far fewer sodas, and cutting out potato salad from my diet. At least in a barbecue restaurant, I have a plethora of promising choices and can easily avoid it. New York delis, on the other hand, seem to demand that I order it. It was pretty good, too. Every calorie-packed, ultra-fattening bite brought me a little nearer to death by obesity, but it went well with the sandwich.

Okay, I know that line was a little excessive, but it's like how I curb my very occasional craving for a cigarette by remembering a line from Robo-Hunter about those things turning your lungs into "black, moldy tacos." It keeps me off the cancer sticks and it limits me to maybe one side of potato salad a year. Some years, I don't even turn the bowl upside down and lick it clean.





I have mentioned before that I work a very unusual schedule, and some short days I go in very early and get off very early. This works out fantastically if I'd like to go out of town for the afternoon, or go back to Cobb County and get a little housework done before having lunch in the 'burbs, but it often means a little thumb-twiddling and reading a book under a tree somewhere if I want to have lunch ITP. Gas is just too expensive and money's just too tight to go back and forth on I-75 any more than necessary. So I am very happy about places like Goldberg's that open for breakfast and serve lunch all day. I'm sure that nobody else wants a light breakfast at five in the morning and lunch at ten but me, but I appreciate it.

The experience was solid and simple. The service was good and attentive. There's a nice little perspex cube on each table full of sweet pickles. I helped myself to, perhaps, one or two more than my fair share. I really appreciated the chance to enjoy a good sandwich with tasty pastrami and linger over a good book for a while, and not have to wait around for an hour or more for lunch. It's always nice to know that there are one or two places out there willing to accommodate the more unusually-scheduled members of our town this way, isn't it?

So, the following morning, I wrote up a first draft of what was going to be a standard little chapter about Goldberg's, and found myself a little uninspired. I couldn't focus on much of anything but the potato salad. As I typed a little, I found myself wanting potato salad more and more. Fortunately, I would not have the afternoon free to do anything stupid. I had an event to attend at my daughter's school, and, while they were going to feed us, I was at least a little certain that I could avoid the sort of potato salad that they make for school lunchrooms. Just my luck, then, that lunch was a cookout, with grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and about a seven-gallon bucket of glorious, tempting, glow-in-the-dark yellow potato salad. Mistakes were about to be made.

They were waiting for more burgers to come from the grill. "Why don't you take a dog and some 'tato salad while they're cooking, and come back for one," the server asked. I nodded acceptance. The gigantic spoon of potato salad, larger than any spoon we own, slapped something like a faceful of the stuff onto my styrofoam plate. It buckled under the weight. My daughter, who is too old and too cool to call me "Daddy" in public anymore, said, "Hey, come sit here." And so I sat, considering what I know of the recipes and caloric content of potato salad. This will vary quite wildly, depending on, for example, how much mayo is in it. This seemed to have a little more mustard and a little more egg than mayo, so I felt comfortable slotting it on the lower end of the scale, say "merely" 325 calories for about one cup of it. The problem was that the nice woman gave me what appeared to be about five cups' worth of the stuff. This wasn't a plate that I was needing to clean.

In fact, I did well. I had three spoons of the wonderful stuff, loving it like most people love ice cream sundaes, and then heard the call that burgers were up and hot. I discreetly covered the remaining spectacle of a "side" with a napkin as though hiding the face of the recently deceased, and helped myself to a burger with lettuce and tomatoes. And that, I sincerely hope, will be the last potato salad temptation for many, many months.

But while I'm not thrilled with Goldberg's opening up that potential disaster, I do have their West Paces location to thank for my daughter's dessert the following evening. I noticed on that first visit that they have a window open where they serve ice cream treats and Dippin' Dots. In perhaps one of the worst puns in restaurants, Goldberg's ice cream window is called Iceberg's. Sadly, it is not open any later than the five or six pm that the deli is open. Happily, though, the frozen yogurt shop three doors down is. It's called Yogurtland and it's the first Atlanta store, of three, in a national chain of 180 or more stores.

Amy on Food stopped by last month and was taken by the experience and the pricing. My daughter had eaten very lightly at dinner and had been on fabulous behavior for a couple of days, so I told her to go wild. She had a little bit of pistachio yogurt and a little bit of something that only a thirteen year-old girl could possibly think would mix well with pistachio yogurt, and then buried it all under a mountain of toppings. Everything from white chocolate chips to blackberries to Cap'n Crunch and Fruity Pebbles covered her selection, like fries and rings "a'plenty" cover burgers at Spartanburg's Beacon. I was pleasantly surprised that it was so inexpensive, coming to under four dollars.

Frankly, I can't imagine how such a mess could possibly be any good, but she yummed and nommed from the back seat and was quite appreciative as we drove home. She asked whether we can stop back again. Maybe she might be due another trip as a reward for me being good with potato salad.

The Hickory Hut and Rodney's Bar-B-Que, Dallas GA

A few weeks ago, I started wondering again about Hudson's Hickory House in Douglasville, and their buckets of thin, red, barbecue "juice" sauce that have found considerable popularity at about a half-dozen restaurants in the region. I wondered whether more barbecue joints in the western suburbs follow this path, and I also noticed that Paulding County is shockingly underrepresented among the area's bloggers. So, a couple of Saturday evenings ago, Marie and the children and I went out to Dallas to try a place, and stumbled past another on the way home. We found some pretty good food, albeit nothing really extraordinary and nothing that follows the Hudson's template, and, as far as our health goes, pushed ourselves just a little too far, leading to some unhappy and grouchy folk who just wanted to go home.

After our trip to South Carolina, the baby spent the week unhappy with a tough case of RSV. For him, it was worse than a cold and not as bad as a flu, starting things off with a croupy cough and mild fever, and, by the weekend, leading to albuterol treatments with a nebulizer and mask. Marie and I each took time off from work to stay with him. By Saturday evening, she was exhausted and I was pacing the floor restlessly. We must go out! Damn the torpedoes! The baby's feeling a little better, so let's go! So we chased the sun down heading west out GA-120 and arrived at the Hickory Hut just after dark. This place opened in 1965 and is still family-owned. It's a really basic old cinderblock building, neat only to those of us who enjoy really basic old cinderblock buildings, in the shadow of Paulding's courthouse on one side and the hospital on the other. This place is said to get amazingly packed at lunchtime.



It's only about half an hour's drive from our house, but that was enough to do the ladies in. Marie and the girlchild both got in the car exhausted and became progressively more so as we made our way there, arriving in low spirits. Additionally, my daughter has a skin sensitivity to some cheap necklace, so when she wasn't blowing her nose, she was scratching her neck and ignoring our pleas to stop before she made it worse for herself. Man, we needed some good barbecue to brighten things. What we got was pretty good. I wasn't displeased with it, but it didn't have the magic necessary to revive everybody.

I did not ask for my meat dry, as I was curious to see whether it'd be Hudson's-drowned. As mentioned above, it wasn't, though it did come drenched with a red sauce, just one much thicker than Hudson's. It's like a tangy ketchup, and goes equally as well with the steak fries as it does the pork. The Brunswick stew is the classic, regional, orange-colored melange, heavy with corn, tomatoes and onions. I split the fries with my daughter, who otherwise only wanted a fried peach pie, and also had a small cup of slaw. Everybody was satisfied, if not inspired.

If I were a little more sensitive, I might have just reversed our course and gone home, but I decided to just take the conveniently-named Dallas-Acworth Highway home. (This road intersects, at one point, Acworth-Dallas Road. Don't tell me that people don't get confused by that.) Some nights, you just really need to drive, even if other people just need to sleep. This path took us past a much newer barbecue restaurant, Rodney's, but, in deference to my family's desire to be home, I just got a to-go order. And my daughter conned me into another dessert. I'm sweet that way.



Our server told me that Rodney's opened in 2006. It appears to have taken over what had been an old El-This-Los-That-style Mexican place, and turned it into a good, solid, family restaurant for the community. It has a really thick menu that emphasizes barbecue, but also offers everything from burgers to ribeyes to cheesesteaks, all done with a Six Flags Over Texas "wild west" theme and lots of ads for area businesses, who can rent billboard space on the interior walls for a C-note a year. It reminds me of what Atlanta's storied Old Hickory House had been in the 1970s and early 1980s, except that Rodney's is much, much better today than the poor shambles of Old Hickory House.

The pulled pork, again, doesn't really get much better than "not bad," but the interesting point was the cowboy stew. I asked what the difference was between it at the Brunswick stew, and the server didn't know, so she went back and asked. Apparently, Rodney's Brunswick stew is made with beef, pork and corn, and the cowboy stew is made with beef and red beans. In other words, it's chili. Except that it's not, because Texas chili isn't made with beans, and consequently the chili on this Texas-themed menu is prepared without them.

We got home, and Marie went to bed. The cranky baby stayed up with me and watched a New Avengers episode that guest-starred Peter Cushing. I figured the least I could do for Marie after insensitively keeping her out on a silly long drive was let her sleep, and not insensitively make her watch mediocre seventies action TV.





The map at the bottom of each of our pages displays every restaurant featured on this blog. A separate map of just the barbecue joints can be viewed here. Have fun with it!

Bell Street Burritos, Atlanta GA

Every once in a while, objectivity flies right out the window here at our blog in favor of wild, emphatic gushing. This is one of those chapters.

When I was living in Athens, and waxing eloquent about the amazing Mean Bean to anybody who would listen, I would occasionally get reports back from Atlanta about a place called Tortillas. They predated the Mean Bean by a few years, long enough to already have an imitator, Frijoleros, that I tried once in the late eighties. Somehow, though, possibly because high schoolers have far less of an awareness of the world around them than they would like to think, I never heard of Tortillas, or it never registered, until the early nineties, when I started reading papers like Creative Loafing and hearing every one of the burrito joints in Atlanta compared, unfavorably, to the mighty Tortillas. In time, there was a craze that started. Raging Burrito, Z-Teca (which became Qdoba), Chipotle, Willy's, Moe's and plenty of others started up, and, in time, Tortillas started feeling the effects. They shuttered in the spring of 2003, after a 19-year run.

I rolled my eyes at the angst and weeping and gnashing of teeth. Whoever they were, Tortillas was no Mean Bean.

Armed with approximations of their recipes - the owners, Charlie and Grace Kerns, kindly left general versions up on the restaurant's old MySpace page and those have been passed down around the internet since - a guy named Matt Hinton started a delivery service called West End Burritos, changing his name to Bell Street when he opened a brick and mortar store in the Sweet Auburn Curb Market, in 2009. A second location on Howell Mill Road followed last year, and I finally got over there to see what all the fuss was about.

I was right. This is no Mean Bean, but it is closer than any other restaurant I've tried. I've enjoyed some pretty good burritos in the three years since the Mean Bean closed, but Bell Street's are, by leagues, the best.





Look at that amazing tree next to their building! Isn't that beautiful? Bell Street has opened a few doors down from Flip Burger Boutique, in the space vacated by a brunch place called The Social House that I never visited. I had a spectacularly good lunch there, helped in part by the music. I genuinely had to double-check my hip pocket and make sure that my Sentient iPod was still there and they didn't plug it into their stereo, because just about every song they played - Neutral Milk Hotel, Bob Dylan - are songs that I love and own.

I had a taco and a green chile burrito with chips and salsa, and knock me down but these good people have fountain Cheerwine! Holy anna. I loved this place before I had a bite*. Everything was so good. There's a reason that Tortillas inspired such loyalty, if their food was this wonderful. The beans were absolutely as good as the Mean Bean at their best, and that was the kicker. They didn't taste dry, like they so often do in burritos. I remember how the Mean Bean's refried beans had that wonderful, moist consistency, like it was a specially-concocted burrito filling, and this had the same smooth texture and explosions of flavor. The sauces and salsas were similarly punchy, and I must have smiled all the way through the meal.

In point of fact, I can honestly see how Marie and I might lose a little momentum in covering restaurants in Atlanta. We haven't been regulars anywhere in ages and ages, preferring instead to try new things and share more stories. I want to eat here all the dang time. That might mean one or two fewer chances to get out and report on something new. These are good enough to make a fellow change his routine. The following Saturday evening, I brought the whole family here for burritos and quesadillas, and everybody was similarly impressed. That won't be the last time we visit, I'm sure.



*Not entirely sensible. Several months ago, I discarded a planned chapter on a barbecue restaurant in this region after photographing the plate, all a-giddy from, and pleased by, the Cheerwine, after I actually tried the food and found it lacking.

Mot's Bar-B-Que, Augusta GA

We've come to the end of our 520-mile road trip. The seventh and final stop of the day, or night, as it were, came a little north of Augusta, between the suburbs of Martinez and Evans at a business that had a different name than what I was expecting. It's called Mot's Bar-B-Que, but in one of those silly little Urbanspoon quirks, it was, for some reason, misidentified there as simply "Motty."

Augusta is the second largest city in Georgia, but you wouldn't know it from its reputation. This is, simply, not a town that anybody talks about, unless they're talking about golf or James Brown. It has no online footprint among any hobby that I follow. It does not appear to have ever been home to any bookstores, record or comic shops of any note, doesn't host any conventions that I ever heard of, nothing. They have a team in the Class A South Atlantic League, and that's about it. That's not to say that people disparage it, but rather that nobody seems to mention it. I guess that, unless you're talking about the Masters, there isn't anything to talk about.

Food-wise, we were amused by our visit to Sconyers Bar-B-Que in 2011, but that is clearly a restaurant whose heyday came and went during the Carter administration. I can just imagine some poor staffer at Southern Living being given an assignment to turn in six pages on this town and weeping quietly, not knowing what to do.

It's so silent here that the top blog on Urbanspoon's Augusta leaderboard, I Just Ate This, doesn't even exist anymore. We're competing with a ghost.





Hash over rice is one of South Carolina's best known local dishes. Its influence stretches west into this corner of Georgia; most barbecue restaurants around Richmond County offer it. I'm unsure how far south it stays common, but continuing west and north up US-78, through Washington and into Athens and then north up 441, rice fades from the recipe. The Athens area is a melting pot for several different takes on the dish. Paul's in Lexington labels their side "stew," but it has more in common with the hash that we sampled at Henry's Smokehouse in Greenville than anybody else's stew. Harry's Pig Shop, one of Athens' newer restaurants, offers both hash and Brunswick stew, but I really don't know that the rice is common anywhere west of Taliaferro County.

Now, the last time we did this trip, my senses and critical powers were blunted and dulled by the time we made our final stop at the eighth and last restaurant, about which I remember nothing beyond what I wrote. It happened again this time at Mot's. I had passed on the previous stop, leaving it to Marie alone, but I was still so stuffed that nothing beyond general satisfaction registered at Mot's. The hash over rice was terrific, and I remember enjoying it more than what I had tried at Henry's or at Midway, but I could not tell you why. The chopped, hickory-smoked pork was pretty good, and I was amused by the thundering sound of the cleaver coming down on it as it echoed through the dining room, and I quite liked the tomato-vinegar sauce, but the words aren't triggering any specific memories. When this chapter is posted, I'll be a couple of weeks away from my most ambitious solo road trip yet, with a whole freaking pile of restaurants to sample and share. I am simply going to have to take more detailed notes than I typically do, or fear losing all the memories too soon.

Of course, I'm not entirely to blame. The two good people who took my order and rang me up disappeared into the back when I returned to the counter with some questions. The teenager left behind was stunningly unprepared to answer any of them. He seemed, at least, to be of the opinion that Mot's opened around the year 2000.

Since the traveling barbecue bloggers that I enjoy - I've linked to 'em enough times they should be in everybody's "favorites" by now - have given Augusta a wide berth, and since the city has not spawned any kind of local foodie culture, there's little to nothing online out there to help spark more of what to say. I've done Mot's a disservice; saying that this was the best of the three orders of hash that I tried is no good when I can't even remember why, much less explain it.

Finances forced us to cancel a long trip to Augusta several months ago, and we haven't rescheduled it. I'd like to give Mot's another visit when I'm not stuffed to the gills with pimento cheeseburgers, and learn more about the city. Maybe take one of those green jackets home or something.



The map at the bottom of each of our pages displays every restaurant featured on this blog. A separate map of just the barbecue joints can be viewed here. Have fun with it!