Marie, Let's Eat!

Don't Ask Me Why

2012-02-23T02:09:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-21T02:43:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-19T00:05:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-18T03:56:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-17T02:19:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-15T01:10:00.001-08:00

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

2012-02-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-12T03:06:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-10T01:20:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-09T02:37:00.000-08:00

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

2012-02-07T23:03:00.000-08:00

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!

Luigi's, Augusta GA

2012-02-06T00:01:00.000-08:00

This is Marie, contributing an article about a place that my father and I went to together when he lived in Augusta. My dad liked Luigi's because it had Greek chicken, was convenient, and had a plate on the floor in front of the door stating "On this date in 1870 nothing happened". (It is possible I may have slightly misremembered the date.) My dad is the kind of person for whom a tickle to the funny bone is worth twelve great meals. And this place seems to have offered him more than twelve. Grant had originally scheduled a popular burrito place, Nacho Mama's, to sample as we drove through Augusta, but, protesting that he'd reached his limit, asked whether I'd mind having the burrito and telling him how it was. If that was going to be the case, I would rather visit a restaurant that's important to my memory.

Luigi's is a family type restaurant on the bad side of downtown. The restaurant has been in place since 1949, and a lot of bad things have happened to downtowns since then; Augusta doesn't seem to have escaped from even one. For goodness sakes, there's even a pillar that is supposedly able to strike you dead. The pillar does seem somewhat forgiving to work crews that move or repair it, so I have to assume that the curse was displaced onto the downtown itself. There's even a pool hall, a tattoo parlor and a strip club in the otherwise mostly empty row of shop fronts where Luigi's lives. And it does live - the place was packed, and early, when we got there with only two booths left available, and a wait list swiftly built up while we waited for our food to arrive. Local legend has it that the actor Jackie Gleason, in town for the Masters in the 1970s, followed up his meal at Luigi's with an all-night hustling in the pool hall next door.

The original owner's son currently runs the place. Curiously, neither of them was actually named Luigi. He'd been in an entirely different field of work and moved back to town to take care of his Dad, and wound up taking over the business. The decor is very strongly influenced by golf and '50s music. The booth where we sat had in a large frame an almost uninterrupted run of Masters badges going back to the early '60s, including one labeled as being a counterfeit. The kitsch is amusing and the juke box by the door works.

Reviews of the food vary from highly positive to lukewarm; there seems to be some variability in the quality. The menu has a curious combination of American Italian and Greek recipes, and my dad's choice was generally the Greek chicken. That is a half chicken, roasted for at least 2 hours, and served with salad, rolls, a side, and lots of gravy. The meat is tender and flavorful without being overspiced. Of course there was no reason for me to buy anything except that for this visit.

This chicken was one of the few things he mentioned missing when he moved away from Augusta. One time when I was still living in Athens, I decided on a whim to drop by Luigi's "on my way" to St. Simons Island and bring my Dad some Greek chicken. It only added a couple of hours to the trip, but it connected me with my grandfather, who was known to drive five hours or more out of his way (he would regularly drive between Minnesota and Mexico) to have a cup of coffee in my mother's kitchen for twenty minutes. On the whole, I don't know that anyone else would need to go that far out of the way for this place, but it made me happy to visit.

The Kingsman Restaurant, Cayce SC

2012-02-05T00:04:00.000-08:00

For the second time in an afternoon, the road took us to one of the meals that John T. Edge spotlighted in his famous article, "100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die". Edge, whom I have mentioned here previously as the Professor Emeritus of Eating Real Good at the University of Mississippi, really loves pimento cheeseburgers, and spent a mouth-watering chapter of his essential book Hamburgers & Fries waxing eloquently about them. So to have just this one burger at a lovely old place called the Kingsman singled out for that article, that sounded to me like a burger that needed a visit.

Cayce is a busy suburb of Columbia, a city that still demands much more attention and a lengthy and focused visit in the company of locals who know where all the good bookstores are, and the interstate took us into the town of West Columbia first. All I know about West Columbia is that it was once the home of United Music World Recording Studios Incorporated ("The finest sound available anywhere"). Cayce is on the southwest side of the metro area, and the Kingsman is in a corner spot in a striking, surprisingly large and sprawling strip mall. The restaurant has been here since the shopping center opened about forty years ago. Once upon a time, the strip was anchored by a Belk and several upscale shops, but it has been slowly deteriorating over time, and the main attraction is now one of South Carolina's million or so Bi-Lo grocery stores.

The sprawl of the place is really interesting. I read Epicurious Eats' review of the Kingsman - I liked the burger a lot better than he did - and knew from his photo of the exterior what to look for. However, the shopping center wraps around very strangely, facing three streets with multiple corner points. For Atlantans with long memories, it's similar to the recently demolished Belmont Hills in Smyrna, or Suburban Plaza in Decatur, where you could honestly visit for ages having no idea until somebody tells you that there's a bookstore or a video arcade or bowling alley in the place. I'm not kidding, my heart was starting to sink and I feared that the restaurant had recently closed before we turned around the correct corner and found it.

By this point, I had indulged and overindulged and Marie had drawn her own line in the sand to take a short break from eating. As much as I was looking forward to this burger, there wouldn't be any fries or salads to go with it, just a pimento burger and a glass of water for myself, and a Pepsi for Marie to wake up a little. They serve a lot of Pepsi in South Carolina, I've noticed.

I hate this phrase, but the Kingsman is a really old school restaurant. They don't make them like this anymore. It hits a very curious nostalgic chord for me, as it half-reminds me of very, very vague childhood memories of the sorts of nice bar and grill restaurants that thrived before anybody thought about offering kids' meals. Most of the time, when my parents took me out to eat in the 1970s, it was either to fast food places, or to family restaurants in our area, like the Red Sirloin steakhouse on Cobb Parkway or the Akers Mill location of the Round the Corner chain. Once in a while, though, we'd go someplace smoky, that wasn't necessarily upscale, but was more nicely designed. It looked grown-up. I halfway remember a bar and grill called Copperfield's that my father would bring me on "Take Yer Kid to Work Day." That's what the Kingsman reminds me of, with its suits of armor and Tiffany lampshades and quiet music and those very seventies mirrors with a huge playing card printed on the glass.

The restaurant is still owned by the King family, and I've decided that they're terrific people because of a delightful bone that they've thrown one of their employees. The Kings, like most in Columbia, are big Gamecock fans. That's as it should be, of course. Columbia and Nashville are the only state capitals in the southeast to be home to an SEC school, but Nashville might as well just be Knoxville West for all the orange and white worn by the locals. There's Gamecock burgundy in abundance inside this great old restaurant, but the family kindly ordered a staff T-shirt in orange for our server so that she could show off her Clemson Tiger pride. What great owners. I've been having a playful argument for ages and ages with our operations manager about neither Bulldog red nor Bulldog black being in the "palette" available to have a staff T-shirt made specially for me where I work. I'm not going to win this argument. I'm jealous.

Epicurious Eats definitely visited on an off day, because this burger was terrific. The meat was cooked just right and the cheese was really perfect, gooey and dripping and flavorful. The burger was hot and the cheese rapidly turned into a glorious, melted mess. I do think that I preferred the one I had five hours previously at Northgate Soda Shop in Greenville, but only by a hair. They were both excellent sandwiches. I've had several pimento cheeseburgers around Atlanta over the years, but neither were as good as these two in South Carolina. I don't know why the locals call it the Palmetto State, when Pimento Cheese State makes so much more sense. Maybe it might not make for a window decal quite as simple and effective as that tree you see on the backs of so many peoples' cars and trucks. That must be the reason.

Midway BBQ, Buffalo SC

2012-02-04T03:53:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, a travel plan comes together quite spectacularly. As I mentioned earlier in the week, Marie and I planned to make the South Carolina trip a little more affordable by cutting off the Rock Hill-Charlotte side of the square, while taking the opportunity to do a little exploring off the interstates. The very best way to get from Spartanburg to Columbia with minimal use of I-26 is by taking US-176 through the Sumter National Forest. This road goes through the town of Union, which appeared to have a couple more interesting places to stop the next time we're in the area, and it's right next door to the smaller town of Buffalo, where, seventy-one years ago, Jack O'Dell first started selling beef hash and chopped pork for the Fourth of July. The teenager got the assistance of some grown-ups in learning how to slaughter a calf and a pig and cook them in a pit dug overnight. He cooked whole-hog style like they do in eastern North Carolina, and he made a tidy profit, enough to realize he could do this regularly, and, in time, he turned this into what might be the state's oldest continuously-running barbecue restaurant.

He also added chicken mull to the menu, which is what brought me here. Now, mull is what we call it in northeast Georgia, and that's what I will still do, but in South Carolina, where the dish is better known, it is called chicken stew. I first got a hankering to visit Midway after reading the two simple sentences that John T. Edge afforded the mull in his seminal Garden and Gun article "100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die". There are some places in and around Athens that serve mull and Brunswick stew together, but the notion of getting eastern NC whole hog-chopped pork, chicken mull and So'ca'lina hash over rice sounded like a to-die-for combination.

And it was. Oh, friends and readers, put this place on your wish list. It is amazing.

Marie and I split a mixed plate of pork and hash with cole slaw and baked beans for only seven bucks. Unfortunately, the mull is not available as a side order on plates, but then again, the amount that they serve you is just enormous. For another $3.50, you get a big cardboard boatload of mull. It is thinner than any that I've had in Georgia, and it is served with a heaping pile of saltines to help thicken it. The key word in Edge's writeup is "slurping." You don't slurp down a bowl of Georgia chicken mull. This, you do. It's peppery and milky and the chicken is just perfectly stringy. I really could eat this every week.

The hash was quite a surprise. Apparently there are only four ingredients. It is mostly beef, with just a little pork, onions and butter. I won't claim that it is my favorite, but it certainly had a unique and surprising flavor. The pork, on the other hand, was remarkably good. Dry, it was perfectly smoked and moist. Sauced, it became fantastic. I did not much care for the tomato-based sauce, and the mustard sauce was only pretty good, but the vinegar mixed so wonderfully with this barbecue that it tasted like heaven. Of course, we have barely scratched the surface of barbecue in South Carolina, but this is the place to beat, in my eyes.

I spoke for a few minutes with Jay Allen, who is Jack O'Dell's son-in-law and manages the place now, while Marie perused the meat counter. I considered the map, and figure that if we make it to Asheville to live, then this place is really only about a thirty-five minute detour on runs between there and Marie's family on Saint Simons Island, and we'll probably need to pick up steaks and sausages from somewhere. Might as well get some mull while we're there. Allen, for a Yellow Jacket, was a heck of a great guy, and actually offered to deliver some to us on his occasional runs back to Atlanta. I smiled and thought about that. In the meantime, I just want the word out: Midway needs to be on everybody's barbecue to-do list.

(Additional reading: Newspaper stories line one of the walls of this low-light, sawdust floor shack, but I couldn't find any of those online. I did, however, hit upon this great article about Midway from Edible Upcountry.)

The Beacon, Spartanburg SC (take two)

2012-02-03T00:07:00.000-08:00

When we first visited the Beacon in February of last year, we were a bit overwhelmed by just how huge, wild and chaotic it was, and that's despite very old familiarity with Atlanta's similar Varsity. The spectacle of the Beacon makes for a real experience, and we could not wait to get back and give it another try.

It's only about forty minutes' drive from Henry's Smokehouse in Greenville, and after the rain eased up a little, we got back on US-29 and enjoyed the ride. Google Maps suggested Terrace Road as a quick shortcut over to John B. White Sr Boulevard; if it ever does this for you on your own road trip, pass. The resulting left turn to get to the Beacon is blind and dangerous. The food here's good, but take a few moments and get there safely, please!

Now, on the previous visit, we arrived a little tired and immediately hit sensory overload with the wildness of this place. This time, we sensibly took a moment and looked over the menu at a discreet distance before approaching the counter. Guests need to know what they want before they step up to meet J.C. and have their order called out. You talk and walk. Ideally, from the moment that you finish speaking with J.C. and he bellows out an order to the clockwork-like crew ticking and tocking and flipping burgers, you should not need to stop moving, collecting additional foods and drinks - the sweet tea is, with good reason, legendary - until you get to the register.

Surprisingly, we stumbled upon one of the very few times when this machine-like precision breaks down a little. Nobody was available at the station where you can either take a little shot glass sample of chicken stew - or mull, about which, more in the next chapter - and so I wasn't able to ask for a small bowl until we were down the line a little ways. The delay, in my terms, was infinitesimal and, in any other place, not worth a mention. But with the amount of care, focus and attention on moving guests along, to have things stop for the twelve or fifteen seconds that it took to get my order caused a bizarre logjam behind us that took a couple of minutes to untangle. I was just amazed and impressed watching everything unfold.

The food is not extraordinary, but it's really neat. I ate reasonably lightly at our first two stops, planning to indulge here. The trick is to order your burger, dressed as you like, "a'plenty," which means that it comes buried - absolutely buried - underneath a towering peak of onion rings and fries. Sensible couples or groups need only order one "a'plenty" for the table, as there are considerably more than enough to share. I was impressed that the resulting mess was not quite as greasy as I was led to believe. Don't get me wrong; it is certainly a gigantic and unhealthy pile of fried food, but the rings, in particular, are nowhere as greasy as the Varsity's. The breading is soft and, while the two of us were unable to finish the mountain, we enjoyed it. The bowl of mull was just fabulous; while not the best, it's still better than a couple of places around Athens that offer it.

It should not surprise readers following this road trip to learn that I had a pimento cheeseburger. Taste-wise, it was the least of the three that I enjoyed that day, but it had the most cheese on it, by far. There was darn near a solid inch of the stuff atop my hamburger patty. It had not melted much, which did not surprise me, as food served piping, scalding hot isn't really the order of business here, and it would take an awfully hot hamburger patty to melt that much cheese anyway.

One day, we might get a chance to visit the Beacon when we're not in the middle of a food tour, and we'll get the opportunity to linger a little longer and check out the treats at their dairy bar. I figure that it's only about six minutes off I-26, and should we be in a position to use that interstate in the future to get from Asheville to Saint Simons as we dream, we'll be eating here many, many times to come. As long as our arteries can stand it, anyway.

Henry's Smokehouse, Greenville SC

2012-02-01T00:06:00.000-08:00

For the second stop on our South Carolina trip, we hopped just a few streets over from the Northgate Soda Shop to get some barbecue at Henry's Smokehouse. Their location on Wade Hampton Boulevard, US-29, is the original. They have, in the 25 years since it opened, spun off two additional locations. One of these, in nearby Simpsonville, was noted in Playboy in the summer of 2002 as the country's best barbecue restaurant. I use "in" rather than "by," as the notice came via an advertisement for Mini Cooper laid out in the style of the magazine's "Party Jokes" page, and so it might not be editorially accurate to state that Playboy itself made the claim. You can get that magazine yourself and check me on that. It's whatever issue that summer that had Dalene Kurtis on the front cover. She might be fairly accused of distracting a fellow from remembering which month.

At any rate, you probably came to read about barbecue, and not necessarily distracting blondes. Henry's is in a very neat older building with huge windows, and not very much room for many diners. When we arrived, it was raining, and as we ate, it started pouring buckets, so we had plenty of time to consider our meal.

In anticipation of the gorging to come, about thirty miles down the road, we ate very lightly here, and simply shared a chopped pork sandwich and an order of hash over rice.

Honestly, this isn't the best barbecue around. It's not even the best barbecue in South Carolina. But it's still very good, and really worth a stop. Maybe it's because, for some reason or another, we haven't gone out for barbecue very much lately, but I really enjoyed the texture of the pork, and it was just moist enough and pleasantly smoky. There is a sweet tomato-based sauce and a spicy mustard-based sauce, and both were very good.

The hash was also very good here, although the staff would not be budged in hinting what was in it. I was pleased that this restaurant, like very few others, offers both hash and stew. If you're unfamiliar with this dish, imagine, if you can, a meat gravy, served over plain white rice. It is a fine side for a plate or a pork sandwich.

As I mentioned above, we lingered in Henry's for quite some time after finishing, waiting for enough of a break in the rain to transport ourselves and the baby back to the car and stay reasonably dry doing so. I fear that we failed in our "job" as bloggers to spend more time actually talking to the staff about their place as we just enjoyed each other's company while the rain poured down instead. I'll leave it to somebody else to come behind us and do better. Places this good should be documented a little better.

Actually, the whole Greenville/Spartanburg/Anderson area definitely needs better coverage from hobbyists like me. Just driving around town up US-29 on our way to our next destination, we saw all sorts of interesting places. If you're like me, and curious about regional chains that have left the Atlanta area, you might be interested to know that both Pizza Inn and Sub Station II, which failed here and have long ago left this market, still have footprints in Greenville and Greer. Most people, of course, aren't much like me in that regard, but might be more interested in the barbecue, with, according to Urbanspoon, dozens of open restaurants in that category, or the drive-ins. There's a small chain of drive-ins called Clock that sounds incredibly interesting, and a fantastic-looking place in Spartanburg called Sugar & Spice which called to us as we passed, not to mention Ricky's. There looks like an awful lot to eat in this town. We'll need to come back.

Northgate Soda Shop, Greenville SC

2012-01-30T02:27:00.000-08:00

In February of last year, Marie and I took a fantastic day trip to Charlotte and back. We took I-20 and I-77 there and I-85 back, stopping at eight places. We had such a good time that we wanted to repeat the experience a year later. I made some modifications and alterations, and we didn't go quite as far as Charlotte, deciding instead to connect Spartanburg and Columbia via US 176. And we did the trip in reverse, starting in Greenville. So about 520 miles instead of 590.

I wanted to do some proper eating with some South Carolina - eastern Georgia specialties. With one notable exception, we had pimento cheeseburgers, chopped pork with spicy mustard sauce, hash over rice or chicken mull at each of the seven restaurants that we visited. I did not intend to schedule our trip for the same day as the Palmetto State's Republican presidential primary - oddly, Rick Perry, who dropped out earlier in the week, was the clear winner in side-of-the-road signs - but while South Carolina, the state that neglected to recall Mark Sanford, went for Newt Gingrich and gave another big A-OK for adultery, we gave the state a big A-OK for fantastic food and left with as many places added to our wishlist as we took away.

We started things off in Greenville, at the venerable Northgate Soda Shop. I read about this place over at Serious Eats' A Hamburger Today blog, which, in 2008, excerpted a chapter about it from George Motz's fun book Hamburger America. (The indefatigable Todd Brock also paid a visit for that site, in May of last year.) I kind of had a bad feeling that we couldn't get lunch here until eleven on the dot, meaning we got a late start out of Marietta and made it a slow drive, with breaks at a filling station and a rest stop to feed the baby and not get ahead of the clock.

Incidentally, gas in South Carolina's upstate was much cheaper than I've seen it anywhere else in weeks. We're paying $3.40-plus in the suburbs of Atlanta, and it's only $3.08 around Greenville.

The shop is now on its fourth owner; everybody involved seems to have made it their business to not change much of anything beyond the gradual emphasis of food over greeting cards and sundries. It was opened in 1947 by Charlie and Thelma Davis. Eight years later, they sold it to a man named Rex Collins. In 1965, Jim DeYoung purchased it, and made it legendary over his decades in charge. It was under DeYoung that the practice of immortalizing beloved patrons with brass plaques on the tables emerged. We sat at Randy Coe's old space. Today, it is owned by Catherine Christophillis, who, I understand, also practices law and runs the neighboring Other Side bar when she's not, as Motz notes, acting in community theater.

Many other commenters have noted that this place doesn't seem to have changed a bit over the years, and it's evident that the staff has worked hard to keep this place as timeless and as timelost as possible. It's a place where the locals come to have a nice, long meal surrounded by relics of the past. One wall is shelved to capacity with old soda bottles and bric-a-brac, and photographs of old Greenville are framed all around. The older gentlemen at a table near us were discussing native settlements of the 18th Century. It's a place where the modern world doesn't intrude much.

Marie, still a few weeks away from being able to enjoy dairy, had to skip out on the pimento cheeseburgers that I enjoyed all day long, but enjoyed a chili dog and a slaw dog. I spent the next several hours fretting that I might have started our day with the best meal that I'd have, because my cheeseburger was just that good. It was a terrific burger on a toasted bun, topped with freshly made and wonderfully gooey pimento cheese, lettuce and tomato. It was completely delicious!

Of course, a soda shop wouldn't be a soda shop without neat, hand-mixed treats. This was too early in the day for desserts - we had so much on the agenda that we passed on either potato chips or fries with our food - but we did try out some of their hand-mixed drinks. They offer some neat concoctions like a cherry smash, which is cherry syrup and soda water, and a really neat thing with chocolate ice cream and cherry syrup in Pepsi, but Marie decided on a limeade, and I went with a half-lemonade, half-orangeade. They were wonderful, and just the perfect accompaniment to the cheesy burger.

I loved this place completely, and insist that everybody try it out, but there was so much more to do, and so many more miles to cover, so we had no time to linger. Our next stop was just a couple of streets over.

Falafel King, Decatur GA

2012-01-29T03:54:00.000-08:00

A couple of Fridays ago, my plans got changed. There's a restaurant - it would be churlish to name them before I give them another try, so let their identity slide - that I had hoped to visit some time ago. Now, I knew that I wanted to go get some lunch on Friday, but not where. On Thursday evening, I opened the brand new issue of Southern Living that had arrived in our mailbox, and wowed at the description of an item that this place makes. It isn't on their menu; you have to know to ask for it. So at eleven sharp, I arrived, ready to eat, and grumbled that they didn't open for another half hour. I sat in Starbuck's with a mediocre doughnut and read for a bit. Eventually, I walked over, placed my order, paid my money, and was then told that, oh, me oh my, they weren't going to have this interesting item today after all. I got my money back and looked for something else to eat.

I took the risk and left this little strip mall, which I later learned is a good way to get your car booted, and walked over to Falafel King. I recall when this oddly-shaped building was a Domino's Pizza. In the 1980s, I would sometimes come to meetings of the local Doctor Who fan club, which met in Emory's White Hall, and we'd sometimes walk past the Domino's on our way over to window shop at a record store called Music, Music, Music. Back then, the building's bizarre roof was baby blue, and today it is a drab yellow, but it's still a lovable curiosity.

This tiny little place is run by a Korean couple who also serve up sushi and udon. Report after report suggests that these are far better than anybody expects, but those weren't what I was in the mood for. They are apparently the second owners. The original Falafel King moved his business to Athens in 2007, and operates on Baxter Street in a former Pizza Hut that has been home to sixty-eleven different restaurants.

The falafels at his original location are fried up to order, so there's a short wait for them. They are very crispy, with a soft inside. They're a little dry, even with a drizzle of a white sauce over them. I was pleased with the little hot sauce they came with. There is a small selection of sides with the plates. The hummus was pretty good. I was torn between grape leaves and olives and settled on the latter. Nothing was really amazing, and the falafels were not in the same league as OU for U Cafe in Dunwoody, but it was a satisfactory meal in a fun place.

I got lucky and avoided a boot, whereas several of the commuters in the lot behind Starbucks and Wonderful World didn't that afternoon. I'm not sure that it's worth risking the parking trolls of Emory Village for a return visit, unless I can nail down one of the few spaces specifically marked for this restaurant. Emory Village has all these signs and websites about improvements to the shopping experience. What they need to do is get their act together and coordinate short-term, low-cost pay-parking at each of the seven or eight different small lots in this neighborhood and let people wander from business to business without worrying about their car, or starting the engine to move it three hundred feet from one dedicated lot to another. There's no falafel in the world, and nothing listed in Southern Living, that's worth this kind of headache.

Keba Spitfire Grill, Athens GA

2012-01-27T00:01:00.000-08:00

Here is a restaurant that I remember well from back when it had an even sillier name. See, about three years ago, Achim Reus, who, before he became a restaurateur, was once the principal French horn player in the Stuttgart Philharmonic, decided that it was time to corporatize the restaurants that he'd been running since 1999 or 2000 or so. Back then, he had two in Athens and they were called Achim's K-Bobs. There was one downtown and one by the track and the football practice fields and I really enjoyed them. They were proper, ramshackle restaurants for a college town and I ate at each of the two frequently.

In November of 2003, I took my still-quite-small children to Athens along with Matt on the day that Auburn came to town to get beat, 26-7. We didn't have tickets and didn't expect to find any; we just enjoyed the tailgating and the spectacle and the fun, and, looking for a place downtown with tables and televisions and a big crowd in red and black, we ended up at Achim's and had a complete blast. I yelled myself hoarse after we intercepted on our one inch line with Auburn set to score and ran it all the way back. Oh, that was beautiful. Food was good, too.

I also remember an incident a few months later at the other Achim's where my son, then seven, managed to lock himself in the restroom and his sister, then five, took advantage of my absence, trying to calm him down while somebody went looking for a key, and went rocking in her chair on the patio and fell backwards, conking her head on the cement. I thought for years that she avoided lasting injury; lately, though, I wonder. Anyway, with each kid completely terrified and bawling, I don't know that I remember the food all that well on that visit. I was too busy watching out for a TV crew from America's Worst Dads to drive past.

While I don't know for certain that I stopped by Achim's again after that low moment, I was aware that in early 2009, Achim remade and remodeled his restaurants into the franchise-friendly Keba Spitfire Grill. Now featuring flat and solid colors, big, easy-to-read menu boards and uniformed staff, what was once cluttered and unique now looks like the sort of place that's ready to open in every town in America. There are two locations in Athens and one in nearby Watkinsville, and while I couldn't confirm that any others are immediately in the offing, the company's web site talks at length about their franchising plans. Loco's Deli and Pub, Barberitos and Zaxby's have all successfully expanded beyond the Athens area; perhaps Keba might be the fourth to do it.

The main offering here are doner kebab sandwiches, prepared in the German style. That is, if you will, a similar product to what you see at a Great Wraps, but served on a freshly-baked hamburger bun, with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers and drowned in one of nine sauces. Most people go for the Keba sauce, which is basically tzatziki, but I had mine with the roasted red pepper sauce. You get your choice of meats, or a mix. I went with beef and pork and was incredibly pleased. This was a delicious sandwich. You can get them in wraps, or in a salad, but I definitely recommend the freshly-baked bun.

You're definitely going to want fries with that. A high point since the Achim's K-Bob days, these are big, freshly-cut incredibly tasty Belgian fries and each order comes with one of the nine sauces. I had the chipotle, and then decided I wanted to buy an extra cup of the curry sauce for them. This is one bit where the corporatization of the concept has hit a speed bump. If you go back up to the register for some, every single member of the staff fails to understand what they are supposed to do.

I never objected, back in the good old days, to giving the register a quarter and having the fellow working it get me a cup of sauce. Here, they've got to punch it in and make a production of it, and it costs fifty cents and not a quarter, and they charge tax, and they give you a receipt, and all the other kids behind the counter don't understand why you're standing there because the guy at the register can't actually leave the register to squirt sauce into a cup, and so you stand there for a minute and a half while smiling teens are waiting for the fellows in the kitchen to finish slicing and prepping the previous customer's sandwiches until you say, "Excuse me, my sandwich and fries are cooling; could one of you please just pump me the curry sauce that I just paid for?" Franchising has its consequences. It's like how "zero tolerance" should not necessarily mean "zero common sense," but it always seems to, because when you have a rigid system in place, nobody understands how to take initiative anymore.

In other words, it's really good food, but nostalgia isn't the only thing that made the experience a little better once upon a time.

I did a little shopping after that. I was with David, and he bought several more old records for his mighty collection of old vinyl. Before leaving town, I had planned to try one of the lauded burgers from Farm 255's lunch cart while he was browsing at Low Yo-Yo, but the cart is, sadly, parked for the winter. I shall have to try again in the spring. That meant that my post-shopping visit was simply at the local branch of The Varsity.

We've written about the Varsity's Atlanta locations twice before in this blog. The Athens location is the most agreeable of the chain, of course, on account of all the red and black on display here. I seem to stop by on my way out of town maybe every third or fourth visit to Athens for a frosted orange and a last chance to stretch my legs before getting back to Atlanta. I was actually in the mood for a messy burger with pimento cheese, but I knew that those were on the agenda for Saturday at at least two places, so I passed on the grease and just had a wonderful F.O. It was, perhaps, not quite as satisfying as a burger might have been, or a pint of beer at The Globe, but it traveled a little better for the ninety-minute trip home.

J. Christopher's, Kennesaw GA

2012-01-25T00:23:00.000-08:00

This is Marie, contributing an article about breakfast. Recently, my brother came for a visit. He is more of a hearty eater than I am. For one thing, he likes bacon. Although we have a number of excellent breakfast places, my current dietary limitations mean it's not quite as much fun to go to places like the delightful Stilesboro Biscuits. On his first day here, we went to a national chain restaurant. I decided that for his second day here that an alternate had to be found. Which is ironic, because we wound up going to a chain after all - the difference being that it was a local chain that started right here in Marietta. Karl suggested J. Christopher's, and I am glad he pointed it out because otherwise I might not have known it was that local. They currently have 22 stores in Georgia and Tennessee.

J. Christopher's has a somewhat more idiosyncratic decor than the place we'd gone to the day before. They have quite a bit of art up on the walls and rest of the decor looks interesting and non-industrial. I would like to see whether some of the pieces are provided by local artists - some had that look (even if one was the obligatory re-working of "Starry Night" and another was a Warhol type).

The menu has some interesting things on it, and when I can eat waffles again I would like to try the seasonal Gingerbread waffle. Although the selections have cute names that I prefer not to use when ordering, it's still a good variety of tasty food. We each ordered from different bands of the breakfast spectrum, and each of us seemed pleased with the color we chose. The savory crepe that Ivy ordered looked quite interesting; that might be something I'd try after the visit for the waffle, or if it's still out of season when we're by next. My brother's breakfast skillet was better left with him, as I took one look at it and knew that even without bacon, that would only get finished if I shared. My own breakfast was the Irish oatmeal with cinnamon, brown sugar and raisins, along with a side of sausage and raisin toast. Somehow they managed without any milk to make that oatmeal creamy and smooth. The tea was Tazo, which is a good bit better than the Lipton's I've wound up settling for at some places!

Although the food was tasty, the service was really the high point. Although as happens occasionally, several of the wait staff come up to admire the baby, our server was attentive and on task. She brought out extra hot water for my tea, picked up a flung toy, and cleared up after we were ready and not before. Overall, a satisfactory and pleasant experience was had by all.

The menus and signage are definitely professional, but one thing I like about them is the note on the menus that items may differ by location. If they are indeed serious about that, and individual franchises get to have their own specialties, that would make this a really good place indeed. It warrants further exploration.

Lucky's Burgers and Brew, Roswell GA

2012-01-23T01:49:00.000-08:00

Marie's brother Karl was in town a couple of Saturdays ago and in the mood for a burger. I don't know that Marie and I were being the best of hosts by not taking him to a reliable favorite instead of taking the chance on something untried, but we wanted to visit someplace new for our blog and so passed on a trip to Farm Burger or something excellent like that, and instead looked on Urbanspoon for the highest-ranked burger joint in Atlanta within a reasonable drive where we had not visited.

Roswell is just about the limit of a reasonable drive for us if we're not popping on the interstate, and I feel strongly that we could do a much better job covering the food in this town anyway. It's a quite nice drive down Post Oak Tritt Road, although it's not the sort of commute that I would want to drive every day. For almost three years, I did. It was a bit much, in the end. Still, every couple of months, it is doable. So, about half an hour through neighborhoods later, we made it to Lucky's Burgers and Brew, a very nice little place that opened in the summer of 2010. The selection of beers is a little disappointing if you prefer a deep collection of local breweries, but the burgers are very good.

It's an even more satisfying trip if you want a meal out with your dog. As gimmicks go, this is a pretty good one. The restaurant is named after the owners' golden retriever, who spends many afternoons hanging out on the pet-friendly patio. It is a dog-friendly, family-friendly sports bar, with photos and drawings of dogs all over the interior. Now, unless they're named Snoopy, or Dougal, or Uga - or Russ, should an Uga be unavailable - I don't have any liking for dogs myself, but I do enjoy restaurants that take a theme and run with it.

We arrived around six and took one of the last available tables and the absolutely last highchair. I've never seen so many babies in one place outside of daycare. The Saints and the 49ers were going back and forth and the sun had gone down. My attempts to photograph the outside in the low light failed completely; should you be curious what the place looks like, Food Near Snellville made it here during the daytime and got a good picture of it.

We shared an appetizer of onion rings and were very pleased with them. The soft and crumbly breading had just enough of a zesty kick to really impress. These were much better than the strangely bland fries that accompanied the burgers, which were really quite good. Marie just had a basic one with lettuce and tomato, and her brother went with one that came with bacon and blue cheese. I was taken with the idea of the Berga Masco, served with marinara sauce, mushrooms and melted cheese, almost a chicken parmesan made with ground beef instead. The resulting sandwich was indeed very good, but it was also almost comically messy. Much as I liked it, I did find myself wishing that Lucky's would look into a firmer bun, or possibly toasting it, for creations this prone to disintegration. All of us were very pleased with our burgers.

Incidentally, the messiest hamburger ever made, anywhere, was the "Sloppy Burger" that I concocted with the short-order cook at the office cafeteria at Ravinia Three some years ago. It had chili and melted cheese and slaw, among other things, and provided a second meal when you ate the resulting flotsam atop the fries in the little cardboard boat. With a fork.

For a place that welcomes families, Lucky's seems to want to stride that line between comfort food and silly edginess. They offer a burger called The Undertaker with fried onions, fried eggs and bacon, but this pales beside their absolutely ridiculous concoction called The Grim Reaper. This was prepared for an eating contest held last summer; photographs of the debauchery are displayed towards the back of the restaurant.

In all, this was not a bad evening out. In Roswell, I do prefer the burgers at Rhea's, but they're not open in the evenings, and neither the timelost style of that place, nor the my-way-or-the-door approach really lend themselves to nights out for families even if it was. I'd like Lucky's more if they got in more beers from Sweetwater or Terrapin instead of all the nationals, but they certainly do a good job with what they've designed. It's a fine place to spend a few hours with friends.

Mediterranean Grill, Marietta GA

2012-01-22T03:53:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that 2004 was, for me, something of a mistake-filled year. Well, the mistake in question lived in Decatur for a while before moving way out to Morgan County, and one of the few very decent things to come of that experience was her introducing me to her favorite restaurant in our area, a wonderful little place with the simple name of Mediterranean Grill. It opened in the late '90s in the same strip mall as Wuxtry Records and Rainbow Grocery and ChocoLaté Coffee, across the street from Evans Fine Foods and it is completely delicious. I have visted many times, and the only thing on their menu that I don't really like is the baba ghanoush. I'm certain that they won't take offense to hear that they don't do one single thing to my liking, because they do everything else incredibly well.

In fact, I'd never had baba ghanoush anywhere before, not knowing what it was. It probably never registered with me that there was such a dish, if ever I was at a restaurant that offered it, because when the mistake in question occasionally used it as a pet name for her small daughter, I had no idea what she was talking about. So quite some time later, she took me to Mediterranean Grill, ordered some alongside whatever else she was going to have for lunch, and explained that this was her comfort food. I had a little taste with some pita bread and did not like it at all, and stuck instead to hummus.

Some months later, the mistake in question consigned, mostly, to history, I was with David in another restaurant, since closed, that served Mediterranean food. While we were at the register considering what to order, I made the mistake of saying aloud to him that I'd be having hummus with the plate that he suggested, as I didn't care for baba ghanoush. I was unaware that the chef was spectacularly proud of her baba ghanoush and she bristled, turned and stormed back into the kitchen. There was a short moment of shared awkwardness before she returned with a small plate and a spoon and ordered me, "You try this!" It was magnificent. Until the place closed in 2007, I must have eaten my weight in it. And just think: I never would have enjoyed all that spectacular baba ghanoush if Mediterranean Grill's didn't disappoint me.

In the meantime, while I was enjoying baba ghanoush in Marietta, Mediterranean Grill became a regular destination whenever I was near Decatur. I can honestly say that I completely love everything else on their menu that I have tried: gyros, falafels, shish and kofta kabobs, their wonderful home fries-like Greek potatoes and their creamy and magical Jerusalem salad. All that time, I enjoyed meals there with lots of different people, and it never really registered that the restaurant had a location much closer to me, and I need not drive all the way to Emory to try it.

Despite having this favorite food only about fifteen minutes of sprawl and traffic lights away from our house, I had actually only visited once before this past weekend. Not long after Marie and I visited in late 2009 with our friends Samantha and Todd, we started the blog and sidelined reliable favorites in favor of trying new places. I always intended to get back for a meal and feature it here, but Marie unwittingly kept shooting me down. On an evening where we didn't have specific plans, I might, for example, ask Marie "What are you in the mood for? I was thinking maybe Mediterranean, or perhaps Thai?" Actually, phrased like that, it was not so much Marie shooting me down as it was me doing it to myself. Given the choice, Marie would probably pick a Thai place over just about anything.

I finally gave myself an opportunity to have another order of their delicious gyros and Greek potatoes last Saturday. I had an appointment just a couple of miles away and took the camera and enjoyed a really delicious lunch for just under seven dollars. Actually, the best time to go is during the week. They have a "businessman's lunch special" that just piles you down with excellent food for even less than the small amount that I paid. All of their prices here are very reasonable, and the food is sublime. The decor is cluttered and tacky, like a neglected fast food chain, and the small Marietta location seems to quickly fill up at just about any hour. This shouldn't be surprising; places this popular and well-loved are always going to be busy.

I'm more familiar with the original location in Decatur, which is also always busy:

Perla Taqueria, Atlanta GA

2012-01-21T01:16:00.001-08:00

I don't know whether they're ever apparent to you good readers, but I do like to occasionally find some kind of an angle to a chapter here, especially when I write a chapter with two different restaurants. Well, beyond just "here are two places where we ate recently," I mean. Last week, I thought that I was onto a good one when David suggested that we follow up our lunch at Decatur's No. 246 with a visit to Perla Taqueria near Cheshire Bridge. He had eaten here a couple of weeks previously, and emailed just about all his local friends as soon as he got back to the office to warn everybody about their incredibly hot sauce. Evidently, he seemed to think that I had not actually read that email when he then told me how I really had to try this place.

No matter, I certainly like good, spicy hot sauces, and was willing to give them a try. As we walked back to the car, trying to block out all the '70s dinosaur rock being piped out of Ruby Tuesday and The Pita Pit, I caught sight of Big Tex Cantina, a little side venture of the good fellows at Fox Brothers, and figured I could make a little two-fer chapter about the tacos at both joints. David and I took our seats, but were surprised to learn that Big Tex is undergoing an interesting menu revision. Perhaps pummeled by the popularity of the tacos at the nearby Taqueria del Sol, Big Tex is slowly abandoning their Tex-Mex menu in favor of traditional southern cooking, turning into a meat-and-three with emphasis on things like chicken and dumplings and pork chops. With three buck tacos no longer on the menu, I decided to snack here some other time.

So, onto Perla, to try this wicked hot sauce. The business opened in mid-2011 in a shuttered Mrs. Winners. The prices here are remarkably low - the $3.99 burrito that I ordered was one of the most expensive things on the menu - and I enjoyed the flavors and the goofy design and attitude. I love the lights hanging from the ceiling in old potato chip cans.

The food did not knock me out. I had a brisket taco and it really was not as tasty as the one that I enjoyed several days before at El Rey del Taco. The burrito and the taco were satisfying and pleasant, but not spectacular. I'm probably a little more satisfied than Foodie Buddha was with his visit, which is hardly surprising, as Buddha, lovable curmudgeon that he is, seems eternally unsatisfied by everything that he eats, but I'll still agree that this is probably best sampled as late night hangover-prevention food. I did enjoy the sauces, if not the tiny little chip-defying cups that you can spoon a feeble little bit into, and the hot sauce certainly met David's description of it being too darn combustible for the unprepared.

The one disappointment that I had with the hot sauce was that I couldn't quite get enough of it. The fellow at the register was apologetic, and told me that the kitchen staff was working on a new batch. Some guest had just left and, in what must be a breach of all restaurant etiquette, filled up on their hot sauce in their own container, leaving only drips and drops behind, barely enough to fill one of Perla's tiny little chip-defying cups. I spooned up just enough to flavor my food just a bit. Next time I come by to sample their other tacos, I hope to get a little more of it!

No. 246, Decatur GA

2012-01-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

Last Thursday, nothing went right. I really wanted to go up to Athens with David and visit a couple of places I have not been for years, but Marie and I had an appointment in the evening back home that we couldn't shake, so David and I wouldn't have very long to visit before rushing back to town. Then I had the bright idea to leave my car downtown and have David come meet me, saving a little trip to the suburbs and then around the top end. I came up with this brilliant plan on the Thursday of market day at AmericasMart.

It's my experience that most locals don't even know what this big mess is, much less sensible out-of-towners. It's a year-round trade show of various inessential wholesalers' nonsense, unfolded under high security for retailers across the nation, but twice a year, the four-building convention space goes mad with a great big event with all the season's latest tchotchkes, area rugs, and vases full of broken branches. All the downtown hotels are booked, celebrities are showing off some tomfoolery or designs or other, the price of parking increases at least fourfold, and the traffic on the connector coming in from the northern 'burbs backs up solid to Buckhead one way and North Druid Hills the other.

Our potential time in Athens was already curtailed by David being delayed by, honestly, 45 minutes of backup, and it would be curtailed further by the reality that we'd have to navigate this mess a second time to pick up my car. Therefore, we'd have to leave the Classic City within minutes of actually arriving. So we put it off for a week and went for a nice long walk in Decatur instead.

I'd been wanting to lunch at No. 246, an Italian-"inspired" new restaurant opened by Drew Belline and Ford Fry, for a few months now. It's another case of me hearing about a good idea, and by the time I get around to it, everybody else in town with a blog has had time to rave and tell everybody how neat it is. Marie and I are always very late to the trendiest places. You can tell this place is trendy; just look at the "cones of silence" hanging from the ceiling. For what it's worth, I do like the open kitchen. I can't imagine stepping past on the way to the gents' and not pausing to watch the work going on there.

I really, really don't think much of modern restaurant design, but Fry and Belline have certainly come up with some incredibly tasty food and I think the world of it. They do pastas, and cook quite good pizzas in a wood-fired grill, but it really is not an Italian place and nor do they claim it to be. While there are certainly meats on the menu, the real emphasis is on locally-sourced vegetables. My pizza came with some of the most delicious mushrooms that I've ever had.

One thing that I note upon reading what my peers have had to say is that David and I certainly played it far too safe. We were both pleased and satisfied with our pizza and sandwich, but take a look, for example, at the interesting things that Decatur Food and Wine Dude enjoyed, including a cucumber soup and parpadelle carbonara. I didn't even have one of the celebrated No. 246 meatballs that I should have tried. This is definitely a restaurant that requires a little more investigation.

Hopefully, however, when we make it back, the music will be a little better. I was telling David about my visit to Sheik Burritos n Kabobs and how fantastic their playlist was, including as it did Modest Mouse, Vampire Weekend and Metric, all fine music to enjoy with lunch. Here, it was all Doobie Brothers and Tom Petty and "Stairway to Heaven," like 96 Rock in 1983, and I swear the same station was being piped out of every last restaurant that we passed on the way back to the car. Somebody needed to give the whole city of Decatur a kick in the rear that afternoon.

Two Meals on Buford Highway

2012-01-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

A couple of Saturdays ago, Marie and I made a long overdue trip to Doraville to finally start sampling some of the restaurants along Buford Highway. Now, I imagine that locals are probably wondering what the heck took us so long, and for that, I plead not knowing where in the world to start. Out-of-towners may not know that this is a huge and very eclectic neighborhood full of traditional cooking and restaurants that cater to Atlanta's huge international community, from Guatemalan to Vietnamese.

I'd make the bold claim that there is no quarter given to Americanized menus here, but there's a Monterrey smack dab in the middle of this long stretch of road. This small chain, which dates back to the early 1970s, says that it is the very first of what I've come to term the El-This-Los-That joints. Monterrey soon begat the local El Toro and La Fiesta chains and all of their countless imitators, and what all of us who were teens in the 1980s came to think of as "Mexican food." The cheese dip that has made us all so fat? Their doing. Now that there are dozens of restaurants on this stretch where you can get the real thing, authentic Mexican dishes served without consideration for suburban palates, I wonder how this Monterrey continues to thrive.

El Rey Del Taco is a great place for authentic recipes. We stopped by here to get some tacos as appetizers for the next meal. I could have eaten three times as many. The meats were wonderful - I had steak, chicken and tripe - and the table sauces vibrant and full of flavor. They bring out a little thing of limes, a spicy chipotle sauce and a thick green sauce and they were all wonderful.

I absolutely loved the service here. I think that our server mistook us for somebody else, though, as when she saw the baby, she exclaimed, "He's getting so big!" This is, on the one hand, not entirely true - he is so active, far more so than most babies, that he's actually amazingly small for his age - and on the other, quite curious, as we'd never been before, and I'm not sure that she truly has a baseline from which to judge him! I liked how they directed all the families with small kids into one alcove. That way, all of the younguns could bellow and carry on and not disturb anybody else. We didn't mind all the baby-admiration going on between tables, and I'm sure all the fellows in the main room who were there to watch the soccer on the gigantic TVs wouldn't be interrupted by babbling toddlers.

That said, I really do want to go back here again very soon, so our server might have more chances to watch the baby get big, because I really enjoyed my meal. On the other hand, I also want to go back to Chef Liu's, because I didn't enjoy my meal very much at all and I'm anxious to give them another try.

As I've mostly run out of patience and interest in El-This-Los-That places, I've similarly lost any desire to try Golden-This-Happy-That joints. Chef Liu came highly recommended for its traditional Chinese dishes, and its dumpling specialties. The real treat here would be the pork buns.

Many of our fellow hobbyists have written about Chef Liu, most before the restaurant moved to its current location. I think they just kind of hopped from one strip mall to another, and now have a kind of bland, typical-looking interior instead of the old sliding door sun room. Marie read over as many bloggers' reports as she could find, and settled on the recommendations that The Food Abides made. She ordered the Shanghai pork buns and beef noodle soup and really enjoyed them both. I went with the fennel pork sausage dumplings and didn't like them at all. I had half a mind to walk back across the street and get some more tacos.

However, the soup that we shared was so wonderful, and the appetizers so tasty, that I know that the restaurant did not do a blessed thing wrong, the food just wasn't what I wanted. Food Near Snellville photographed some sliced spicy beef that looks amazing. Marie enjoyed her selections a lot and we left knowing this was a good place. We really liked the price, too. All the food that we ordered came to under twenty dollars. With prices that low, we can afford to experiment and sample, and will certainly come back for another visit one day.

The Vineyard Cafe, Marietta GA

2012-01-16T01:26:00.001-08:00

This is Marie, contributing an article about tea. Specifically, about a cute little restaurant which serves tea along with desserts, soups, salads, and an awful lot of little girls. Technically the little girls aren't on the menu; it's just that this appears to be a popular spot to bring kids for tea parties. The restaurant is above a gift shop which is open every day of the week. That was disconcerting, because the first time I stopped by, I had consulted the gift shop hours and was disappointed to find that the restaurant portion of the business is not open on Sundays. As a result, this place lingered in my memory and the next time our paths took us through the Marietta square, I decided it was time to go. My husband is not as fond of tea as I am. He can be impressed by sweet tea with ice in, but hot tea is just not his thing. However, we were going to be having pizza later in the day (which is currently off-limits for me) and therefore he was willing to be extremely patient while I enjoyed myself.

I don't remember a time when I haven't liked tea, though I do vaguely recall adding milk and sugar because it tasted too strong. Now, this was not in the context of a tea party like the little girls at The Vineyard, at least one of whom had a tiara and feather boa. It had to have been at my grandparents' place in the Netherlands based on the context, which means I was probably 8, and the tea was just what was available to drink. Well, there was also the fact that my grandmother would not give me cookies every time I asked, but there was always a cookie with tea. Since caffeine and sugar are my two vices, it's good to have a link to family history. And a reminder that I have apparently been motivated by food for a very, very long time.

The cafe is upstairs in a little room looking over the square, which makes it something of a challenge to get into (not many restaurants are forced to have their customers pass by the kitchen in order to get into the dining room) but once there it's very pleasant. We didn't have a table next to the windows and were still able to have a great view. The server was very helpful. She made sure that all her customers knew how to use a French Press, and gave good advice to the couple across from us who were somewhat daunted by the tea choices and wound up both getting the same thing. She also was kind enough, having answered questions about which soups were non-dairy, to have the kitchen leave the cheese sprinkles off my salad without being asked.

The food options are mainly either light snacks like the tiny but very tasty bowls of soup, a certain prize-winning croissant sandwich, and desserts. I would definitely like to revisit this place when the dessert menu is back on my options list, as I could sit with a friend talking about books over many, many cups of tea and slices of cake or croissants. My soup and salad were excellent – I wonder where they got such good tomatoes in the winter, and the dressing was interesting too – but a slice of cheesecake would definitely have set off my tea more effectively. The Vineyard Café seems to have parties, bridal showers, and such as a significant portion of their business, but I would have to say that if I had time to be in a book club I’d vote for this as one of the main destinations.

Two "Companies" in Cobb County

2012-01-15T01:29:00.000-08:00

I had lunch at a couple of pretty nice and fun places in the last couple of weeks. David and I had a bite at the almost-in-Vinings location of Vermont Mustard Company. Interestingly, this is a rare example of a restaurant that has either held its prices for ages or dropped them a little bit. Many, many years ago, I stopped by and, without remembering details, was surprised by the cost of sandwiches here. David also remembers them once seeming quite high, but as everybody else's food costs have gone up, and only the national chains have borne the cost by sapping quality, Vermont Mustard is now pretty much in line with every good high-end sandwich joint.

These are certainly good sandwiches. I had the roast beef, because I was in the mood for the horseradish that comes with it. There was a short wait while the sandwiches were made, allowing us to enjoy the really fantastic design of the place. It's meant to evoke a little country shop from the Green Mountain State, with imported jams, syrups and, of course, mustard. Unlike some places that we've visited lately that offer completely off-kilter and off-brand groceries in the "store" - I'm still baffled by the boxed mac and cheese that we found at an ice cream shop in Marietta - this all makes sense and helps the atmosphere a good deal.

On the other side of the equation, there's the Marietta Pizza Company, on the historic Marietta square and serving up big New York-styled slices. The atmosphere here is one of wild, sports bar abandon and craziness. Marie and I got a big kick out of the silly signs for the restrooms. They use shadowboxes with action figures and comic book collages in them: The Creeper for the gents' and Power Girl for the ladies'.

This place has always been completely crazy and popular; I'd actually made an effort to eat here a couple of weeks before and left because of the long lunchtime line. I was surprised that they didn't expand to a second location successfully. For a while, they did have a movie theater-friendly place over by the AMC on Barrett and Cobb Place, in the space that Sushi Bites has today, and the children and I ate there several times from 2003-05. Speaking of kids, on Saturdays, this is apparently the place where everybody in Cobb County with children come to eat. Plan accordingly; I've never seen so many tantrums in one place in one hour in my life.

Marie asked that I draw your attention to the dogs on the right-hand side of the picture. As I put the camera away, one of 'em drew up and started making his desire for pizza obvious by rearing up on his hind legs and giving his master an affectionate licking while the poor man was trying to eat.

The slices are pretty good, about on the same level as G'Angelo's or Baby Tommy's. Really, these aren't going to bowl anybody over, but they're perfectly good for what they are, and if you enjoy chaotic and wild lunchtime experiences while some awesome servers somehow manage to contain the madness, then this place is worth a stop. Honestly, I came by in the evening once about seven years ago and had a perfectly pleasant and comparatively quiet time. I guess it's just lunch when this joint gets turned upside down. Tip your servers well; they're deserving combat pay!

Rhea's, Roswell GA

2012-01-11T02:43:00.000-08:00

I did you good readers a terrible disservice by forgetting about Rhea's! I should have found time to pop back over to Roswell and sample their food and take some pictures ages ago. I was introduced to it by a nutty girl named Kristi, a former co-worker from a job that I once had in Alpharetta. She was emphatic that theirs were the best hamburgers around, and so I had a few suppers at the closest location to the office on the occasional long workdays at the end of the month that had me getting an evening meal before driving home. Doing a little research for some background now, I see that she's still preaching the good word. I found her in the comments of CitySearch, praising Rhea's.

But no, they had slipped my mind entirely until this past fall, when Marie and the children and I were driving back from a less-than-satisfying lunch in Roswell via a different back way than I was used to driving and sped past the original location. I had wondered where "Rhea's I" might have been when I was stopping for a burger about once a month at Rhea's II. There are four locations: the original is called Rhea's Take Out Foods, and it's just a hop from Roswell's downtown at the corner of Canton and Woodstock. Rhea's II is north of town on the way to Alpharetta, and Rhea's III is in that big development on Crossville Road with the Trader Joe's. There is a fourth store that I've never visited; it is a little ways south of town, in the Sandy Springs/Dunwoody area.

I was finally prompted to get off my tail and go back for lunch after Todd Brock wrote about them for A Hamburger Today. The comment thread contains the usual whines and moans from intown paranoids who can't bear the thought of crossing I-285, but the article itself is well-written and will certainly do a better job than I can in making readers hungry. I'll do my best, though.

Most restaurants trace their history right back to the opening of the business, even if the current owner has only been in charge for a short time. That's not the case here. Rhea's Take Out Foods opened in the 1960s, and information about that incarnation is really thin on the ground. The business was purchased by Jimmy Smith in 1983, and that is the year that they consider this place to have opened. My fellow Roadfood fans definitely need to come give the original store a visit. From the peeling signage to the tiny interior and hardly-updated menus, this place has a classic dive look that only authentic holes in the wall can offer. The menus still reprint a quote of praise from Gary McKee of WSB Radio. I could not, for the life of me, remember when Gary McKee was with WSB. It's been at least thirteen years. In the back, on the way to the restroom, the original soda dispenser, with room for four whole beverage choices, is unplugged and being used as a big red storage table.

The burgers are griddled up and served on buttered French bread. The best way to enjoy them is with cheese, because Jimmy smashes them up so much cooking them that they start to crumble up and break apart; the cheese helps hold the meat together. Shredded lettuce, gooey tomatoes, onions and liberal squirts of ketchup, mustard and mayo demonstrate that this isn't anything new or weird, just a basic, classic burger done old-school and done perfectly, reminiscent of the burgers at The Red-Eyed Mule in Marietta. I wish that they hand-cut their fries here, because they're the only sour note. The burger is simple and it is wonderful, and it deserves a little better accompaniment.

One thing that I thought our meal lacked was a milkshake to finish it off. Had we been at Rhea's III, where Marie and I once ate back when we were dating, we could have just walked to the Bruster's next door to get one. Fortunately, Rhea's III is just maybe five minutes' drive from the original store, and I didn't mind the detour.

I don't know how many Bruster's stores there are around town. Too darn many, probably, but they'll do when a fellow is too many miles away from Morelli's. They didn't seem to have any flavor that I really wanted, so I settled for a half-and-half vanilla and strawberry. Marie enjoyed their take on an orange freeze, made with sherbet and Sprite. It was a very nice, windows-down afternoon, the last Saturday - heck, the last day - of 2011, and a perfect day to spend with family, sipping ice cream treats while driving around. Every day should be so nice.

Sheik Burritos n Kabobs, Atlanta GA

2012-01-10T01:43:00.000-08:00

I had been planning to stop by Sheik Burritos n Kabobs for weeks and weeks, and it sort of slipped down the to-do list. In time, another burrito joint opened on Howell Mill and started getting some buzz. I thought about heading that way, but remembered that I owed Sheik Burritos a visit first. It's only fair to get them crossed off the list before I try a (relative) upstart.

Sheik Burritos has been open for a little over two years, in that slowly dying strip mall on Piedmont near Cheshire Bridge that was once home to E.D.'s Gourmet Records. The owner, Jahan Ostad, was not in when I visited, but one of his employees explained that in 2009, he had planned to open a food truck. Unfortunately, he was stymied by the then-onerous regulations that required anybody in Atlanta with a truck to also have a nearby kitchen actually cooking the food. These have since relaxed, allowing for 2011's food truck boom, but it allowed Ostad to get settled in a low-rent location amid several vacant storefronts. The strip mall's owner had planned to demolish this center in 2008 and build condos or mixed-use or something, but the collapse of the economy put that on the backburner, allowing Ostad to grow a neat little business that several of my fellow hobbyists have found entertaining and a little weird.

Before he got the call to join the AJC's Food & More blog, Jon Watson updated his own little page, Live to Feast, pretty regularly. He visited the Sheik in the summer of 2010 and learned that Ostad, an Iranian, found himself loving the local burritos when he was a student at Arizona State. The goal of this place, therefore, was to mix up Persian flavors with southwestern American preparation and come up with something unlike any other burrito joint in town. I believe he's been successful; these are a little weird, but they are very tasty.

I had a Persian-styled burrito - the difference between it and a southwestern-styled coming from the use of either flatbread or a flour tortilla, and the type of salsa - called a dirka-dirka. It's lamb sirloin with spinach salad, beets, a creamy yogurt and a sauce called bad-man-jon. This slightly spicy sauce mixes eggplants, lentils and tomatoes. The restaurant also has a spicier, thin sauce on the table, and I ended up drizzling some of this over alternate bites. With two sauces and yogurt competing for attention, suffice it to say that by the end of my burrito, I had a big, wet mess of food.

Now that I know more about them, I would have liked to have started my experience with an order of Sun Devil Beets. These are a mix of maroon and gold beets served with goat cheese. That sounds completely lovely. I lost touch with a cartoonist friend who, like Ostad, attended ASU. I'm certain I'd be sending some nostalgic memories her way as I sampled those.

Honestly, the mix of flavors was very weird and very unexpected. The prices are a little higher than I can justify for regular visits, but I was intrigued enough by the experience to want more. That said, I also found myself craving another Mediterranean-styled place that I have not visited in ages and ages. The flavors here had me wondering when I could get out for something similar again.

Zeigler's BBQ, Acworth GA

2012-01-08T03:15:00.000-08:00

As I drove north on US-41, I realized how long it had been since I was on this stretch of road. Honestly, the last time I was anywhere north of McCollum Air Field on Cobb Parkway was a good ten years back, when I was in the insurance industry and I went to see a broker in Cartersville and decided to take the long way home. Since then, apart from once going to a karaoke bar right in front of that air strip in 2005, I had not been this way, and so I did not know what to expect. It turns out that this long stretch of road decided to roll over and make way for the Wal-Mart. It's just a long, hideous, pedestrian-unfriendly sprawl with every national retailer and restaurant represented in one awful, identical strip mall after another for miles and miles.

At the intersection of 41 and Mars Hill Road, there's a strip mall with an Auto Zone and a Porter's Paints, and that's where Zeigler's BBQ chose to open. They've been quietly doing business here in this small space without much, or indeed any, fuss among the local foodie literati*. I had not heard of it until I finally got to the end of the alphabet on my first pass through cleaning up Urbanspoon Atlanta's barbecue listings, and, not seeing any press, hoopla or blog posts about them anywhere, I decided to head that direction. Even Barbecue Street, which I wrote about in yesterday's chapter, has one other blogger mention. This place is completely top secret.

Al and Mary Ann Zeigler set up shop here in 2007 after winning in several barbecue cookoffs and competitions. A couple of years later, aggressively, an outpost of the Tennnessee-based Bar-B-Cutie chain set up shop across the street. The Zeiglers have not seen the upstart off quite yet, but they have a loyal crowd and, based on my experiences with the chain, a better product at a better price.

The pulled pork was pretty good. It was moist, but did not taste very smoky to me. I had it with beans and stew and I was disheartened just a little to pay extra for stew, as I object to that, but it's hard to object too loudly when they only charge $6.99 for a pulled pork plate in the first place. Even with the upcharge, that price is a good deal lower than quite a few of their suburban competitors. Plus, the stew is very, very good indeed, really nice and peppery, and I enjoyed it more than the pulled pork. It is thin and soupy, with much more tomato character than onion, and just packed with spice and zest.

They have a pair of thick, brown sauces for each table. The house sauce is an apple bourbon, and while I personally didn't enjoy the taste very much, I have to applaud the Zeiglers for coming up with something quite unique. I don't recall another sauce like this anywhere in the region, and I really like the way that they stand by this as their basic sauce. Part of me enjoys having lots of variety and choices, but I also feel very strongly that the best restaurants are the ones that do it their way. Particularly with barbecue restaurants, we see many places that try to please everybody by offering a Texas-style sauce, and a couple of North Carolina-style sauces, and a Kansas City, and so on. This can be great if you enjoy sampling, for instance, but it takes pride in your product to just say, boom, this is the sauce. If Atlanta's ever to develop a nationally-known identity for its barbecue, it'll take more definitive statements like this from chefs, competitors and restaurants. I like the moxie, but I liked the hot sauce better.

(*Postscript: I don't know how the heck he's managed to do it again, but in between my visit to this restaurant and writing it up, and this blog post going up about two weeks later, The Georgia Barbecue Hunt has claimed first dibs on yet another previously-unblogged restaurant. For what it's worth, he reports that the brisket is amazing.)

Barbecue Street, Kennesaw GA

2012-01-07T01:47:00.000-08:00

Barbecue Street is that great big barn of a restaurant that everybody passes on their way to the incredibly popular Big Shanty Smokehouse. Well, perhaps I should clarify that a little. They've been in business for a good while, so they must be doing something right, and it is hardly fair to dismiss them so easily, but there's a little truth to that.

I have mentioned in several entries here that I have observed reliable and popular older restaurants in this area being overlooked by bloggers, and by critics at the AJC or Creative Loafing, in favor of newer, trendier restaurants. To be sure, in many cases, like Big Shanty, the newcomer is presenting a really, really impressive product. Following trends and trying to catch the same audience as everybody else in this hobby, many of us flock to the same places. Older joints like this one, or a pile of other barbecue places that I could name, are just the places that people drive past without noticing.

So despite being in business under this name for about twelve years, the only online discussion that I can find about it is John Bickford's From My Table. Even the many barbecue bloggers that I follow who do not use Urbanspoon have not stopped by for a visit. For many years prior to its current incarnation, this place was known as Bell's Barbecue. The family sold the business in late 2000. I can't find any evidence that Bell's made it onto anybody's radar either, apart from sixty-eleven of those stupid, outdated area restaurant guides that Google still finds. I'd say that those things should be nuked from orbit instead of cluttering up my search results, but I did just learn that the very nearly defunct chain Red's Backwoods BBQ once had an outlet in Kennesaw while trying to find some history of Bell's, so I suppose they still serve some purpose.

I honestly don't remember who told me about Barbecue Street many years ago. Somebody mentioned it in 2004 or so, and I took the children for supper one evening. I thought that the food was pretty good, but there was something about their kids' meals that I didn't like or appreciate. On a tight budget then, and needing to save money via kids' meal combos, whatever it was prompted me to pass on returning for quite some time.

So Barbecue Street had been on our to-do list since we began the blog, but we never found the time to get over there before this past Christmas. Dave and Shaindle were in town for the holiday, and we were looking for a barbecue place that was open on Christmas Eve. Happily, this place was staying open just late enough to accommodate us, although I'm sure the staff was anxious to lock the doors behind us. My appreciation for their kindness and patience.

The food preparation here is very similar, but not identical to, the Hudson's Hickory House style. (Please see that entry for links to the handful of other places we have visited that use it.) The meat does not come drowned in the thin, red barbecue juice, as I've termed it, but the pork tastes similarly moist and really does want some kind of sauce. The table sauces are thicker than what the other restaurants in this category are known for, and the Sweet Onion sauce that From My Table enjoys is probably my favorite.

They offer the same incredibly hot red pepper-freckled mustard sauce that the other restaurants like this have, and the stew is similarly thick and onion-packed. Despite the familiar bottles and identical taste, our server assured us that the sauces are all mixed in-house, trumping my notion that there's a Hudson's delivery warehouse sending this mustard sauce to so many restaurants west and northwest of Atlanta.

My poor daughter decided that she wanted hot wings. I enjoyed a little bit of some pretty good chopped pork, fries and stew, and then switched plates with her, as her wings were "too hot." They were not. I think this daughter of mine should stick to lemon pepper or mild if she's going to order wings in the future.

This certainly isn't a bad restaurant, although I am a little bemused by reports that it's really the catfish where this place excels. The next time I'm in the mood for catfish, I'll pop back up here. It's the least I can do after we kept these good people late on Christmas Eve.

Nuevo Laredo Cantina, Atlanta GA

2012-01-06T01:43:00.000-08:00

Meredith Ford's name is still on the front window of Nuevo Laredo, still barred from entering. Four years ago, the former AJC critic penned a quite mild criticism of the restaurant for the newspaper and war was declared. At the time, only a handful of blogs were active, and this was an early-to-our-hobby example of something that all food writers, bloggers and amateur critics have since come to know: conveying the gentlest of disappointments can be, in the eyes of the faithful (or the owners), a blight upon God's eye.

Nuevo Laredo opened in 1992 as the sister restaurant of U.S. Bar y Grill. This was, absolutely, my favorite El-This-Los-That place in Atlanta. It was on Howell Mill Road just a little east of I-75, it was always packed and it was always delicious. I did not eat there nearly often enough, although I was there that Saturday in October 1995 when the Braves won the World Series. That was one amazingly happy restaurant. U.S. Bar y Grill closed some time shortly after that, and I honestly had no idea, until Ms. Ford started her controversy, that there was a complementary restaurant that served much of the same food.

Fortunately for my slowing metabolism and generally subpar health, I've since lost my taste for El-This-Los-That Tex-Mex restaurants, and rarely feel the desire to gorge on this stuff. But every three or four months, I feel a little peckish for the sticky sauces and melted cheeses, and limitless refills of chips and salsa. Actually, the only thing about Nuevo Laredo that I don't like is that they do enforce a limit, and charge for the third cup of salsa. This can prove obnoxious if you're like the couple at the table next to me on the afternoon before Christmas. I nosily observed that they started with two cups of salsa for their chips, as the fellow liked to pour about half a bottle of Cholula sauce in with his red stuff and mix it up. When the young lady finished her cup, the server informed her that another would cost two dollars. The customer was so aggravated that I'm certain that the restaurant lost her repeat business.

This was only my third trip to the restaurant, and I confess that it was a somewhat down-the-list choice after the other places I was considering were closed for Christmas. I was covering a co-worker's shift on this Saturday, and since it was only a half-day, I could grab a bite to eat before going home. That is, if I could find a place I wished to try that was open.

As ever, Nuevo Laredo was completely packed and I got one of the last parking places in their overflow lot across the street. The restaurant is located on the trailer park side of Chattahoochee Avenue, in a garish and tacky building that looks like something out of Six Flags. When this place says "traditional," it means "the traditions of southeastern US takes on Tex-Mex food, as established in the early 1970s by the Monterrey chain." It is, in point of fact, just another El-This-Los-That place, albeit one that sparks just enough of a notable difference in flavor to bring in giant crowds and cover the walls in "Best of Atlanta" awards. The AJC, Creative Loafing and Atlanta Magazine have all given this joint credit as either readers' or critics' favorite many, many times over the last twenty years.

I had an order of cebollitas, which are grilled green onions, heavily salted and served with lime, and one of the lunch combos of a burrito and taco, served with rice and refried beans on a giant, hot plate. I'm rarely in the mood for it, but when I am, I'd like it done right. The prices are a little high here, but the food, for what it is, is just fine, the service is pretty good and, on those occasions that a fellow forgets to bring a book, the discreet people-watching is entertaining. As traditional Mexican dishes are, after all these years, finally becoming a little more common in Atlanta, this place is something of a throwback, but as throwbacks go, it's the king.

Heck, just writing this has got me thinking about a plate of nachos with dry ground beef, refried beans and gooey white cheese. It has not been three or four months!

Come N Get It, Marietta GA

2012-01-04T02:34:00.000-08:00

When a restaurant called Fat Boy in Smyrna shuttered at the end of 2006, the city had an outpouring of grief and nostalgia like it had never, ever seen before. A friend of my parents phoned them to say not to bother going down for a farewell milkshake on their last day of business; the line was two hours long.

This was unusual. I grew up in Smyrna. Nobody shed a tear when they knocked down Jonquil Plaza or Belmont Hills. That lunatic shoe store in the former downtown with the windows packed to the ceiling with mismatched shoes like something out of one of Carson McCullers' bad dreams, nobody lined up for one final chance to go there. But Fat Boy? Oh, that took the wind out of everybody's sails. Generations ate there. It was in the Campbell district - we're going back a bit, I'm talking about the district as mapped when I went to school there - but it brought in Wills and Osborne families in equal measure.

For decades, it lay claim to the title of Smyrna's Oldest Restaurant. (I believe Old South Bar-B-Q has it now.) I never ate there that much; it was a place that locals told you about and steered you right when you suggested getting some chain fast food somewhere. It was about like a pre-conglomerate Dairy Queen, but with superior fast food. It was a brother-in-arms to Jiffy Freeze, Dari Spot or Tasty Dip, and, consequently, exactly the sort of restaurant that I loved. When my children were either cheerleading or on the field playing Upward flag football at a nearby church in 2004-05, I liked to get a bite to eat with them here. They served perfectly reliable fast food burgers and dogs, with milkshakes in about two dozen different flavors. I wish that I had been blogging back then, or that the awesome Chopped Onion had made it by, so that more of a record of the business would have been kept.

I mention Fat Boy because some members of the Kipreos family, who ran Fat Boy, opened this second generation place, Come N Get It, about three years later. It is located on Marietta's Church Street Extension, home to two really notable joints that we have featured here before, Brandi's World Famous Hot Dogs and The Red-Eyed Mule. This street is only about a mile long and home to three reliable and fun little restaurants. Is it any wonder that, on a day where we don't feel like trying something new, it's possible that one of us might be found on this street?

In fact, for lunch two Fridays ago, I just felt like a couple of Brandi's amazing dogs and chili, and that evening, Marie came home with a sore throat and suggested we get some of the chicken soup at Come N Get It. I recalled that we'd never actually taken the camera that way before, and were doing our readers a disservice by not telling you all about this place.

Guests can still enjoy the same sort of burgers and hot dogs on toasted buns that Fat Boy once offered, but the focus here is more like a classic meat-and-two diner with, as seen in many of today's southern diners, Greek-American influences. In Cobb County, the Marietta Diner gets all of the press, and all of the attention from Food Network's Guy Fieri, but I'd suggest that the meals are just as good at Come N Get It, and the prices are a lot lower and we've never once had to wait for a table.

I've eaten a few things here and never found a disappointment. It's just solid, reliable comfort food. Among their Greek dishes, the gyro is a simple classic, remarkably tasty and I don't object at all to the heaping, generous ladle of tzatziki sauce. Too many places, you wind up napkining out the excess, but here, it's quite welcome. The sauce is also a key ingredient in a distinctly non-traditional side called Zorba Fries. One day, some enterprising soul in the Marietta Welcome Center will assemble one of those popular "local dishes that you must try" and must include these. They're fries, sprinkled with some of the same seasoning used for the Greek potatoes, drowned in tzatziki sauce and feta cheese.

It's the Thia's chicken soup that has become Marie's immediate go-to when her throat hurts, though. It's a deep, lemony, thick and yellow brew with rice. A great big bowl of that is only four bucks and makes her feel twice as good as she did when she stepped into the place. You can't say no to that. It's a good place, with good people, and even if that song of the same name by Badfinger gets running through my head whenever I think of it, I'm glad we have comfort food like this so close.

Hot Dog Factory, Smyrna GA

2012-01-02T01:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a little place on Spring Road in Smyrna that I noticed a couple of months ago and returned to try. It's in a small strip mall that came up in the 1980s a few paces away from that Dairy Queen which has been on Spring Road forever, and which used to be the home of the first Pizza Hut delivery-only outlet that I remember seeing. I certainly enjoy hot dogs, and there are admittedly better in Cobb County, but this is still a fun place, and worth stopping by if you might be in the area. They have just enough original spirit to keep things interesting and entertaining, and the food is pretty tasty, too.

The theme at the Hot Dog Factory is "under construction," with hard hats, gears, yellow diamond signs and "do not cross" tape. It's actually quite incredibly cute, and I think kids might get a kick out of it. It's really interesting to see a small startup business like this invest so much in their design. It looks ready-to-repackage and franchise, but I think the chili needs a little more work before they're quite ready to grow. They have eleven different dogs on the menu. Six are "classics," simple things that are each under $2.50 apiece, but it's the five "factory dogs," priced between $2.80 and $3.50, where the fun lies.

I ordered an "Ay Chihuahua!," which is described as a "taco in a bun." This is a Hebrew National beef dog wrapped in bacon and buried under pinto beans, cheese sauce, pico de gallo, relish, jalapenos, mustard, ketchup and mayonnaise. It honestly never occurred to me to have pinto beans as a hot dog topping before, but it all worked really well.

I also had a chili and slaw dog that was quite disappointing by comparison. The chili just tasted like the most boring of canned brown stuff, but the slaw was not bad. I really should have tried one of the other factory dogs. The fries and onion rings, sadly, are from bags, but for the same price, guests could have a mollette instead. This is a grilled, open face hoagie roll with refried beans, cheese, guacamole and sour cream.

Overall, I enjoyed a reasonably priced and tasty little lunch. It's not really destination dining, but it's a little bit different, and certainly worth a visit should you be in the neighborhood and in the mood for dogs.

Red Elephant Thai Cuisine, Marietta GA

2012-01-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

Let's start the new year off right by trying to bring some business to a place that's having some slow Saturday nights.

Consider: if one of the very infrequent negative reviews that we post here can, in the eyes of a restaurant's thin-skinned defenders, have a nasty impact on a restaurant's success, then surely the inverse is true, and our praise should result in greater success for a restaurant. And, following that logic, a more widely-viewed blog than ours, when praising a restaurant, should bring even more diners out to spend money. Therefore, when one of my principal competitors on the Urbanspoon Atlanta leaderboard, Marilyn Wolf, gives a nice review to a place at her site, Atlanta Etc., we should expect to see it just buzzing on a Saturday night. Just a couple of weeks ago, she had a few nice things to say about Red Elephant, and I resolved to get over there just as soon as Marie could be persuaded to go out for Thai. This wouldn't be long; Marie requires very little persuasion to be taken out for Thai.

Marilyn, incidentally, really did have just "a few" nice things to say; she is one of the most direct and succinct hobbyists in our area. I heartily recommend my readers give her a click and enjoy her blog, if for no other reason than to consider how much more effective food writing can be when a good communicator like she is types very little but says so much.

So Marie and the baby and I arrived at Red Elephant on a Saturday night and I was expecting a good crowd, but this place was dead. It is, clearly, a lunch place first and foremost. I have seen this restaurant many times before - it is in the same strip mall on Windy Hill as Barker's Red Hots - and the shopping center's parking lot is almost always packed during the lunch hours. Sadly, we had the place almost completely to ourselves. Only one other couple came in to eat the entire time we were there.

I certainly agree with Marilyn that the spices here are quite tame. Marie had been considering a chicken dish with red curry, but went with yellow in the end, and I found it rich but incredibly mild. Like most Thai places in town, guests are offered the choice of red, yellow, green or Massaman-styled dishes. I had the chicken Pad Prik - a favorite from the menu of the dearly missed Thai of Athens - and it was only just a little spicier than the yellow curry. The prices were reasonable and the food was comforting and quite decent. I would not agree that it's worth a long drive, but people in the neighborhood are well served by it.

That said, now that both this blog and Marilyn's have agreed that this restaurant is pretty good, I fully expect to see it full this Saturday night. Because our power is indeed that great.

For dessert, I wanted to try out a very peculiar little ice cream place over on Johnson Ferry in another familiar strip mall: the one on Johnson Ferry where Cafe de Paris is located. This is the only D'Lites in the Atlanta area at this time. This small chain has a few stores in Florida and is attempting to grow its little concept of low-fat, low-calorie soft serve ice cream. I hoped that they might have cakes or other treats, since Marie is still avoiding dairy, but no such luck. She told me to go ahead and enjoy a milkshake, though.

Their flavors are quite tasty, and the calorie content is so low - about 50 to 70 in most of their desserts - that guests won't feel very guilty. They rotate six flavors available from a bank of more than thirty. If you are interested in a particular flavor, you'll need to visit their web site's menu page beforehand, or just leave it up to chance. I was pleased to see that peppermint was on their menu when we visited. Since I banished the Chick-fil-A corporation from my diet, I found myself missing their seasonal peppermint milkshake. Unfortunately, D'Lites' peppermint was a good deal stronger than I was ready to enjoy in a shake - this is why sampling is always a good idea! - and it worked best mixed half-and-half with vanilla. (That said, soft serve shakes don't keep well, even in the fridge. Order it, drink it, finish it. Lesson learned.)

This was probably the first time I've ever gone into an ice cream place for dessert and looked at pasta on the shelves. D'Lites, which also offers a small discount for Weight Watchers members, sells a few low-cal groceries, principally from some outfit called Fiber Best or something silly like that. No good macaroni and cheese has ever, anywhere, emerged from a box. I'll treat this as simply a very peculiar case of interior design, and when I next visit D'Lites, to try the orange dreamsicle flavor in a milkshake, I might also be bringing home some prepackaged pints of their ice cream. The groceries, however, will remain on their shelf.

Chicken and the Egg and Canvas, Marietta GA

2011-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

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.

Fincher's Barbeque, Macon GA

2011-12-28T00:03:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-26T02:17:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-25T00:18:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-24T03:29:00.000-08:00

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...

Brewer's Pizza, Orange Park FL

2011-12-23T02:38:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-21T00:31:00.000-08:00

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.

Bennie's Red Barn, Saint Simons Island GA

2011-12-19T01:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-18T00:27:00.001-08:00

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?

Chicago Delights and The Cuban Diner, Marietta GA

2011-12-16T02:59:00.000-08:00

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.

Your Pie and The Royal Peasant, Athens GA

2011-12-14T00:01:00.000-08:00

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.

Trappeze Pub, Athens GA

2011-12-12T16:45:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-09T00:01:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-07T00:02:00.000-08:00

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.

Sushi in the Suburbs

2011-12-06T00:09:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, when Marie and I went to a little media event for Outback Steakhouse, we got to meet several area bloggers, including two writers from Exclusive Eats, and shared some favorite restaurants and meals. Asked about my favorite sushi, I found myself unable to come up with anything other than Ru San's. I mean, I know that I've had sushi in some other places - I was taken to a surprisingly good place in Macon once - but, at least since we began the blog last year, we've only ever gone back to one of Ru San's stores.

I'm also aware that their reputation is less than sterling. I don't know whether there's a culture of sushi snobs that gets as uppity and adamant about things as some of us barbecue bloggers are known to do, but finding bad reviews of Ru San's is not difficult. I think that's a shame and genuinely don't care what people say; I think that Ru San's sushi is just fine. But Exclusive Eats did remind me that, in order to provide a more well-rounded blogging experience for our readers, we should probably sample a few other restaurants in each category, and so I resolved that we would try some different sushi someplace else when the chance came.

A few Saturdays later, as related in the previous chapter, we were "enjoying" a relaxing weekend without any plans whatever, which meant that I paced back and forth, restless, until the Bulldogs game started on Peachtree TV, and resumed pacing restlessly as soon as it finished. I asked Marie what she was in the mood for, since, lack of plans be darned, we needed to eat something. She suggested we go to Ru San's for tempura and fried rice, and I suggested we give someplace new a try. Marie doesn't actually care for sushi, madly, but she does like tempura vegetables and, occasionally, a ridiculously oversized and gigantic bowl of soup. I looked around and saw that Atlanta Restaurant Blog had given a not-entirely positive review of Kuroshio, which is only a few minutes further away from our neighborhood's Ru San's, but I read there enough promise to give them a chance. Additionally, "Kat Food," an online acquaintance, called their chicken fried rice the best that she'd ever had. So did it deliver for us?

Honestly, two out of three things ordered, I would have been just as well or better off sticking with Ru San's. The chicken yakitori sticks were just the driest and most tasteless chicken I've ever had, and I ended up eating them soaked in sticky sauce and the carrot garnish just to give the meat some flavor. On the other hand, the UGA Roll, which I ordered in celebration of our beating Kentucky and winning the SEC East earlier, was pretty good. I'm wondering how it got the name; it's a mix of salmon and tilapia with a gooey sauce, fried with a crispy coating. I liked it, but I know that I've had better. On the other, other hand, I added a little order of spicy tuna from their dollar menu, and Ru San's doesn't have anything at all even remotely that good on their daily specials. This tuna was completely fantastic, and I loved the thick brown sauce. I'd have done better to have just called for four orders of that, and then I'd be raving about it.

Marie had some very good tempura vegetables that she enjoyed, and confirmed that the chicken fried rice was excellent. Other than my disappointment with the chicken sticks, we were very pleased with our supper here, from the service to the very nice, relaxed and comfortable design of the interior. It's certainly worth another visit, but I figured that that we'll try to expand our knowledge base a little the next time the mood struck us.

There's a place called Sushi Bites that's right around the corner from Kuroshio, but the first place that we went after making this resolution was several miles south. We hadn't been back to Yakitori Jinbei in Smyrna since we went there with Randy and Kimberly after we saw Miyazaki's film Ponyo. Yes, we went to a Japanese restaurant for lunch after seeing a Japanese cartoon. We're predictable that way sometimes. Similarly, this place gets ridiculously busy once every September when Anime Weekend Atlanta is going on about a mile down the road.

We visited about two weeks after the trip to Kuroshio. It's a very small little place in the same strip mall as Thompson Brothers Bar-B-Q, and I first went over here with David about four years ago. They specialize in yakitori, which, if you didn't pick up on it before, is kind of like Japanese kabobs, various meats and veggies on short skewers. Here, the yakitori is grilled over imported binchōtan oak charcoal, and that is said to make all the difference. The yakitori is served either with a dark, sweet sauce or with sea salt.

The children and I met Marie here on a Friday evening when the traffic was particularly hellish, sparing her at least part of that bad commute. She had a teriyaki chicken bowl, with rice and vegetables and an insensibly tasty egg. My daughter had the basic starter order of yakitori, three skewers of chicken with the sauce, and an order of California rolls. I had the yakitori negima, which they describe as young chicken, served with grilled onions and peppers, and an order of spicy tuna sushi. The prices here are considerably higher than Ru San's, and came close to $45 for the three of us after the tip, but the meat was so much better. This was some of the tastiest, juiciest chicken that I have had in quite some time, and I could have gladly indulged in more.

Interestingly, reading some of my fellow hobbyists' opinions about this place - good grief, just about everybody local's reviewed it - it seems that this is one of the very best places in Atlanta for ramen. I'm rarely ever in the mood for that myself, but Marie occasionally gets a craving. Perhaps we'll give the ramen a try the next time.

A couple of days later, we gave Sushi Bites a visit. Somehow or another, the chicken yakitori here conspired to be every bit as dry and awful as the stuff at Kurushio, but the rest of our visit was quite nice. Neal joined us, and he ordered what they call a Monkey Roll, a mix of smoked salmon, cream cheese, cranberries and jalapenos, and said that it was very good. He also enjoyed the bacon scallop yakitori, which I promised myself I would try the next time. My spicy salmon sushi was not bad, and I enjoyed the shrimp tempura. My daughter had chicken yakisoba, and Marie had an order of pork fried rice.

We liked everything except for my chicken yakitori, and also liked the price. The food is mostly just as good as Ru San's, and the service was charmingly attentive, yet scatterbrained. Early on, having delivered our drinks, our server asked whether we were ready. Indeed we were, for menus.

Of the three, Yakitori Jinbei was clearly the best, but it was still nice to find some very reasonably-priced alternatives to Ru San's in our neighborhood. Having said that, now that we've gone out for fried rice three times in a month, it's possible that Marie is now satisfied enough that we may not be back to any of them any time soon!

Buckhead Burrito Grill, Kennesaw GA

2011-12-05T01:34:00.000-08:00

There are coincidences and connections all around in the restaurant business. Sometime in 2008, I read some people on a message board raving about Big Shanty Smokehouse, up in Kennesaw off Wade Green Road. I took the children up there for what would be the first of many terrific meals, and we noticed, along the way, this little burrito place in a strip mall closer to the interstate. I said then that, one of these days, we needed to stop by and give them a try. It was not a priority, as longtime readers might have read, as I have been losing my taste for, and interest in, American-styled burritos and tacos. Somebody really needs to prompt me to go get a burrito anymore.

So several months passed, and we drove up there one Sunday, only to find them closed. They don't open on Sundays. They also take a short vacation and close down around the Fourth of July every year. I know this because around that date in 2010 and again this year, we tried coming by and, stymied, left with a shrug.

A couple of Fridays ago, we decided it was time to let Marie relax for a weekend. We complement each other very well, I think, but one way that we have really started to differ since we had the great emotional drain that is a baby is that I spend all week antsy for the freedom to get out and drive and relax by getting up at the comparatively late hour of about seven and finding someplace miles and miles away to eat, and Marie, who's much more of a workaholic and has a more demanding desk job than I do, and could, given the chance, sleep for a whole lot longer than anybody, enjoys the occasional weekend where she can stay in bed until ten - ten! - and not do anything for two and a half days. Weekends where I really, really relax leave her completely exhausted, and weekends where she really, really relaxes leave me completely unfulfilled. We compensate by allowing me weekends where I overplan and completely fill it with things to do - oh, and I'm two months away from the most awesome weekend ever - and, once in a while, allowing a weekend with not a single thing on the agenda.

This was one of those Fridays. I asked what we were doing for supper and she said that she'd simply like to get a burrito from Willy's. I suggested that we might could go a few exits up and give Buckhead Burrito Grill one last try. If they weren't open, we'd come back to Willy's. Not only were they open, and excellent, but we also learned that they moved to this location from the very space into which Big Shanty Smokehouse, the restaurant that we visited when we first saw these guys, opened. If the Buckhead Burrito Grill had not been successful enough to move into a bigger place with more parking, then the Smokehouse would not have started up in the space that they vacated, and we would never have seen this "California-style" place. Well, I think that it's weird, anyway.

Bob and Melissa Ross started the restaurant, so named because, when they opened about ten years ago, they felt that you had to drive down to Buckhead to get a decent burrito, and they still own it. We didn't know when we arrived that their signature item was the fish taco, and so Marie and I each had burritos. She had the "house" style, made with your basic chicken, rice, beans, cheese and pico de gallo, and I had the "Rio" style, which was chicken, rice, cheese, lettuce, and two sauces, one a hot red sauce and the other thick, creamy and peppery. They were both perfectly acceptable and tasty, probably better than what we would have had at Willy's and leagues better than what they sell you at Moe's. I feel like they could probably spare a few more chips in the basket, however. The salsa bar here is stocked with really terrific and tasty blends, even if, like most places, they offer little plastic dipping cups that are just too darn small, and I would have gladly indulged in many, many more chips after I finished the puny number that came with my meal.

There are a couple of newspaper reviews on the wall here, and after we read those raves, we realized we probably needed to try the fish taco. This thing deserves the hype. It's tilapia fried in a batter full of ingredients that the woman at the register would not divulge, and served with onions, cabbage, cilantro and a really unique jalapeno yogurt that they call "Mexican tartar sauce." Marie liked it more than I did, and I liked it a lot.

They seem to rotate their unusual desserts, which are usually deep-fried American snack foods served in a burrito with whipped cream. When we went, Snickers were on offer. Personally, I don't like Snickers at all - a friend in middle school once described the sensation of spitting out little peanut crumbs two hours after he had a bar and I've never forgotten the accuracy - and so I passed, but my daughter just loved it.

Honestly, it was good to finally try this place. It's not my favorite type of food in the world, and, to be honest, I'd be happier driving a little further down to the Smokehouse, but the fish tacos were quite surprisingly good. The next time that Marie gets a hankering for California-styled Mexican food, we'd do all right to see whether this place is open before trying anybody else in the area.

Ebony & Ivory, Smyrna GA

2011-12-04T01:48:00.000-08:00

Have I ever told you about my sentient iPod? I'm quite serious when I say it's alive. Six thousand songs on it, and it routinely, when shuffled, plays songs back-to-back with the strangest and most tenuous connections, like four songs in a row played by artists whom I've seen at one particular venue in Atlanta, or three songs in a row with the word "radio" in the title, or two songs that had made their way to the seminal soundtrack to Pretty in Pink. Once in a while, it will play songs that answer each other. There was one evening when it played Bryan Ferry's cover of "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and then "replied" with Cowboy Junkies doing "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." Recently, it followed XTC with the Beatles: "My Bird Performs," "And Your Bird Can Sing." So I pay attention to my iPod.

A couple of Fridays ago, I was wondering what I should eat, and so I asked my iPod, aloud, "What should I eat today, o sentient iPod?" I know you're going to think, based on the title of this chapter, that it played "Ebony and Ivory" by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder, but it couldn't do that, because I can't stand that song and don't have it on my iPod, but it did play "Pipes of Peace," from Paul's 1983 album of the same name. I probably enjoy Paul McCartney's solo work a lot more than anybody you know, but I've got my limits, and that album is one of them. (London Town is another. Good grief, what a rotten record. Anyway.) But while the Pipes of Peace LP is the living definition of safe, unchallenging, soft rock treacle, that title track just manages to stand out a little, even if Paul really managed to otherwise make far too many records in a row that sounded way too much like each other, and, consequently, make himself quite irrelevant to anybody who went to high school in the late eighties. The result of this is that even though I like "Pipes of Peace," I can't quite listen to it without thinking about all his other early '80s treacle, like "Ebony and Ivory," and that reminded me that there's a take-out barbecue place on Concord Road in Smyrna by that name.

You would agree that this is the iPod's doing, right?

Ebony & Ivory is in a very unassuming little place near South Cobb Drive, across from the old building where Smyrna's Fat Boy had stood for many decades. It was apparently once a Church's Fried Chicken, but I don't remember that, personally. Guests will have no trouble finding it, even without a street sign; just look for the big black smoker out front and follow your nose for the amazing scent of meat cooking over cherry wood. I went to speak with Victor "Ivory" Amato when I parked and told him that if his food tasted half as good as it smelled, I'd be in good shape. I was; this place is a winner.

Amato and his partner, Marcus "Ebony" Phillips, opened the small window in the summer. It's more than just a barbecue joint; they give equal love to catfish and chicken. If you like southern cooking, there is definitely something here for you. The partners have more than twenty years' experience in the restaurant business, and worked together at the Dantanna's at CNN Center.

I had the pulled pork with mac and cheese and baked beans, along with a catfish taco. I think that the only thing that I don't much like at this place is that Brunswick stew is not offered as a side, but, unusually, as a full dish which guests can order with sides of its own. Otherwise, everything from the prices to the quality of the food to Amato and Phillips's smiles and fun, upbeat attitudes pleased me greatly.

The pulled pork was just fantastic, and while I enjoyed the white sauce that I got on the side, the meat didn't need a drop. I am curious enough, however, to want to stop back by and get some of their other sauces next time. I might see about taking my order back to my mom's house, as it's only about ten minutes' drive from the restaurant. The twenty minutes it took to get this yummy food back to my place in Marietta were agonizing.

Anyway, enjoying this good food in my own dining room, I was also really taken with the baked beans, cooked with a little pork, and the catfish taco. Overall, the food is every bit as good as the terrific stuff at Buckhead Barbecue Company, a few miles down South Cobb. My personal feeling is that BBC might just have a slight edge, as they are a full service restaurant, and I always like the opportunity to sit and visit for hours and hours when it arises, but both restaurants are serving up wonderful barbecue and are absolutely worth visiting.

Clocked!, Athens GA

2011-12-03T00:52:00.000-08:00

This is Marie, contributing an entry about Clocked! in Athens. Every once in a while I take a trip up to the town I lived in longer than anywhere else in my life, and generally any little excuse will do for a visit. Sadly, the arrival of the baby sharply reduced the number of trips, but I still try to make it up when possible. In this particular case, a former neighbor of mine happened to be free, so we had lunch together with her husband and kids before I went and did a little shopping and visiting.

When I lived in Athens, I only went to about three restaurants, and therefore paid no attention to places that should have been enjoyed (in some cases, repeatedly) when I didn't have to drive 90 minutes to get there. If I had been paying attention in 2000 when they started, Clocked! would have easily made my trio of favorites a foursome, if for no other reason than the shakes. Oh, I have not yet had one of those shakes, but I will. There will be a Festival of Dairy to rival the post-pregnancy Festival of Nitrates as soon as the baby is weaned, and this restaurant is going to have to be in the list. You know a shake must be good when the person who ordered one at your table has to start on it with a spoon, and then passes it around for the whole table.

I chose this restaurant for one main reason, and that requires a little background story. My dad and one of his sisters had a competition going for years in which they tried to make the most unlikely recipes possible. I am not solid on all the rules, but they essentially boil down to a) the food must be likeable and b) the food must be silly, and A trumps B but B is required. One of my father's creations was the peanut butter burger. As a child I was distinctly anti-condiment; I would not use ketchup on my fries, I fussed if given pizza with any toppings other than cheese, and so forth - but I loved his peanut butter burger. He didn't make them all that often as he only did cooking for special occasions (a doctor's schedule does tend to reduce dinner opportunities) but the rare meals assumed greater prominence as a result. So when I was looking for a place to have lunch with my former neighbor, the opportunity to have a peanut butter burger was irresistible - I'd likely have gone even if the reviews hadn't been so positive.

Now, a peanut butter burger, however tasty, is not terribly photogenic. Overlook all that brown to the little dish of red sauce by the sweet potato fries, though. That is the best solution to the problem of "ketchup doesn't go with sweet potatoes" problem that I've encountered. It is a sweet raspberry pepper sauce that is quite mild, leaving barely a tingle on your tongue, but it is light years away from that cinnamon apple goop that some places desperately try to inflict on the unwary, and goes admirably with the fries.

Overall, this is good food at only slightly over fast food prices, made with care. Recommended.

Kaleidoscope, Atlanta GA

2011-12-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

Proclaiming anybody's burger as the best in a burger-packed powerhouse of a city like Atlanta seems like asking for trouble. Longtime readers might recall that I have considered The Vortex to be Atlanta's best burger joint among a whole mess of very strong contenders. Our neighborhood burger restaurant, Cheeseburger Bobby's, is the one we visit the most often, as they serve up a super product at a great price with just about the best staff of any restaurant in town. Also, they are one traffic light away from us. Sometimes, that means a lot. Anyway, if we do end up moving to North Carolina in two years, we'll probably have to come back a lot for burgers, especially since I understand that state law doesn't allow restaurants many cooking options for ground beef, limiting the juiciness potential. Well, I guess that the Cook Out chain is about on the same level of quality as Bobby's. Wish that they had indoor seating, though.

In the late summer, I ran across Serious Eats' blog A Hamburger Today and, once I started paying attention to it, I saw that a local writer named Todd Brock has been spreading the good word about Atlanta's offerings. Back in February, he gave a major thumbs-up to Kaleidoscope, a "gastropub" in Brookhaven in a new development on Dresden Drive just a little ways below the MARTA station. Their burger won out as the Judges' Choice over twenty competitors in the city's October 2010 Battle of the Burgers, with the restaurant a good two months away from opening.

I figured this required a little investigation. I wasn't disappointed.

It was a good day to start with, as Georgia didn't just beat Auburn, we took the Tigers out behind the woodshed and administered a whipping the likes of which nobody will forget. Time had eroded my memory of how fun it is to try rocking a toddler to sleep while whooping and hollering and bellowing bits of our fight song. Suffice it to say that I was enjoying the afternoon a little more than the baby was.

We met our friends Victoria and James for supper and, while we waited for the burger, we shared baby stories and baby stories and more baby stories. We also shared a little order of roasted cashews tossed with a spicy Thai chili powder, and that was quite lovely.

Now, one thing that I'll disagree with Brock about is the dollar that he spent getting a side of duck confit and bacon mayo for his fries. It wasn't bad, but I've spent a lot better dollars myself. Where he's not wrong is calling this absolutely worth adding to the discussion about the best burgers in town. It's amazing. I honestly don't know that I've had one better in this burger-happy city. Two patties, pimento cheese, slaw, chow chow, bread and butter pickles, and just absolutely perfect. The owner and executive chef, Joey Riley, used to be head chef at Buckhead Diner and Goldfish, among other places. Fellow knows what he's doing.

I don't know what to add. When the argument has been settled so effectively, there's really not a lot else to say. So we'll leave it there... but in the next chapter, Marie goes to Athens and finds another contender.

CamiCakes, Vinings GA and Sugar Shack, Atlanta GA

2011-11-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

Sweet stuff! Normally, Marie tackles the little chapters about snacks and desserts, but in today's post, I wanted to share about a couple of treats that we enjoyed a couple of Saturdays back.

Cupcake boutiques have been growing in popularity a lot lately, probably led by the success of the Gigi's chain. It's led to a few other locally-owned places that we have visited once or twice, and a few other small chains. One of these is CamiCakes, which has two stores in Florida and two in the Atlanta area. The second of these opened up in Vinings, and a part of me swears that they moved into a space that, until recently, housed another cupcake place. Then again, I'm so old that I remember when the ground that this strip mall occupies was home to a Majik Market.

Marie and I took the children over to my mom's house, and she watched the baby while the three of us and Neal, whom we had not seen in a few weeks, had lunch at Vinings' Figo Pasta. We then walked over to get some desserts here. This was not very easy, as Vinings is really, really pedestrian unfriendly.

I think that these probably do the job better than anyplace else in town. They are just terrific, and so rich that a single cake is perfectly satisfying. I had a "black and white" of chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, Marie had the chocolate raspberry almond cream - yes, you read that correctly - and Ivy had mint chocolate. We brought one back for my mom as thanks for watching the baby while we ate, because we're even sweeter than cupcakes, we are.

So, some hours and one heck of a great football game later, we came back down I-75. This time, we were without my daughter, who went over to a friend's house to stay up all night and drink lots of soda, as tween girls do. We had supper with friends, as you'll see in the next chapter, and as we were leaving, I started thinking about some place we could get a late-night treat. I recalled that we passed a place called Sugar Shack in the strip malls across the street from the Brookhaven MARTA station, and hoped that it might be open.

This appears to be the only Sugar Shack around at this time, but it is looks to be corporate-designed by an ownership group, Metrotainment Cafes, for easy exporting into other locations should the demand arise. I have to say, though, that when we stopped by, things were pretty slow and there wasn't a lot of demand for their cakes and treats.

Marie had a slice of one of their extremely good chocolate cakes, but my eye was taken by a great big round red thing. It was a red velvet Whoopie Pie. I had never heard of these treats before, although, in a really weird coincidence, my friend Natalia, who's from upstate New York, mentioned literally three days later that she had just tried to bake one for a friend and failed. Whoopie Pies are two big "cookies" of cake surrounding an icing. The layers are softer than cookies yet firmer and less crumbly than cake and, in the case of the red velvet variety, the icing is cream cheese. It's apparently more traditional to see them as chocolate cakes surrounding vanilla frosting.

I looked up Whoopie Pies on Wikipedia and was amused to see that Pennsylvanians and Mainers are in a long-running war of attrition as to which state can claim the delicacy. Each side has my sympathies; as a Georgian, I'm not about to cede the origin of Brunswick stew to anybody who thinks it came from some county in Virginia. The idea!

The other Camicakes store in town, on Peachtree, was where I snuck off to find myself a banana cream cupcake, and it was wonderful. I'm conspiring to stop by one or the other location again really soon for another.

Fred's Bar-B-Que House, Lithia Springs GA

2011-11-29T02:02:00.000-08:00

Every so often, I get a reminder that, for every new restaurant that stays on top of social media and Google alerts about their place, there are many more that have no real interest in doing that sort of thing. Take, for example, Fred's Bar-B-Que House in Lithia Springs. Despite logging several hundred guests a day, and a welcome and thanks to every one of you, this very blog had some disagreeable misinformation posted on it a little more than five months ago, and in all that time, nobody, not the business owner nor any of his legion of patrons, mentioned it to me.

Probably back in 2001, I visited a restaurant one Saturday evening not far from McCollum Air Field called the Kennesaw Bar-B-Que House, and logged it on my old Geocities barbecue page. Some time later, it closed, and I mentioned its passing in a June chapter here that listed all those older restaurants that had closed since I first wrote about them.

A couple of months went by, and I started cleaning up Urbanspoon's listings of barbecue places in Georgia and Alabama. As I've mentioned in some earlier chapters, this wonderful, useful site does have many errors, ranging from businesses that were closed before there ever was an Urbanspoon, to miscategorized places, like wing joints erroneously tagged as serving barbecue. So I was looking through the Atlanta "B" heading and found a place called simply Bar-B-Que House in Lithia Springs, and, like the one in Kennesaw, it was said to serve something called Yellow Jacket Hot Dogs. I guessed that either that business moved or this was another location. Either way, their web site was expired, but I added it to my to-do list, and, a couple of Fridays ago, drove out to enjoy some of the best chopped pork anywhere around Atlanta, in an unassuming little place that nobody online talks about. I can't help but find this curious, as it's more evidence that, the further you get from the city center, the less important the internet is to your business's success. There was a huge mob of customers and guests that any trendy urban place would kill for, but not one person in this crowd apparently had any incentive to let Urbanspoon know that the name of the restaurant should be Fred's Bar-B-Que House.

So I was quite mistaken in simply listing the Kennesaw location as closed and having no follow-up. I got only the briefest few words with Fred, who was managing the front register and window amid an increasing tidal wave of hungry customers, but he confirmed that place had been their second location, and it closed in April of 2004. The store in Lithia Springs has been doing roaring business for twenty-five years now, with hardly a mention online. This is one of those restaurants that I'd like to see turn around on that front. It really is quite interesting and very tasty. Well, the hot dog wasn't.

Even the only sour note of my meal was nevertheless fun in a historical sense, however. The Yellow Jacket Dog - a mediocre boiled dog served with ketchup, mustard, onions and dry chili on a toasted bun - is a holdover from the dogs served from the 1950s through the 1970s at the long-closed Yellow Jacket Drive-In, which had been at the intersection of North and Hemphill two generations of Georgia Tech students ago. We'll set aside partisan college loyalties in favor of good taste, noting that Athens has seen more than its share of below-average restaurants with the word "bulldog" stuck the name somewhere, and just say that infinitely superior dogs are available from many, many other places in town. I suppose, though, that plenty of older Tech alumni can be excused for their nostalgia in wanting to experience these old favorites again, and I am glad that the beloved old recipe has a home on Thornton Road for them. Businesses with a sense of history are always a good thing.

But honestly, I have to wonder who has time for more than just two or three bites of these unhappy dogs to confirm their awfulness when this excellent pork is available. This is genuinely terrific stuff, tender and moist and smoky and not needing any sauce to impress. The house sauce is a light brown, mildly sweet tomato-vinegar blend and it is also really good. This interstate exit is home to two really fantastic restaurants. South of I-20, you've got Turner's - slash - Beaver Creek, with its pulled pork and glistening orange mustard sauce, and north of it, you have this place, with chopped pork and sweet brown tomato sauce. What the two have in common is an amazing success among the locals. Fred's was nearly packed by 11.45, with a short wait at the window and limited chances to chat about things in the "lobby" while you wait for your number to be called. After twelve, the line snakes into the dining areas, and the big parking lot is darn near full.

I was reminded how, a couple of weeks previously, David and I enjoyed an almost solitary lunch at downtown's One Eared Stag, nobody there but ourselves despite every blogger in the city yammering at full volume about it (and with good reason; it is amazing), and here's this place, the only reason the line isn't out the door is because for some weird reason it threads through the dining room. You get outside the perimeter, the definition of success is a little different. Might be, it's a little more honest.

Hudson's Hickory House, Douglasville GA

2011-11-28T00:08:00.000-08:00

A few Fridays ago, I found myself heading west out I-20 after a short morning at work, bound for Lithia Springs to try a barbecue place. I had all the time in the world, and I needed to stop at a Publix to use an ATM. I remembered that there was one in Douglasville, so I went along a little further, just enjoying some music and a very pleasant morning's drive. It wasn't until I was on the exit ramp that I remembered that I'd been meaning to stop by Hudson's Hickory House and that it was supposed to be around here somewhere. I recalled reading on a blog called Courthouse Bites that it was somehow near the Douglas County Courthouse, and I was certain that I could find that. It turns out that the restaurant really isn't anywhere near the courthouse, but it is next door to the sheriff's department.

This might perhaps be the last entry in which I wonder aloud about the origins of a particular regional style of barbecue, detailed in these earlier chapters: Wallace in Austell, Briar Patch in Hiram, Johnny's in Powder Springs and the deliberate homage at Davis in Jasper, although I have learned that there might be another in the area that has a similar style. Apparently, the proprietors of a place that might be called Hog Wild somewhere south of Douglasville* got permission from Buford Hudson to use his style of hickory-smoked pork and thin, red-to-black vinegar sauce. It was my server's contention that Hudson is the man who came up with this recipe forty years ago. I wish that he had been available to speak with me; I think that I would have enjoyed a chat with him.

Well, my server did not know about Briar Patch, but she did confirm that both Wallace and Johnny's are welcome to use Hudson's recipe, and, in return, Hudson's uses Wallace's recipe for stew. As with the others that use this style, the meat is, unless you ask ahead of time, served completely drowned in the thin, red-black vinegar-based sauce, and there's a bottle of truly hot mustard-pepper sauce if you order the meat dry and would like to try both. Interestingly, the mustard sauce at these five places is not quite like the mustard sauces of South Carolina, or in the Auburn-Eufaula-Columbus triangle. Those are thinner and yellower and less potent. This sauce is more of an orange-yellow and it's quite firey. After a few bites of the dry, quite moist pork with this tough customer, I conceded and just drowned the meat with the red-black vinegar sauce, as its creator intended.

Georgia often gets a very short shrift from barbecue writers, as we allegedly have no traditions of our own to compete with the better-known styles of Texas, Kansas City, Memphis, Owensboro or the Carolinas. I would humbly suggest that, while its influence is small and its home region mostly confined to Atlanta's western suburbs, this is something that we can genuinely hold up as a Georgia original. I certainly haven't found it anywhere else. It may not be to everybody's taste, but it is unique, and it is ours.

*I found reference to a place in Carrollton with that name, and I suppose that it might be the one that my server mentioned.

The Purple Daisy and The Hickory Pit, Chattanooga TN

2011-11-27T00:58:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month, David and I took our every-other-month trek up to Chattanooga and McKay. We'd hoped to have David's old friend Stephen join us, but he ended up having to work. It was a disagreeably long trip. When we go, we're on a bit of a time budget to get back in time to pick up my son from day care before he hits the "you've been here too many hours!" alarm. Between missing the exit for our first meal destination, necessitating a lengthy detour, the unhurried service at that place, and the agonizing wait for McKay to price the gigantic stack of CDs that David brought to sell - two hours!! - we found little time to relax at the two restaurants where we visited, and no real chance to talk with staff or owners to learn much about them. This, sadly, was a case of eating and running.

Part of the problem is that Google Maps is still hopelessly confused about how to navigate exit 178 on I-24. Seriously, if you think that you might need either US-27 or TN-58 in Chattanooga, at this point, I'd recommend using some other service to get better directions, because if it turns out that you do need that exit and miss it, it's a real pain in the neck to turn around. That said, travelers from Atlanta or parts east will use this exit, like they're going to the Incline Railway, if they want to sample the food at The Purple Daisy Picnic Cafe. It's owned by Lisa and Tony Davis and opened in 2005. They have the rumblings of a good reputation for the quality of their pulled barbecue pork, but since David and I would be visiting a barbecue joint in just a couple of hours' time before leaving town, we each tried one of their other signature items, an incredibly neat triple-decker sandwich called a Rainbow.

The Rainbow is a really neat little sandwich, and I think it would be fair to call it a little frou-frou. Between three slices of bread, crusts removed, it includes pimento cheese, cucumber spread and chicken salad. The result is just a fantastic little mix of very different flavors. David and I each enjoyed it a great deal, and it suggests that even better things might be found on the menu.

I have to say that I was not mad about the chili, which was quite thin and didn't have any feel of personal oomph to it. The hashbrown casserole, which went with the sandwiches even better than the heaping handful of yummy kettle chips, was a much more successful creation. This is quite a good little restaurant, and one that I would like to visit again to try the barbecue.

(Incidentally, the Purple Daisy is across the street and catty-cornered from a pizza place called Mr. T's. I pity the fool who does not recognize the giant ice cream cone sign out front that marks this location as a former Kay's Kastles ice cream parlor. More about this at some point down the road.)

Speaking of barbecue, we dashed in and out of a little place on Ringold Road that I had spotted a few months previously and had a very good snack on our way home. It's called The Hickory Pit and it's in a really neat log-framed building that might be older than the business. The teenaged girl working the register said that she thought the restaurant might have opened "a long, long time ago. Wow, it's always been here. Since the eighties." It's always humbling to listen to teenagers and their incredibly different perspective on what constitutes a long, long time ago.

David ordered a chopped pork sandwich and I had chopped chicken for a change, with beans and slaw. The meat was smoked well and pretty dry; it really wanted some of the sweet brown sauce to make it a little more to my taste. The slaw was really terrific.

I was a little discouraged by the inclusion of - dear heaven - "freedom" fries on the menu, but this was otherwise a thoroughly decent detour in a nicely-designed restaurant with plenty of neat things on the wall to look at, ranging from a local newspaper report of President Roosevelt's death in Warm Springs, Georgia to a collection of old soda bottles. In this case, I chose to get mock-hurt by one of the bottles and bemoan the late hour and how we really would not have time to stop by a Bi-Lo for more Double Cola before flooring it out of town. I got some excellent sweet tea to go and we made tracks for home, wishing that McKay had not taken quite so long to process all those cast-offs of David's. At least Hickory Pit was on the way home so that we could stop there at all, and I did not pick a place in Ooltewah or Cleveland! Hopefully, the next trip to Chattanooga, the restaurants that we pick will be places where we have a few more minutes to linger.

Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint, Nolensville TN

2011-11-26T02:35:00.000-08:00

I don't believe that I got quite as much out of our trip to Martin's as I could have. It's one of those very rare cases where I did a little research - if you can call it that - after the fact and found that there was so much more here than I knew, and that, had I been better informed going in, I would have gone from a very pleasant and tasty experience to a potentially even better one.

I first heard of the place when John T. Edge included it in his celebrated November 2008 article for Garden & Gun, "100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die." Edge singled out Martin's redneck taco, a pile of pulled pork and slaw on a cornbread "tortilla," and I agreed that I needed to try that. However, I declined in the end, as the "taco" turned out to be a burrito-sized monster, and I would rather just sample the restaurant's standard plate to get a feel for how they do their meat here. I figured that I'd order a brisket taco instead - much smaller, and about $2.50 compared to the huge redneck taco's $8 - and get my fill that way. And, because I am a numbskull, in the sixty seconds that it took to move from the menu board to the window register, I somehow conspired to forget to order the brisket.

Martin's is an extremely busy place. We arrived just after the church rush began and it was completely packed by the time we finished, proving, once again, that those barbecue places that choose to close on Sundays are just killing themselves missing business. I suspect that most of the guests were looking forward to watching a little football at noon central time, but this was the one Sunday of the season where CBS didn't have a double-header, leaving all their affiliate stations scrambling for something else to fill three hours of airtime. The Nashville CBS station dusted off an ancient episode of Law & Order from way back when Richard Brooks was in the cast, and when Chris Noth was a baby. Not often you see that season on TV anymore, is it?

It's a lovely drive down here. When I sent a wishlist to Brooke to put together an itinerary of sorts for where we might go eat on the Saturday, I had included Martin's as a possibility, but when I looked at the map and saw that Nolensville is located a good twenty miles south of the city, in between interstates 65 and 24, I told her to never mind, that we'd make our way there on the way home. Of course, I'd never been out this way before, and it was just a gorgeous and relaxed little drive after we left the southern edge of the Nashville sprawl and found nothing but farmland and orange-colored leaves for miles and miles.

I had a pulled pork plate with slaw and fries, and thought everything was very good. They cook the whole hog here, as they do in the eastern Carolinas, and the pit really is a sight to see. I was a little disappointed that more sauce was not available, because the small cup that I had was really terrific and I couldn't flag anybody down to get more. Would you believe that the red and yellow squeeze bottles on the table really were ketchup and mustard? I've become so used to barbecue restaurants using those for additional sauces that I was quite surprised to find them used as they were intended. Apparently, the sauce that came with my order was the "Sweet Dixie" style, which is a completely wonderful mix of sinus-clearing peppery zest and sweet zing, not quite thin enough to drink. I could have used a lot more of that, but it wasn't until I watched the clip of the restaurant's appearance on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives that I was even aware that there were more sauces beyond the Sweet Dixie available.

(Strangely, I had no idea that Martin's was ever on Triple D and wouldn't have looked for it but for a curiosity from the evening before. When we were at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, I saw the autographed poster of Guy Fieri that appears regularly at establishments featured on his show. Once we returned to Atlanta, I looked for it at the Triple D fan site, Flavor Town USA. Prince's was not listed, suggesting that if an installment has been taped there, it has not yet aired, but I saw Martin's on the list instead. What a pleasant surprise!)

The interior design is really cluttered; beyond the fun and silly country & western music decor, which includes a framed ad for the short-lived JR Ewing Beer, there is so much signage for the food and the slogans and the T-shirts that it's a little overwhelming. It's a rare case of a restaurant offering too much for guests to take in. With the line out the door with after-church guests and loud Nashville standards being played at maximum volume - sadly, no, we weren't quite able to make it out of middle Tennessee without hearing "A Country Boy Can Survive" - it's pretty easy to hit sensory overload here. Stepping outside into the calm, blue, November sky was very pleasant after all that chaos.

We had quite a long trip home from there, thanks to the baby being very fussy. We continued south to TN-840, what I would call a "trucker's loop" that currently connects Interstates 40, 24 and 65 southeast of Nashville and allows travelers to get from one to the other without hitting all the knots and tangles of those highways in the urban center. Along the way from Nolensville back to Murfreesboro on this road, you can briefly see the most remarkable home in the hills above and on your left. It looks like a huge, white castle and it is completely gorgeous. It was used as the location for Taylor Swift's "Love Story" video and it's called Castle Gwynn. Sadly, no, we weren't quite able to make it out of middle Tennessee without a reference to Taylor Swift, either.

Three further stops on the way home were necessary to satisfy this hungry and cranky baby, and Marie and I learned the hard way that, when they are awake, babies don't take well at all to the ear-popping atmospheric changes of high points like Monteagle. We had a terrific time in Nashville, and love our friends and love the food, but we've never, ever been so glad to get home!

Noshville, Nashville TN

2011-11-25T01:18:00.000-08:00

This is Marie with an article that contains no desserts at all, though it does have something that is nearly as yummy - salami. I didn't like salami nearly as much before I got pregnant and swore off the stuff for a very long time. This article is about a place that is, as a result, nearly synonymous with salami for me. On our first visit, sometime while we were still dating, we stopped by this place mainly because it was across the street from a comic and music store that was dear to my husband's heart, but now it is a destination to itself. Which is good, because the comic and music store moved to a soulless strip mall that probably has better rent prices and definitely has more floor space.

The motto of Noshville, a New York-styled deli, is "An eating experience, not just a place to eat," and they do a good job living up to that. The deli area is at the front, where you could theoretically just order a pound of this and a half pound of that if you insist on not sitting down. Mostly, of course, it services the restaurant and catering customers. Although the place is really quite large (and needs to be, with the lines as long as they can be) the floor space is neatly divided up into separate eating areas by a bar and a couple of semiprivate rooms.

The menu is large and varied enough that I have very little trouble putting together my ideal breakfast as described in an earlier entry. However, the more usual breakfast selections are clearly very popular, and I passed a couple on our way to the table who were eating omelets that looked almost good enough to steal and run away with. But then we wouldn't get to come back, and that would be bad.

Noshville has four locations in Nashville, though we have only gone to the Midtown one. That seems to have the best reviews, though, among them the delightful Dining With Monkeys, which comments on the pickle bar as one of their features. For that, I wish we'd brought our daughter, who is somewhat fond of pickles. As it was breakfast time, though, I passed it by without a glance. Those are really the best choice of green stuff of the options available, though who goes to a deli to have salad?

We have eaten there a good half-dozen times by now and never had an unsatisfactory meal, though I was considerably less taken with the celebrated hash than my husband was. One of these days we will have to visit on a day when we aren't going to another place just before or after, so I can get some of the desserts without feeling bloated. We will probably continue making a point of stopping by to load up on salami on our way out of town, though. I've also had the roast beef and tuna melt, and maybe next time will try the liverwurst. Grant once had what appeared to be an orgasmic experience with a Monte Cristo. Definitely recommended.

Prince's Hot Chicken Shack and Pied Piper Creamery, Nashville TN

2011-11-23T00:32:00.000-08:00

I was told two things before going to Prince's: that the wait would be long and that the chicken would be unbelievably hot. You know that Daffy Duck cartoon where the genie warns him very sternly that he's going to suffer dearly for his insolence, and Daffy just dismisses him with a "Consequences, shmonsequences" and learns the genie was not kidding? I felt a bit like that.

So, as related in the previous chapters, our friends in Nashville led us around - the number of people required two cars - to visit some good eating. To avoid the line, Prince's was actually our first stop, at noon. They don't open until two in the afternoon, evidently because, on weekends, they stay open until four in the morning. So we came back later on, right in the middle of their supper rush. This is a really sketchy little strip mall in an ugly side of town at noon. After the sun goes down, and people start wandering in to ask diners whether they'd like to buy a brand new two-pack of mens' shirts, you start to wonder how the heck good this chicken must be.

We ordered. We were given number 88. We looked around and noticed that there really were a hell of a lot of people twiddling their thumbs. The security guard - yes, security guard, and packing - had turned on the LSU-Alabama game, five minutes into the first quarter. It didn't appear that there was a line when we entered. It only registered afterwards that all these people had already placed their orders. Ms. Jeffries - Prince is her middle name, and she is the grand-niece of the Prince family that started this joint in a different location decades back - seems to have an extended family and lots of young nephews watching TV in the back. We enjoyed brief bits of casual conversation with the folk around us. A lady called out "number 53! Your order's ready!"

Time passed. Brooke suggested that she take advantage of the delay to go gas up and return. Our three friends decamped as two seats along the wall opened up, so Marie and I took the baby and sat down. A fellow came to wipe down the table next to us. "Wow," I said to him, "is it always this busy?" He talked, at length. Almost the entirety of the twenty minutes that Tory, Brooke and Matt were gone, I listened to this man talk and found his mumbling impenetrable. I caught perhaps every eighth word at first, nodding sagely. He just talked like a character in a Cure B-side. After a quarter of an hour, he held up a finger and said "something something something cake something something back," and returned with a flyer for Irene's Old Fashioned Homemade Cakes. I think that he recommended me to phone in an order.

After he made his way to wipe down another tablecloth, Marie and I watched some guy with a seat at the table in the window react with some visible intensity to the powerful chicken that he was eating. He was wearing a lime green ball cap. His face was the color of a brick. He was just far enough away that we couldn't quite hear what he was saying over the sound of the other diners, and the two children bouncing a basketball back and forth, but he was wiping sweat from his forehead and it sounded like he was saying "howwwwwkkk, awwwwwkkkk, Gawwwwwd, arrrrgh."

Our friends returned. They called out number 65. It was nearly 8 pm, and our dessert destination, Pied Piper Creamery, would be closing in an hour. We decided that Marie, Brooke and Matt would go get ice cream and return to Tory's house. Tory and the baby and I would wait for the chicken. And so we waited and chatted. The security guard took a break when the game reached halftime, LSU and Alabama tied at 3. You should see this security guard. He might not climb a chain link fence to run after you, but I'd sooner punch myself in the face than this guy.

As Tory and I waited and, mercifully, the baby slept, everybody else made their way south to the awesome Pied Piper. We wrote about their sister restaurant, the Eatery, last year. It is one of our favorite places in the city, and we knew that the ice cream would be good. Everybody got wonderful treats. Marie selected a Cheerwine sorbet for herself and a vanilla for me, and all the ice cream waited in the freezer until we got the chicken back.

We returned at five to nine and unwrapped the chicken. Whether dining in or taking home, the chicken comes in wax paper in a brown bag. Unwrapping it, you find deep dark orange that we now know to be the color of pain.

I don't care how many ghost peppers you think that you can gargle. Do not, do not order this chicken hot the first time you go to Prince's. Sure as you're living, do not order it extra-hot. Start with mild and work your way up. I'm serious. I've finished vindaloos enough to think I'm ready to tackle a phaal one of these days. That Man Vs. Food guy would get knocked down unconscious by Prince's Extra Hot.

Tory had one small bite of the hot and was done, instantly. And see, the first three or four bites, it's not too lethal. What happens after those three or four bites shouldn't happen to anybody. Marie worked her way past the skin, where the hot paste is concentrated, and dug out the meat and still couldn't finish half a leg. I did slightly better, but this was not the same sort of life-affirming, every-corner-of-your-mouth-is-alive glorious air-punch of hot awesomeness, this was insanely firey and very painful. The chicken was good, oh it was so good, but it hurt too damn much. My lips felt like they were puckered up like the beast in the kissing booth at Six Flags' Monster Mansion and, abruptly, I retired. I went back to the restroom to wash any lingering Scovilles from my face. Speaking of Cure B-sides, as I did above, my mouth was the color of Robert Smith's, but I was not wearing lipstick. I rubbed Chap Stick on them and it felt like chalk. The next morning, Marie's mouth and mine were still chapped.

Unhappy and in unwelcome discomfort, I returned to the den, where my vanilla ice cream was waiting. This was, in point of fact, the best ice cream that I ever had. Maybe it was the exceptional circumstances, or maybe Pied Piper is just that good, but the next time that I get a hair up my butt to eat crazy lava chicken, I'll have the Piper on speed dial.

Then things got bad. Tory had pulled up a silly video on YouTube to show us. It was incredibly funny. I laughed so much that I teared up. My eyes and face started burning. I don't know how I got hot chicken death sauce near my eyes, but I did.

One of the funniest things ever seen in a movie is in the 1985 comedy Clue, in which Madeline Kahn, as Mrs. White, starts talking about how she once got so angry that there were "flames, flames" on the sides of her face. Up 'til that first Saturday in November, I didn't really know just how bad that might be for anybody.

It hurt, but it was good. I would not have missed this experience for the world. But heed the warnings. Us folk on the internet? We know what we are talking about. It is hotter than you think it is. Have ice cream handy.

Rotier's Restaurant and Hog Heaven, Nashville TN

2011-11-21T00:54:00.000-08:00

In the previous chapter, I wrote about two reasonably new restaurants in Nashville that we had not tried before this visit. This time around, a pair of considerably older restaurants that I have enjoyed before. I was visiting Music City long before Marie and I started blogging, after all. Plenty of favorites have come up in the mix.

Marie and I first visited Rotier's just after we got hitched and made our way to town, and again a few months later when we were passing through on our way to Kentucky and met up with Tory for a bite. I found the place thanks to its listing at Roadfood.com, and it certainly didn't disappoint. Design-wise, it reminds me of Coletta's in Memphis. It's dark inside and, before Tennessee banned indoor smoking in restaurants, you probably couldn't breathe very easily.

Rotier's opened in the mid-1940s and is still in family hands, grilling up some incredibly good burgers with a lovely feeling that they are doing it their own way. It's the best kind of hole in the wall, the one that locals have probably driven past dozens of times without ever noticing. With its back to the busy West End thoroughfare, it's simply invisible unless you happen to be on this side street and looking the right way.

I don't know that I'll ever order anything here except the hamburger. I like mine on French bread, but they'll give it to you on a bun or on toast if you ask. A couple of trips back, though, someone in our group had the roast beef and that has sold Marie, and she, in turn, recommended it to the rest of our group. While the baby slept, Tory, Brooke and Matt joined us for this early supper. Brooke and I each had burgers and everybody else dug in to the roast beef, which comes in a really thick gravy, and enjoyed a pile of sides. Everybody had either the fried zucchini, which is completely amazing, or the fried okra. Marie also ordered some broccoli, for some weird reason, when she could have had the fried pickle spears, which sounds much more sensible to me.

With more meals forthcoming, a little exercise was called for. We actually parked just a couple of minutes' walk away in Centennial Park, and went back to the cars to unpack the baby's stroller and then took a nice jaunt around the gorgeous park, where the Parthenon was all dolled up for some big event. The side of the gorgeous building was lit up in blue, with bubbles and fish projected onto it! It looked like the sort of shindig that always gets interrupted in Gotham City by supervillains and their gangs.

We also had a really disagreeable experience with a really talkative homeless guy trying to make friends with us. But, you know, cities. We outwalked him.

On the other side of the park, we came to a restaurant that I had visited ten years previously. It's a little barbecue place called Hog Heaven that mainly does takeaway, but also has a few wooden picnic tables for guests to eat there. The restaurant opened in 1986 and is staffed by a really goofy, fun-loving crew. At some point in the eighties, one of the young staffers, using that awful old computer paper that you might remember having little holes along each side to feed through, wrote up a hilarious sign asking for tips so that their band could go into the studio and record a cassette. The sign is still there, and occasionally baffles customers who think that it's meant to be taken seriously. "Nobody really makes cassettes any more, do they," people will ask, before giving advice about mp3s.

I had a pulled pork sandwich and a side of baked beans and while I was not blown away, this was a perfectly satisfying snack. The pork does not taste very smoky, but it is quite moist and full of flavor, with a really satisfying, chewy bark. I asked for the meat dry and had two teeny cups of sauce on the side to try them out. The regular hot sauce is a brown, spicy and sweet concoction typical of the Memphis style, and it complemented the pork very well. The white sauce looked a little pink under the harsh lighting, and had a bit more of a kick to it than any other white sauce that I have tried, but I really preferred the brown, and, after getting a good taste for both, ended up pouring the rest of the brown over my meat.

Everybody else overindulged and ordered a good bit more food than I did at Rotier's and passed on this meal. We'll call it their loss; Nashville is said to have many barbecue restaurants that can compete with the quality of this, but I enjoy it and hope that I don't wait a decade to stop by again.

Mas Tacos Por Favor and The Wild Cow, Nashville TN

2011-11-20T02:02:00.000-08:00

When we first told our friends that we were going to make a blog out of our hobby of traveling and eating at fun local places, our good buddy Brooke piped up with a suggestion in Nashville. She told us that we needed to try Mas Tacos, a food truck that has, in the nearly two years since she told us about it, found a brick-and-mortar base and has been serving up some ridiculously good Tennessee-styled takes on traditional Mexican dishes. We visited Nashville twice in 2010, but neither visit really coincided with a good time to go meet up with Mas Tacos, either the truck or the shop, during their limited hours.

Quite traveler-unfriendly, they are usually a weekday concern, and on weekends, they are only open for brunch on Saturday. Brooke is emphatic that we simply must come on a Friday evening, when they're open late selling fish tacos. The really great things that we enjoyed on the first Saturday of the month sold me; we have penciled in a Friday night visit for March so that we can try the tilapia.

We had a group of six plus the baby when we visited. Our daughter stayed home with my mother for the trip, but it still took two cars to transport Marie and me along with Brooke and Tory and their boyfriends Matt and Andrew. Our first planned stop, after we arrived in Nashville around 11.30 local time, was the legendary Prince's Hot Chicken Shack, but they open later on Saturdays than I thought. We set that aside and came back that way later in the evening; look for a chapter about that remarkable visit on Wednesday. Mas Tacos Por Favor is about four miles south of Prince's, through the dense commercial sprawl of what the locals term "East Nashville." It's really more sort of north, I'd say, but neighborhood traditions are weird things.

Teresa Mason's delightful old Winnebago is parked out front of the store, and I understand that one reason it's hard to track her down on the weekends is that she's usually booked for events and things and doesn't want to try being in two places at once quite yet. Since we knew that we had a very busy day of eating ahead of us, we all took it fairly easy here, just munching on one or two tacos each and enjoying a cup of tasty horchata.

The menu, written in colored chalk on blackboards mounted around the window inside, changes all the time here, based on whim and what ingredients are available. I picked two tacos, fried avocado and spicy carne molida, and Marie had pulled pork. Most of the tacos are topped with red cabbage, cilantro and onions, and a light drizzle of a creamy dill yogurt. It's a terrific, eclectic little mix of flavors, and served in a cozy, low-lighted, get-to-know-yer-neighbors space. I like the design and love the food. Brooke pointed out Ms. Mason to us as she rushed through; I was sorry that we didn't get the chance to speak. I certainly hope that we can make it back in March.

The second stop on our trip was just a hop, skip and a jump away on Eastland, and it was, similarly, packed and busy with a lunch crowd. It was also very, very smoky inside thanks to an awful lot of stuff being grilled in the back. About two years ago, a hip new multi-use development was constructed in front of a closed and deteriorating old retirement home, bringing some new life to this side of the neighborhood. Among the brand new restaurants to move in is The Wild Cow, a vegan place that has been winning all sorts of city awards along with a large and devoted clientele.

Marie and I still ate kind of small here. I ordered the first thing on the menu, the small green chile root salad, which confused me when I looked it up online after I didn't remember the name of it, and found a slightly different worded version of the same dish on their website's menu. It was very tasty, and had fresh lettuce, jicama, a heaping handful of crisp, roasted beets and pumpkin seeds tossed in a green chile "caesar"-styled dressing. Marie was interested in the side dishes and had the pineapple cole slaw, which she did not enjoy quite so much, and the excellent lentil stew.

Most of the others, still pacing themselves, just shared a large appetizer order of the restaurant's cashew dip, which is served with tortilla chips and fresh veggies. Andrew would be leaving the group after this meal to go to work, however, and so he dug in to a French Quarter Dip, which substitutes seitan and mushrooms for roast beef on a hoagie roll with creole-style seasonings, and had a side of spicy kale. He said that he enjoyed it, but the kale was the real standout. Andrew regretted having to work and missing out on the restaurant's excellent beer selections. They offer several high-gravity ales and stouts from good breweries, including the local boys at Yazoo.

Perhaps almost as interesting as the food was the soda that Marie ordered. I've not seen Bruce Cost's ginger ales before; they are unfiltered and require a little very gentle shaking to mix the ginger better before opening. I don't think the result is quite as appealing as my beloved Buffalo Rock, but it's still an extremely good ginger ale.

After this, we returned to Tory's house for a short break before going shopping at the local McKay Books, which is always a pleasure, and then resuming our little eating tour. These first two restaurants that we visited are quite new, but the next one on the agenda was a much older one, and one that Marie and I have loved for a few years already. More about that in tomorrow's chapter.

Outback Steakhouse, Atlanta GA

2011-11-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

Marie and I were invited to join some other local media to sample Outback Steakhouse's new menu items, including a line of steaks and chops grilled over wood that complement their successful "Seasoned and Seared" blend. It was nice to visit with our friends from Atlanta Foodies and meet some other area bloggers, including Exclusive Eats, Insatiable and Talking With Tami, who posts more frequently than most adults breathe. Poor Marie, sadly, had to contend with worse than usual traffic coming from Dunwoody, and missed the first couple of courses. Some good steak and desserts cheered her up a bit.

Our regular readers know that we rarely patron national chains of any type, preferring to learn the stories of small restaurants. I was reminded, however, that beyond the quality of the food, which, at Outback, is reasonably solid, there are still stories to tell. I was really fascinated to learn that the whole roll-out process of the "Wood-Fire Grilled" menu - just imagine a little TM there, as we are dealing with the corporate world in today's entry - has taken two years of testing, training and installing the new grills in close to a thousand stores across the continent. At the same time, Outback has embarked on a massive redesign of all of their stores, apparently the first face lift that many of these places have seen in twenty years. In a hobby where locals scrutinize, for example, the four months between the start-up and the crash landing of LeRoy's Fried Chicken, being taken through the two years it takes to roll out a new product line is actually quite intriguing.

We met with Dave Ellis, who came up from Tampa for the event and who has been with the company since its beginnings. He told us a little potted history of the chain and shared a few fun anecdotes. I enjoyed hearing about the development of the popular Bloomin' Onion appetizer, which required the help of a professor at Texas A&M to get a specific, spherical one-pound Spanish onion to grow under set conditions which could be duplicated at farms throughout the western states. Even with big, multi-national chains, there are funny stories to be told.

So they fed us. They fed us extremely well. They gave us small samples of both the classic "Seasoned & Seared" and the new "Wood-Fire Grilled" sirloins so that we could compare the taste. The original is made with a blend of seventeen spices, while the new has only six, and is cooked over oak wood. They were each quite good, although I did prefer the original, with its fuller flavor. The newer sirloin is just fine, but there's a fire in the classic's belly that the oak wood version, with its lighter spice, doesn't match.

That said, the light spice and wood grilling does go extremely well on some of the other menu items. One of the highlights was the pork chop, which was unbelievably tasty. It's served with a little cup of midly spicy orange marmalade and I could certainly see myself having that again down the road. We also sampled their California chicken salad, baby back ribs, an incredibly curious mahi-mahi dish topped with artichoke heats, sun-dried tomatoes and a lemon sauce, along with prime rib and the menu's highest point, a really good ribeye that uses a slightly different spice blend that mixes a little better with this cut.

I made an exception in our rule against professional publicity photographs, in part because my own photo of the mahi-mahi was horrible, and in part because this pic does a great job conveying just how downright peculiar this dish is. Works, though.

They finished us off with a pile of desserts, including a very rich and moist carrot cake, a cheesecake with raspberry sauce, and a really unusual chocolate waffle, served with a thick, house-made chocolate sauce and a big scoop of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream. I'm sure our long-term readers will appreciate that, now that I have identified the problem, I've broken my bad habit of using the word "decadent" to describe whatever fool dessert gets put in front of me, although the waffle came pretty close to warranting it. Outback's setup allows them to change out their dessert waffle specialties according to the season. Should I return when strawberry waffles are on the menu, I will have to try those.

Having said that, of course, Marie and I rarely ever visit national chains. Outback did a splendid job putting a human face on a corporate world, and showing off some very good food. I appreciated the chance to get to know them better. I'm not about to start calling the Hall of Fame Bowl anything other than the Hall of Fame Bowl no matter who sponsors it, but if you're on the road and desiring a good ribeye, Outback, in a very pleasant surprise, has shown itself to be a good option.

Outback invited us to enjoy an additional meal on them, so a few days later, we stopped by the store nearest us, on Barrett Parkway, in the company of our daughter to try them out. I ordered that celebrated Bloomin' Onion appetizer without thinking to ask whether either of the ladies wanted to share it. Never do this; that is far too much onion for one person to attempt on their own. Other than being forced, disagreeably, to waste about half of a perfectly good onion, we enjoyed ourselves. Marie and I split their largest ribeye, with the "Wood-Fire Grilled" seasoning and prep, with a small order of shrimp, and it was quite delicious, while the girlchild just had some soup and sides. Marie expressed a desire to come back once she is eating dairy again, so that she can enjoy one of those waffle desserts with ice cream. Reckon we'll do that. Probably not on a weekend night, though; this place gets ridiculously busy!

Country's Barbecue and more, Columbus, GA

2011-11-16T01:24:00.000-08:00

Cheryl had mentioned to us when Marie and I were in Columbus in September that she would be busy on the last weekend of October, and to try not to schedule a trip down that weekend. Indeed, we had originally planned to make our visit to Providence Canyon on the 22nd, but circumstances conspired against us and we ended up buying a car that day and coming down on the 29th, when, it turned out none of our other friends in the area were free, either. Fortunately, I've made just about enough trips to Columbus over the years not to get completely bewildered like I used to. That's just as well, because the directions that I had printed for this road trip only went as far as the two Alabama stops in the previous chapter.

I had promised Marie a trip to Country's after we set it aside last time, but we made a couple of other stops first. To begin with, we pulled into a Publix to pick up some twelve-packs of Buffalo Rock and Grapico, which we still can't get in Atlanta. Nor can we get any answers why the Publix stores down there can't ship 'em to the Publix stores up here. Truth be told, it's a little aggravating. Don't get me started on the lack of Blue Raspberry Crush up here.

After that, we did something pretty unusual for us. We visited a restaurant to get food for the next day. I'd read that Cafe le Rue offered some of the best gumbo in the state, among other treats. Since barbecue was on the evening agenda, I decided to just get an order for lunch the next day. The restaurant is small and cozy, a perfect place for date night, and they have a decently deep wine list. The gumbo reheated well, and it was terrific, really rich and mildly spicy. They even threw in a slice of French bread. I bet it's really something else served fresh. We'll have to try it again sometime.

So, onto Country's. For those of you who missed out, the timeline goes like this: my friend Matt introduced me to this incredibly popular local chain about ten years ago. Except for those times that I just went through on the way to Mobile, I think that I've eaten at one store or another on just about every visit since. I heard that Ronald Reagan had died while eating at the original location. I finally got down here with Marie last year, and she gave me a sweet earful about how much she loved it, and how she couldn't believe that I took so long to bring her to Columbus to try it. We were poised to visit again in September, but Ric and Maggi persuaded us to go to Black Cow instead, where Marie was not really thrilled with her meal. So, Country's was emphatically on the agenda when we returned last month. And Marie, love of my life, for whom we made this trip to Country's, decided that three barbecue sandwiches in a day had been plenty, and she wanted a veggie plate. Women!

So anyway, the Country's that we visited on this trip is the newest of the three in Columbus, where I'd only eaten once before. The building was erected in the late 1930s as a Greyhound station with a large interior diner. There's a lovely, curving art deco style to it that fans of this architecture need to see. In the 1950s, Greyhound apparently moved to a smaller location as part of the downsizing that left the wartime diners and cafeterias behind. The rival company Trailways moved into this facility, but I'm not sure whether they used the restaurant much. It was eventually shuttered and left in disrepair for a short time before Country's took it over in 1988. In one of the neatest feats of restaurant design around, the building actually incorporates an old bus which has been gutted and turned into a small secondary dining room. Kids love it. Speaking of kids, there were a heck of a lot of 'em around that evening, in costume. We were not long from being hugely inconvenienced by them.

But before we get to that, it's always worth praising Country's for their really excellent food and service. There's no room in the bus depot Country's for a bluegrass band like the one off exit 6, but there was a TV, so I could see Georgia squeak out that lovely and wonderful win over Florida. I suppose Marie's veggies were all right. I ordered the Saturday night special of a chopped chicken sandwich and a side of salad for $6.39 - I really, really like the fries here, but I figured that I needed some lettuce after everything else we'd eaten today - and, because I did not read the menu closely, was sad to see that the sandwich came drowned in a sweet brown sauce when I was looking forward to Country's mustard sauce instead. The server, who was awesome and sweet, replaced it. She actually told me that she'd "work some of our Country's magic for you." Country's was started, and is still co-owned, by a fellow named Jim Morpeth. Jim needs to identify that server and give her a bonus for coming up with that line.

Actually, following up the discussion in the previous chapter, the next time the road takes me to Columbus, I'd love to sit down with Jim and talk about his experience with chipped meat and mustard sauce. He may not have the older family connections that Chuck's in Opelika and The Smokey Pig here in Columbus share, but anybody who's built a popular colossus like this probably knows a thing or two. The trouble would be finding a time when Jim's actually not working his tail off and Country's isn't packed beyond capacity. I've eaten at these stores more than a dozen times, and I have never seen it such.

For dessert, I resolved that we would go to the other place that we put off visiting on our last trip down, Fountain City Coffee. When Ric lived in a small apartment nearby, he would often come here, and I recalled that they had a good selection of pastries and cookies. We left without stopping last time as the baby decided he wanted to get back in the car and sleep. This time, he let us know that he was really hungry, and I thought this would be a good place for Marie to nurse.

Even though we were within walking distance, we were in Country's lot, so, having tempted parking karma at least twice in October, I decided it best to burn the gas and move the car a little closer. However, we couldn't get as close as I'd hoped; Broadway was blocked off. I've seen this happen before, when the street is closed for a car show or something. So we detoured around it while the baby whimpered, and as we looped around past the Springer on 10th, we both felt that uptown parking was not going to happen, and we'd have to pull into a side street or that big hotel where Patrick Troughton died in '87 to nurse the baby. I was actually shocked when we found a spot on 10th in front of the CSU dorms, right around the corner from Fountain City.

Unfortunately, Fountain City really didn't come completely through for us. They were already sold out of desserts, except for gelato, and my memory of this place being as full of comfy couches and seating is flawed. There are indeed several chairs and tables, but the handful of larger, cushiony chairs for a nursing mom is smaller than I thought. Marie did find a place to nurse and enjoy a cup of tea, but we both joked that if only we knew a Columbus State undergraduate to let us into that dorm, the couches in the lobby looked really comfortable.

In its defense, I'm sure Fountain City is all kinds of awesome earlier in the day, before they sell out of pastries. They sell panini sandwiches here, and staff-mixed blends of coffee concoctions, and were probably the first place in town to offer wi-fi connections for their guests. They still sponsor an open mic night that has been getting a great turnout for years. The tea that Marie had and the Mexican Coca-Cola that I sipped could have come from anywhere, but Fountain City's wonderful service from such a great young staff made the visit as pleasant as could be.

Then we left, and the parking karma that we exhausted earlier in the month, sneaking away from Everybody's Pizza, and later from Hd1, caught up with us. All those costumed children that we saw earlier were participating in a fun run through the uptown streets. Broadway had been closed earlier, and, after we parked, the police shut down 10th.

We sat in the back seat and sang lullabies to the baby while pumpkins and Disney princesses jogged behind us. I'm restless and impatient by nature. Half an hour of that and I was apologizing to restaurants a hundred miles away for misusing their parking spaces. Remember, friends: car-karma can get you.