So Marie and I have been thinking for a good while about eating better, and enjoying what we eat more. Inspired by Calvin Trillin’s remarkably entertaining Tummy Trilogy (which I reviewed here and which I thunderously recommend you all purchase before the weekend’s out), I’ve decided to do a little better job documenting our travels and finds.
That said, we started today by having lunch at The Red Eyed Mule in Marietta. This is a little hole-in-the-wall with a small menu of breakfast and burgers that opened on January 19th. I heard about it from the report at Atlanta Cuisine and it’s really just a hop, skip and a jump from us, on the other side of I-75. It’s on the Church Street Extension, in a small building between Runaround Sue’s and Elizabeth Feed & Seed.
The really neat thing is that the building has been there for a really long time, and was most recently used as a storage shed by Runaround Sue’s. It was rebuilt in the 1930s after a tractor-trailer ran through it; at the time, it was… well, a “speakeasy” isn’t entirely accurate, but it was a place people could go to discreetly avail themselves of some liquor. The feed & seed next door is very old indeed; the business dates back to the Civil War although they’ve relocated several times. The current location is equidistant from Atlanta, Woodstock, Cartersville and Douglasville by old roads.
They have a small lunch menu of four different burgers on Texas toast, and we were very pleased with ours.
Marie also got a cup of white bean soup, which was served a little hotter than I prefer, but I really enjoyed it when it cooled enough. It’s served with two small cornbread muffins.
The burgers were very good, and I love that they’re served on Texas toast. We each just had the simple burger-with-garden option, but they have a couple of interesting varieties available as well. Any place that serves burgers with fried eggs gets thumbs-up from me. I like the burgers better than Cheeseburger Bobby’s, which we enjoy hugely, and where we usually go for a quick burger in the evening. That’s actually the only strike against Red Eyed Mule. Since they close at 2 and are not open Sundays, it really limits the opportunities we have to visit. But I hope one or both of us can get back there soon.
Other blog posts about The Red Eyed Mule:
A Hamburger Today (Mar 13 2012)
The Quest for the Perfect Burger (Mar 31 2012)
Marie, Let's Eat! 
Oh, dear. You specifically went looking for our very first chapter, didn’t you? Well, we got better. Forget that you ever saw this and read our 2013 revisit of this restaurant instead.
Actually, it’s the third chapter, about European Deli in Athens, that really stinks. That one you should definitely skip.