Would you believe that Randy and Kimberly finally got married? It’s only been a week, but we haven’t heard anything about them fighting over him taking her to an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet, so I choose to believe the honeymoon’s still on. Then again, he did write to let me know that he perceived a heck of a lot of Asian restaurants in Asheville, where they went, so who knows what they got up to.
Their ceremony was held on Red Top Mountain near Cartersville, and looking around for something to eat on the way brought up a restaurant in the small town of Emerson called Doug’s Place. This opened up a floodgate of forgotten memories, none of which, it turns out, really have anything to do with this very agreeable Southern-style meat-and-three. When I found a photo of Doug’s Place – the one on John Bickford’s very entertaining From My Table – I suddenly remembered that when I was a child, a chunk of Interstate 75 along this stretch was closed for a couple of years while the US Army Corps of Engineers was doing some sort of digging or reconstruction of Allatoona Lake. When my parents took me along for their monthly visit to see my grandparents in Fort Payne, we would exit early and drive up US 41 through Cartersville. On about three or four occasions, I swear that we stopped for breakfast around here, and wondered whether it might have been Doug’s Place.
It wasn’t – suspicion now lies on a Cartersville restaurant called Cody Jay’s which occupies a building that, thirty-odd years ago, was the home of a place called J.R.’s – but getting to the bottom of things was kind of fun. I first asked my mom whether she remembered what that place in Bartow County we would stop in the seventies was called. Unsurprisingly, since, to hear my mom tell it, whatever good times there ever were ended around the time Nixon got in trouble with the lib’rul media, and, perhaps not coincidentally, I was two, she didn’t remember any such thing. Mom carried Dentyne cinnamon-flavored chewing gum in her purse for the better part of fifteen years, but she thinks I’ve made up this story to confound her, because everybody knows that she hates chewing gum. Getting her to identify thirty year-old breakfast stops is like getting her to identify Godzilla films that were on channel 17 on a specific evening that my parents had friends over for pinochle when I was nine. She’s not very helpful with that, either.
Wherever we ate back then, it wasn’t Doug’s Place, but heaven knows I irritated two or three people trying to get to the bottom of it. Before this place became Doug’s about fifteen years back, it was apparently Morris’s, but the building itself dates to the 1890s. There are two small dining rooms and a large, screened porch to wait for a table, and some really delicious southern food inside.
We had an early lunch, arriving at Doug’s in between rushes. There were only a couple of recently bussed tables available when we arrived, and a long line developed while we ate. The interior of the restaurant is quite small, and it’s not possible to move around to the restroom or cash register without slightly jostling other guests.
The food is mostly quite terrific, although sadly, yet again, everybody else at the table enjoyed a better entree than me. I had the country fried steak with gravy, and I wouldn’t call it bad, but I certainly wasn’t in the mood for it after having a bite of Marie’s wonderful fried chicken, and one of the truly excellent chicken livers that Neal ordered. He concluded that these livers were even better than those at Vittles, which he enjoys more than me, and I had to agree. My daughter inhaled her gumbo, leaving me unable to comment on its quality, but I imagine that it must have been pretty good for her to down that much of it so quickly.
For sides, Marie enjoyed a small cup of broccoli and cheese soup. Neal and I each had baked beans which were quite good and I also had some delicious fried green tomatoes. Each of us also ordered the creamed corn. I would not call it great – Bear’s Den in Macon cooks up much better and much creamier – but I was still quite pleased. If I had taken my sides with a different entree, it would have been a superb meal rather than merely a very good one.
I am surprised that Doug’s Place has managed to stay so far off the radar of people who enjoy this kind of food. Obviously the locals enjoy it and with great reason, but this is quite genuinely the sort of thing that should attract a much larger crowd of travelers who love southern cooking, meat-and-threes, or any unique roadfood destinations. I noticed that the restaurant did post an article from Southern Living where they got a little praise, but doing what they do as well as this, there should be articles from forty different magazines and regular appearances on The Food Network. For now, we’ll call it one of the region’s best-kept secrets.
Marie, Let's Eat! 