Hd1, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

Marie and I found a great way to get stuck in traffic. We went down to Poncey-Highlands to try Richard Blais’s new hot dog place around the time that the Little Five Points Halloween parade was wrapping up. Getting there wasn’t hard, and parking, for perhaps the only time in Hd1’s short, popular life, was no trouble at all. Going home, however, now that was a headache.

But before we joined that long line of cars attempting to move out of town, we enjoyed some pretty good dogs, and some really good fries, at the latest intown eatery aimed at people half our age. It really was a curious visual experience. Like Flip Burger Boutique, the music is entirely too loud to enjoy conversations, and there are elegantly-framed wide-screen TVs behind the bar playing music videos that don’t match the pulsing, robot techno above us. Late nights, they have a DJ. Well, when I was in my twenties, I enjoyed yelling at my friends above the soundtrack of Yakitori Den-Chan in Buckhead. It’s lost its charm. I did enjoy wondering what in the world was on the TV. I think it might have been clips from the film Velvet Goldmine before it all dissolved in a solarized wash of pink pastel, like a bad acid dream. The design is fussy, the seats are uncomfortable and the hot dogs are pretty good.

We split an order of waffle fries, which were completely delicious to start with even before they poured a wonderful, thin maple syrup all over them. I can definitely see myself stopping by to get an order of these fries to go.

The hot dogs were certainly good, but really, my favorite three dog places in the region – America’s Top Dog, Barkers and Brandi’s – have it all over these. They’ve got nothing to fear from Blais. That’s just because those guys are that good, and not because these are in any way lacking. The meat is really good, and I liked the toppings. Marie ordered, if you can stand the cooler-than-you list, a fennel sausage dog with San Marzano ketchup (no Heinz here, of course), fontina and grilled radicchio. I had the red haute dog, which came with brisket chili, pepper jack “foam” and Vidalia onions.

It’s good, but we’re clearly not the target audience any longer, and America’s Top Dog is better. It’s been too long since we’ve indulged over there, anyway.

After supper, we risked the wrath of the parking gods for a quick ten-minute hop down to Atlanta Cupcake Factory and back. We’ve really pushed our luck doing this lately; I think we’ll quit before our parking lot karma runs out. There, we briefly commiserated with the owner, who prepared too many cupcakes on a day that many of her regulars would be unlikely to risk the Halloween parade traffic to visit.

Her regulars obviously are onto a good thing. Marie bought cupcakes for us to take home and share with our daughter. They were really tasty and light, and the time we spent drumming our fingers waiting for traffic on Freedom Parkway to clear move was made worse knowing that we had those desserts in the back seat, and were anxious to try them. They were worth the wait.

Panorama Orchards, Ellijay GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about apples from the Panorama Orchards. Grant and I ran across this family farm operation last year when we picked them essentially at random from the multiple apple vendors along the route to Ellijay to eat barbecue. We were only vaguely aware at the time that we were going up on the day of the apple festival there. It was only through sheer good luck that we arrived before the crush of traffic.

Ordinarily I would be all about the apple festival. Who wouldn’t want to try over a dozen varieties of apple, along with pies and breads and cider and all the other fun festival treats? There is also an antique car show and more crafts vendors than any right-thinking person could stand. Sadly, the highway that people have to use to get there would need to be about three lanes wider to keep the traffic moving. As we drove home from our early shopping and lunch, the crush of crawling cars in the oncoming lanes made us vow never to go to the apple festival unless somehow cars were not involved. Which is kind of sad, because quite a few people seem to think it’s worth the abysmal traffic to get there. Mind you, nearly all of them come from Atlanta, which has traffic that only Californians, New Yorkers, and D.C. residents can diss.

But I was talking about Panorama Orchards, just one business among the many in the area, which has captured our loyalty with the really excellent product they offer. Although there is a possibility that we might go to Walker’s Fried Pies & Barbecue for a little variety.

There really isn’t a way to get a good photo of the place, and so the terrible pictures that I took were discarded. There are too many people parking and walking around the front doors. Hey, they need to get apples too. Inside the place you pass through the baked goods and dried fruit and preserves first, then pass the testing table. That has a really generous selection of stuff on it, including some really impressive apple cider that I yearned to chug by the gallon, and some apple salsa that captured Grant’s heart. I got some of each to bring back. There is also ice cream, old-fashioned candy, and more preserves.

But of course the main feature is the apples. There are people in the back who clearly spend their whole day restocking. They usually have about 6 varieties to choose from at a time, depending on what is ready for picking, and there are endless samples all over the place. There really is no way to leave the place without having put at least one thing into your cart that wasn’t planned for, unless you walk through with your hands in your pockets and your mouth clamped shut. And who could enjoy life that way?

I bought two half-pecks each of Granny Smith and Mutsu, and a full peck of Fuji because that’s what the family likes. I have had an apple nearly every day since our trip. Yum.

Davis Bar-B-Que, Jasper GA

I thought that I had made a very important discovery at Jasper’s Davis Bar-B-Que – well, important in terms of looking for tradition and history in preparing food, anyway – but I was mistaken. I actually found just a fun and very tasty curiosity.

Longtime readers may recall that I’ve stumbled upon some very similar sauces and preparation styles among some barbecue shacks in Atlanta’s western suburbs. Not, apparently, highlighted by any other bloggers – and not, flatly, followed up by me the way that I should – there is a small regional tradition of serving chopped pork swimming and drowning in a thin, black-to-red sauce particular to these restaurants. Places known to serve it this way include Wallace in Austell, Johnny’s in Powder Springs, and Briar Patch in Hiram. They all send it out drowned in the thin sauce, and they all offer floppy hand-cut fries, and they all have a powerful, spicy mustard sauce on the table, which you can only use effectively if you order the meat dry. I have commented on the similarity, and I have noted that another place in the region, Hudson Hickory House, is said to offer something similar, and I have intended to go out to Douglasville and learn a little more about where this originated.

Thinking this just a western-suburb specialty, I was quite surprised to get an incredibly similar plate of chopped pork up in Jasper. Davis Bar-B-Que is located about halfway between the end of I-575 and the retail-packed traffic light of Jasper’s commercial strip, nowhere near the home base of this dish, yet here was my meat, swimming in a blacker-than-red but just as thin and very similar tasting sauce. There was a bottle of pistol-packing mustard. The fries weren’t quite so floppy here, mind.

Questions needed to be asked.

Davis Bar-B-Que is located just about a mile from the main road, behind and alongside a church, across from that church’s cemetery. From the front porch of this faux antebellum house, guests can look out across the graveyard and see the rolling mountains of Pickens and Dawson Counties. In October, it is a gorgeous and amazing sight.

The house was built in the 1960s as the home of Antebellum House Furniture, makers and distributors of Davis Round Tables. After a few decades, the family elected to enter the restaurant business instead, turning the old showroom into a dining room. The building was severely damaged during a tornado some years ago, and closed for a time as it was rebuilt from a two-story house, as depicted in an illustration on the menu, into the one-story property that it is today. There are photographs in a frame near the door showing the reconstruction.

The sauce turned out not to be a very old family recipe that made its way into the foothills of the north Georgia mountains. I mentioned, diplomatically, I hope, that it reminded me of the sauce at Wallace. It turns out that Davis’s is a deliberate homage. As Wallace served the family’s preferred style barbecue, they set out attempting to match their signature sauce and presentation. The prices, like the ones at Wallace, are great, too. A whole pile of pork, stew and a second side comes to just $7.30.

I think that, if you’re a guest in your early forties or late thirties, it’s impossible to eat at any of these places without the old ABC Saturday morning jingle about Louie the Lifeguard and not drowning your food running through your head. It might not be to everybody’s taste, and it might be more sauce than this meat really needs, but it’s all good, and certainly worth looking into. I am glad that we stopped by. We learned a little something, after all.

Walker’s Fried Pies and BBQ, Ellijay GA

We try to make our way up to Ellijay each October, but not on one of the weekends that Gilmer County goes tourist-mad with the apple festival. The I-575/GA-515 artery up through Ellijay and Blue Ridge will give travelers a gorgeous drive, but it is not really built for the incredible volume that comes that way during the festival, resulting in a big logjam. So, once the madness had faded, we drove up to get some apples at Panorama, about which more next time, and then went looking for barbecue.

I had a mind to visit two places in Ellijay. Poole’s, we learned last year, was remarkably reliable and wonderful, but we wanted to try a couple of new places. Unfortunately, one of them, Wolf Creek Canyon, had moved without anybody notifying Urbanspoon of their new address or hanging a sign in the window of their abandoned storefront on Main Street.

The other, providing more evidence for my belief that Urbanspoon means a whole lot less to both restaurant owners and potential customers the further you get from a major population center, was not listed in Urbanspoon at all, despite being in business since 1996. Walker’s Fried Pies and BBQ is just a hop and a skip east of Ellijay along GA-52. That it’s avoiding internet notice is a blasted shame, because they’re serving up some pretty good food here.

The Walker family no longer owns this business, although the building is still theirs’, and the interior is decorated with many stories and photographs about their family. The business is now run by Betty and Jerry Clonts, who smoke their meat over hickory wood. The result is only a little moist and quite flavorful. Marie and I each had chopped pork, although word in the community seems to favor the beef here. Two other parties came through while we were here, and only one of the people in the groups ordered pork instead of beef. They also offer ribs, chicken, turkey and pork tenderloin.

There are two sauces on the table. The hotter sauce is an orange homemade approximation of something like Texas Pete, and the other is a sweet, brown Memphis-style. It was just sweet enough for Marie and I both to find it agreeable. The sides are the usual suspects: beans, potato salad, slaw and Brunswick stew, although sadly, like some of the less agreeable joints in suburban Atlanta, the stew here is only available for a fifty-cent upcharge.

Perhaps the real selling point here is the selection of desserts. Walker’s makes fresh fried pies in six flavors – apple, peach, cherry, strawberry, coconut and chocolate – along with funnel cakes and fried Oreos. Marie ordered an apple pie as a side for her sandwich and was incredibly pleased. These pies are just fantastic.

I’m not certain why Walker’s has been hiding from internet travelers and barbecue bloggers for so long, but I hope they won’t stay a secret any longer. This is a good place, and certainly worth a visit when visiting in this gorgeous part of the country.

Kitsch’n 155, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

I first read about Kitsch’n 155 back in the summer when the excellent Tomorrow’s News Today blog did a really encouraging preview of the place. I don’t have quite the love of silly ’60s kitsch that I once did – Marie and I, finding less of value in possessions of late, seem to be decluttering down to a zero point of stark austerity to compensate for the unbelievable clutter that comes with a baby – but certain design elements of this retro style are still incredibly appealing. I love clocks and ceiling fixtures with all those silly antenna-like appendages, and the jaunty “kitsch” font – I’m not sure what it is called – that invariably accompanies photo books about the silly 1950s and 1960s found objects that inform the style.

In their report, Tomorrow’s News Today also linked to a favorite site of mine, Not Fooling Anybody, a glorious site that has been promising updates for ages and ages. It’s become so much a part of our road tripping vocabulary that whenever we see a distinctive, vintage fast food building that has been retrofitted to become some other business, we point it out and say “Not fooling anybody!” One fantastic example, just down the road from us, is Dive Shop on Sandy Plains Road, which clearly used to be a Taco Bell. It’s actually about three doors down from a former Del Taco, known to area residents in the late ’80s as “The Murder Del Taco,” which later became a breakfast and meat-and-three place called Joyful Diner. We were sad to see that diner close.

I mention this because owners Randy and Lisa Stewart, serendipity on their side, found a terrific location for their restaurant. It’s the former Athens Pizza Express on Clairmont, which, of course, used to be an Arby’s. A lot of garish paint later, and they are cooking up some mean burgers. Ten essential Atlanta burger joints. Does that sound like a good chapter for a first-of-the-month entry? Maybe in January.

David had driven past this place a few months back and thought, correctly, that I’d like to see it. He and I actually had other lunch plans a couple of Thursdays back, but we were over at the Book Nook on North Druid Hills and I suggested we stop by and try this place instead. The goal here is classic American comfort food, done extremely well. They’re doing all the expected things like getting their meat from local farmers (Coleman and Creekstone) and cutting their fries fresh. Nevertheless, I mused, as we were waiting for our orders, that I probably should have ordered the day’s special, which was cod with two sides. Priced at $9.50, it’s a better value than a cheeseburger with just one side. That was before I had a bite of the cheeseburger, which was even better than I thought it could be. Marie needs to try one of these; I’m not sure that they aren’t even better than Farm Burger.

David had the grown-up grilled cheese, served with bacon, tomatoes and onions, and said that it was quite good. He also had a cup of chili which was better than any chili that I’ve sampled in ages. I really liked the touch of adding fresh jalapenos for maximum punch. I declined to ask them to add jalapenos to my burger, incorrectly thinking that they’d just be the far less tasty canned ones. David figured that he’d rather pass on the peppers once he saw them on his chili and asked whether I wanted them. Despite my burger being a gigantic, sloppy mess already, I found room.

The one sour note was the extremely high prices for bottled sodas and, in turn, ice cream drinks. After already spending $10 for a burger and fries, $2.50’s just feels far too much to pay for a bottle of Red Rock or Cheerwine, although, sadly, a few days later, I ran into another new restaurant that charges even more for a glass bottle of a small-market soda. I did think about getting a float when I finished and had a bit of a sweet tooth, but I couldn’t justify the cost. For five bucks, I could make many Cheerwine floats at home.

Fortunately, David had a mind to spend some money at Wuxtry, and there was a coffee shop right next door. I found my dessert – an iced cookies and cream frappe, served with an Oreo – and was perfectly pleased to enjoy something that I can’t make at home, for about a dollar less. ChocoLaté Coffee reminds me in the best possible way of Jittery Joe’s in Athens, with lots of comfortable couches and a wonderful, relaxed vibe with friendly servers having a great time at work. Certainly a fine day’s outing, I think.

Pino Gelato and Sugar Cakes, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about a fun little trip to the Marietta square with the kids. With desserts, of course. I was actually in the mood for cakes and tea, but unfortunately the place I would have gone, which, hopefully, I will get to write about later, was not available since they are closed on Sunday.

I mention that tea shop because it is very likely we would not have gone for gelato if I hadn’t wanted to check out the other place. I could have sworn the restaurant was open, but it turns out that was just the antique store connected to the place. Pino Gelato shares the building as well. It is really an all-purpose sort of place – get cakes and tea, do a little shopping, and then close with ice cream. In our case, however, we just got the gelato. We were the only customers, since it was a slightly chilly day, but the server was helpful and pleasant. There are a dozen or so locations for this small chain, many tucked into other businesses or places like airports, but there are some stand-alone locations.

After starting out our day with dessert, we went to get lunch at Sugar Cakes. On the way we found that the Farmer’s Market that usually populates the Marietta Square on Saturdays was also present, though in somewhat more compact size, on Sunday; I mention this because I got some tea after all! There was a vendor with samples of his products, and I wound up buying a really tasty chamomile-rooibos-mint blend.

Sugar Cakes was incredibly crowded, with diners spilling out into the tables on the sidewalk and a line out the door. Despite the demand, the staff somehow managed not to to seem harried or impatient. However, due to the noise and the lack of outside tables I did decide that we should take our food home rather than subject the baby to such massive overstimulation.

As a result, I have no photos of what we ate, such as the really flavorful and decadent tomato soup, so have a look at these delectable baked goods instead. I definitely plan to eat some of them when I am back on dairy and can have something with that much butter in the dough! A slice of the quiche that some of the other diners appeared to be enjoying tremendously wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Southern Kitchen, New Market VA

(Honeymoon flashback: In July 2009, Marie and I took a road trip up to Montreal and back, enjoying some really terrific meals over our ten-day expedition. I’ve selected some of those great restaurants, and, on the first day of the month, we have been telling you about them.)

A couple of weeks ago, when I wrote about Old Clinton Bar-B-Q, I had cause to mention a wonderful book by John T. Edge called Southern Belly. If you enjoy the hobby of road tripping and eating and loving our culture, then you definitely need to buy this book! Our friends CB and Elizabeth gave it to us along with some other great books as a wedding present, and when I was mapping out our trip, I consulted both the first print edition of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives and Southern Belly for inspiration about where we should stop. I found Southern Kitchen in New Market within its pages, and realized that the best way to get from Baltimore to Asheville would take us right by it.

We left Baltimore in the late morning, having no idea what would befall us on the northern “beltway” around Washington, D.C. As everybody who has ever fought around this monster trying to get to I-66 on the west side of town knows, it is a complete logjam whenever the sun is up. We grumbled and scowled through what felt like hours of gridlock before we finally got a move on. I-66 runs through very pretty country before reaching I-81. Of course, looking at Google Maps with hindsight, we probably should have cut off a mammoth corner by taking US-231 straight to New Market. I bet there’s plenty of lovely country that way, too.

The restaurant is not far at all from the interstate, in a small, lovably old town called New Market. The sign is unmissable, a gorgeous, gigantic neon contraption erected shortly after the current owner’s parents opened the place in 1957. It’s a classic southern diner, with funny old formica tabletops and a menu full of meat-and-three staples, done right and done well.

I had country ham, served with a slice of pineapple, and stewed tomatoes, and really liked them both a lot. Marie had fried chicken that was simply out of this world, although she was less taken by the side of corn, which didn’t taste to either of us like it was all that fresh. Still, the chicken more than made up for it. But the real winner here was the bowl of peanut soup that I had before my ham arrived. I had never had this before, and I don’t know that I’ve seen it on a menu since, as it apparently is a specialty local to Virginia. It was thick and creamy and completely wonderful. I would love to have this again one day, and hope that wherever I do find it, it is as good as this was.

Now, while I did remember to order peanut soup from this place based on Edge’s recommendation, I unwittingly let my poor memory bring out the grouchy in our server. I recalled that, as the book was laid out, the page opposite the entry for New Market’s Southern Kitchen talked about the difference between Virginia Brunswick stew and Georgia Brunswick stew, with a local dismissing our take as being more like chili, and at least people in Kentucky have the decency to call their similar concoction burgoo instead of pilfering the name of their thick brew.

Misremembering, I took this to mean that I could try the Virginia style here at Southern Kitchen. I mentioned to our server that I had thought that they served stew, but did not see it on the menu. She told me that they did not. I apologized, and thought that I read somewhere that they did. “Well, you read wrong,” she said, curtly. Turns out she was correct, but I found the sassiness disagreeable. We made sure to compliment all the rest of the food and thank her for an excellent meal.

I would like very much to spend some time in Virginia getting to the bottom of the differences between our supposed styles. I have mentioned before that the thick, gooey stew at Sprayberry’s Barbecue in Newnan is said to be more akin to the Virginia standard, but there are so many other varieties of stew at so many other restaurants that I really would not agree that there’s a consistent Georgia (or Glynn County) style. Whether you’re talking about the chicken and tomato-heavy mix at Harold’s in Atlanta, Speedi-Pig in Fayetteville and Turn Around in Tallapoosa, or the vegetable soup proxy at Vandy’s in Statesboro or the creamed corn base of Zeb’s near Danielsville or any of the dozens in between, there’s a whole book to be written on the many ways that Georgians do it. I wish that I had read a little more closely, and planned to stop somewhere else off I-81 and find the real Virginia thayng.

This wraps up our Honeymoon Flashback series a little earlier than planned! I had intended to tell you next month about the snack that we enjoyed a few hours further down the road at a Tastee-Freez in Chilhowie, Virginia, but it has since closed, as has the place where we had dinner that evening, Fiddlin Pig in Asheville. The following day, we had a light lunch at Asheville’s Soda Fountain at Woolworth Walk, and an early supper at Knoxville’s Pizza Palace, both of which later got chapters of their own when we revisited them.

At any rate, it was certainly fun to look back at the great places that we enjoyed on our honeymoon. It really was a remarkably good road trip, and perhaps one day we’ll get to undertake something similarly huge. For the time being, we are sticking to the southeast, and there’s plenty more good eating to tell you about.