If you’ve lived in Atlanta for any length of time, you’ve heard of Rio Bravo. This isn’t a failed restaurant chain with one or two deeply oddball fans, like me and Shrimp Boats. Thousands of people loved Rio Bravo, which opened its first location in 1984. For a while, it was by leagues the best Tex-Mex in town. Continue reading “Ray’s Rio Bravo, Sandy Springs GA (CLOSED)”
Month: August 2015
Chicken Salad Chick, Kennesaw GA
So, my daughter. God bless her, she’s a teenager. Is she ever a teenager. Because on the one hand, she’s prone to push back against what we’d like her to do, and eat, and because on the other hand, she wants to eat where all her friends eat, she doesn’t often join us when we pick a place that sounds too weird. And by weird, we mean a Chinese place that doesn’t offer sweet and sour chicken with broccoli. Meryn Cadell once sang of a girl who longed for “the boy of your dreams who is the same boy in the dreams of all your friends.” My girl. Continue reading “Chicken Salad Chick, Kennesaw GA”
Bar-B-Q Hut, Heflin AL (CLOSED)
When Governor Bentley released the initial list of Alabama’s Barbecue Hall of Fame, I was very pleased to see some terrific old favorites of ours who made the cut (most especially the excellent Brooks Barbeque in Muscle Shoals, which everybody should visit), but as I looked over the list, the biggest standout to me was the Bar-B-Q Hut in Heflin. This was a huge surprise, because I’ve made the quick little detour off I-20 to Heflin a half-dozen times in the last five years, and was aware of the pretty good Marie’s BBQ House in the area. I even got behind their catering truck once! But I had no idea that there was another barbecue joint in that small town, especially one that opened as long ago as 1946! Continue reading “Bar-B-Q Hut, Heflin AL (CLOSED)”
The Rocket, Jacksonville AL
In our experience, quite a few old “drive-ins” all around the southeast offer barbecue on their menus, but almost every one of them emphasizes burgers and milkshakes, and possibly a little nostalgia in their architecture, more than they emphasize smoked pork. Then there’s The Rocket, which doesn’t look or feel like any drive-in that we’ve run into, and which is much more like a proper barbecue shack than anything else. It’s also phenomenally popular. It’s a tiny little building completely packed with people, and I was afraid we’d have to eat in the car until a table opened up at the last minute. Continue reading “The Rocket, Jacksonville AL”
Big Chief Drive-In, Glencoe AL
So, on this trip to Alabama, we took a quick break from barbecue to visit a terrific A-frame restaurant. The Big Chief is in the town of Glencoe, right outside Gadsden, and it was originally built in 1963 as a Jack’s Hamburgers – although this was not the same Jack’s as the large fast food chain with locations all around Alabama and southern Tennessee, and in the towns of Tallapoosa and Carrollton in west Georgia. This Jack’s was owned by Jack Locklear, and he had one store here and another in Fort Payne. I’ve not found any evidence that there were any Jack’s Hamburgers other than these two, but would love to be corrected on that point. Continue reading “Big Chief Drive-In, Glencoe AL”
Pruett’s BBQ & Catfish, Gadsden AL
For the second stop on our mini-tour, I picked the closest place to me on the Year of Alabama BBQ app that I had not previously visited: Pruett’s in Gadsden AL. It opened in 1976 and a wonderful blog called The Great North Alabama BBQ Quest paid them a visit in the spring of 2013. Sadly, this blog is no longer being updated; the writer moved back to Europe last year, but it is a terrific resource. Continue reading “Pruett’s BBQ & Catfish, Gadsden AL”
Ray’s Bar-B-Q, Atalla AL
I really got a kick out of how the Alabama Department of Tourism declared this to be “The Year of Alabama Barbecue,” and so I resolved to make one more swing through the state to sample some good chopped pork. I looked around for the best opportunity for a quick day trip with four or so places I’d not been before and home by sunset. I picked pretty well. One of the four was on the state’s list, and two more were on the inaugural edition of Governor Bentley’s Alabama Barbecue Hall of Fame, as announced in June. The newest of the four is thirty-nine years old. A lot of history on this drive, as you’ll see. Continue reading “Ray’s Bar-B-Q, Atalla AL”
Marie, Let's Eat! 