For our next stop in Huntsville, we drove with our friend Helen just a few miles down the road to check out the city’s oldest restaurant. While Big Spring Cafe has only (heh, only) been in its present location on Governors since 1970, the restaurant originally opened downtown in 1928. It is a much-loved old greasy spoon, and it serves a pretty darn good hamburger. It’s on at least its fourth owner, and I don’t believe that it’s ever stayed in the same family’s hands for more than a couple of decades, but considering the difficulty in keeping a restaurant open for even a few months, I believe that any restaurant with this kind of history, even one with as many asterisks as this one has, deserves a round of applause for making it for so long. Continue reading “Big Spring Cafe, Huntsville AL”
Month: April 2016
Stanlieo’s Sub Villa, Huntsville AL
Our good friend Helen complains that she is overweight, and that, instead of a T-shirt that reads “Body By Jake,” she needs one that reads “Body By Stanlieo’s.” She protests that when she went to college, she and her friends were regulars at this iconic sandwich shop, and that too many of their Kitchen Sink sandwiches are what did her in. Naturally, I had to try one of these. Continue reading “Stanlieo’s Sub Villa, Huntsville AL”
C.F. Penn Hamburgers, Decatur AL
For the second stop on our trip, I wanted to visit the last remaining location of C.F. Penn Hamburgers, a very old chain that started selling slugburgers in the 1920s and grew to three or more locations in north central Alabama. A couple of my blogging buddies had visited the old storefront in Decatur, not, I must clarify, with glowingly positive reviews, but vintage places like this just should not be missed. Continue reading “C.F. Penn Hamburgers, Decatur AL”
Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, Decatur AL
Not for the first time, I was forced to consider the odd discrepancy between a phalanx of awards from major cooking competitions and the supposed awesomeness of what the winners of these competitions serve in their restaurants. Either the two are not anywhere close to being the same, or the judges of these competitions have an entirely different set of criteria than I do for what makes good barbecue. Of course, the written word often doesn’t have any nuance whatsoever, and I’m not saying that I’ve ever had a bad meal at a restaurant with one of those larger-than-a-child Memphis in May trophies, but I sure have had better. Continue reading “Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q, Decatur AL”
Silver Skillet, Atlanta GA (take two)
Every once in a while, I have treated myself to breakfast at the wonderful Silver Skillet, a sixty year-old diner on 14th Street in midtown Atlanta. In 2010, I wrote about the place, and, as we’ve been spending time and money at Atlanta’s older restaurants lately, I figured we should go back, and have lunch. That, I’ve never done before. Continue reading “Silver Skillet, Atlanta GA (take two)”
Marinated Flank Steak with Smiley-Face Potatoes
(Marie made an interesting supper the other night. It was not a complete success, but at least one of the children adored it.)
This is about two things, because neither is really enough on its own. I really like this marinade for flank steak, and the girlchild had fallen in love with this recipe for smiley face potatoes. Continue reading “Marinated Flank Steak with Smiley-Face Potatoes”
Varuni Napoli, Atlanta GA
My friend Mike, who lives in Florida and writes the very good food blog Sweet Tea & Bourbon, was finally in Atlanta at a time when it was convenient for us to meet. We’d missed each other a time or three before. On one instance, he rang to see whether I wanted to do lunch about an hour after my daughter had her wisdom teeth pulled. I looked at the poor kid, sacked out on the couch with her mouth full of cotton, doped so high on painkillers that she couldn’t count beyond her fingers without falling asleep, and decided that while I might not be the best parent in town, at least I knew that it would be wrong to drive to Buford Highway for some Sichuan cooking with my kid in that state. Continue reading “Varuni Napoli, Atlanta GA”
Marie, Let's Eat! 