Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and ADD Drug, Athens GA

I got stymied for the umpteenth time with this one place that I wanted to eat in Athens. Let’s not go into it now. Maybe the time after next.

Anyway, on one of my previous trips to town, I noticed that a big sports bar was going in the space near the Morton that had previously been home to that tapas place. Actually, I don’t think that it registered then as a sports bar; I just saw that it was a taco place. I’ve always got time for a taco place, but I somehow wonder whether Athens is large enough to have room for a new one. In college towns, you occasionally see a little friction between established restaurants with a lot of history, the fun and trendy new places, and the out-of-town interlopers who come in and suck business away, particularly downtown. Fuzzy’s is definitely in the latter category. It’s a chain from Texas with, at the time of writing, forty-eight locations in ten states, all of which have cropped up since 2005. The Athens store is their first in the southeast; a second, in Charlotte, is due to open in the spring. Continue reading “Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and ADD Drug, Athens GA” →

Dixie Freeze, South Pittsburg TN

For many, many years, I have told myself that one of these days, I was going to go visit Nashville and take US-41 to get there. Last weekend, Marie and I finally did this, taking the baby and the teenage girlchild along for a very, very long trek up to Nashville that let us see some amazing scenery and lovely places. I had it in mind to stop at every single barbecue joint along the way, expecting to find a few. In the end, we only saw three, all in the Nashville suburbs, thereby putting a crimp in my plan to scale the Urbanspoon Tennessee rankings. More about that in tomorrow’s chapter. Continue reading “Dixie Freeze, South Pittsburg TN” →

Village Burger, Dunwoody GA

Sometimes, a restaurant will show up featured on the much-loved Roadfood.com and I will have no idea why. So it is with this fairly new little place in Dunwoody, Village Burger, that opened about a year and a half ago. It is quite good and just a fantastic place to kick back and enjoy the weather and the company of a wonderful family like the one I’m lucky to have, but it’s far too new to have become a legend and it’s much more of a neighborhood hangout than a place to hunt down from miles away. Continue reading “Village Burger, Dunwoody GA” →

The Kingsman Restaurant, Cayce SC

For the second time in an afternoon, the road took us to one of the meals that John T. Edge spotlighted in his famous article, “100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die”. Edge, whom I have mentioned here previously as the Professor Emeritus of Eating Real Good at the University of Mississippi, really loves pimento cheeseburgers, and spent a mouth-watering chapter of his essential book Hamburgers & Fries waxing eloquently about them. So to have just this one burger at a lovely old place called the Kingsman singled out for that article, that sounded to me like a burger that needed a visit. Continue reading “The Kingsman Restaurant, Cayce SC” →

The Beacon, Spartanburg SC (take two)

When we first visited the Beacon in February of last year, we were a bit overwhelmed by just how huge, wild and chaotic it was, and that’s despite very old familiarity with Atlanta’s similar Varsity. The spectacle of the Beacon makes for a real experience, and we could not wait to get back and give it another try. Continue reading “The Beacon, Spartanburg SC (take two)” →

Northgate Soda Shop, Greenville SC

In February of last year, Marie and I took a fantastic day trip to Charlotte and back. We took I-20 and I-77 there and I-85 back, stopping at eight places. We had such a good time that we wanted to repeat the experience a year later. I made some modifications and alterations, and we didn’t go quite as far as Charlotte, deciding instead to connect Spartanburg and Columbia via US 176. And we did the trip in reverse, starting in Greenville. So about 520 miles instead of 590. Continue reading “Northgate Soda Shop, Greenville SC” →

Lucky’s Burgers and Brew, Roswell GA

Marie’s brother Karl was in town a couple of Saturdays ago and in the mood for a burger. I don’t know that Marie and I were being the best of hosts by not taking him to a reliable favorite instead of taking the chance on something untried, but we wanted to visit someplace new for our blog and so passed on a trip to Farm Burger or something excellent like that, and instead looked on Urbanspoon for the highest-ranked burger joint in Atlanta within a reasonable drive where we had not visited. Continue reading “Lucky’s Burgers and Brew, Roswell GA” →