On our most recent trip to Athens, Marie and I split up the eating duties so that we could visit several restaurants and have small meals at each. It’s easier, she put it, on the budget and on the buttons. She enjoyed a very nice lunch at Last Resort while I sipped water and had a couple of nibbles, and then we went up Clayton to Bizarro Wuxtry to visit and pick up a few comics. After a short time, we needed to think about going back to Atlanta and retrieving the children, so we went over to Transmetropolitan for a snack. Of course, a snack at Transmetropolitan is twice the meal at any other place. These slices are huge! Continue reading “Transmetropolitan, Athens GA”
Category: athens
The Last Resort Grill, Athens GA
I have loved Last Resort Grill for years. Some time before Marie and I started the food blog, I wrote up what would prove to be one of its antecedents on my LiveJournal, back when I was using that service for more than, basically, announcing new entries in my other blogs. In 2007, my little feature Twenty Southeastern Restaurants You Must Try Before You Die – actually only eighteen now, as two of them have closed – proved to be a little popular and got me thinking about expanding my food world. It’s certainly a very dated list; compiled today, I would certainly not include Gold Star Chili or Five Guys or Sticky Fingers. But tastes change. The point is, I have long considered Last Resort to be a destination restaurant, and Marie and I try to visit once a year or so, on those increasingly rare occasions that we’re actually in Athens at the same time. Continue reading “The Last Resort Grill, Athens GA”
Bill’s Bar-B-Q, Hull GA
I have totally done Bill’s an awful disservice. I ate there once, maybe twice, back in 1993 or 1994, and I decided that I liked other, nearby, places better. It’s about a fifteen or twenty minute drive from Athens, depending whereabouts you are, north of the town of Hull and south of the somewhat larger town of Danielsville. This past Saturday, I decided it was long overdue for a return trip. Continue reading “Bill’s Bar-B-Q, Hull GA”
Mayflower Restaurant, Athens GA
The last time I went to Athens, in January with Randy, we stopped at the very good Bar-B-Q Shack. Upon reflection, what we should have done then, for thematic reasons that I like to keep in order, was gone to the Mayflower Restaurant downtown. That’s because Randy’s father, a wonderful man who was lost to us in a stupid traffic accident about eight years ago, had been a student at the University of Georgia in the mid-1950s, by which time the Mayflower was already established. In a town with restaurant turnover as brutal as Athens, finding a place that’s been around for twenty years is uncommon. A place like the Mayflower, which opened in 1948, is one of a kind. Continue reading “Mayflower Restaurant, Athens GA”
Bar-B-Que Shack, Athens GA
Here’s a restaurant that’s never really received a fair shake from me. The Bar-B-Que Shack, which opened in 1993, has been around long enough to reasonably qualify as the oldest surviving joint of its kind in Athens. There are older – much older – places in nearby Danielsville, Watkinsville and Lexington, but unless I’m forgetting about one, all of its peers – Carrithers, Spring House, J.R.’s, Peanut’s Redneck – have long since gone. The two Fresh Air outlets might claim to have been around since the 1920s, but that’s when the original store down in Jackson opened. The ones in Athens didn’t open until 1996 or so. The one on the west side of town, between the Pepsi plant and Bogart was the site of Peanut’s Redneck – and yes, that really was its name, Peanut’s Redneck Bar-B-Q – when I moved to town in ’89. J.R.’s opened sometime in the mid-90s, in the building that once housed Walter’s. That was a mid-eighties favorite of R.E.M., who recorded a “theme” to the restaurant that appears on their odds-n-sods 1986 LP Dead Letter Office. That building is now home to Hollis’s Ribs. The turnover in barbecue places in Athens has always seemed just a little brutal. Continue reading “Bar-B-Que Shack, Athens GA”
Mama’s Boy, Athens GA
I’m afraid that I have done Mama’s Boy a terrible disservice in waiting so long to tell you about our trip here before Christmas. You see, and you’ll forgive me having my silly notions about how I schedule chapters in our blog, I had the bright idea to hold back an entry about Athens for a few weeks, until I visited the town again. That way, for some fool reason, I could have two chapters about Athens back-to-back instead of a single Athens story each month. Continue reading “Mama’s Boy, Athens GA”
Ye Olde Colonial Restaurant, Madison GA (CLOSED)
Here’s a place that took me the better part of eternity to get around to visiting. I first spotted Ye Olde Colonial – and yeah, let’s go ahead and acknowledge just how silly that awful name is – about fifteen years ago, when I was living in Athens and occasionally visiting Madison every couple of months. There are some amazing antique stores in and around the town square, and I remember coveting some really neat walking sticks with silver wolf’s heads and things atop them. I’m still not completely convinced that I should not, when I hit age fifty, always go out in a very nice, old-fashioned suit and a walking cane with a silver wolf’s head. But, if we’re strictly honest, the coolest thing I found back then was my Dr. Shrinker jigsaw puzzle. Continue reading “Ye Olde Colonial Restaurant, Madison GA (CLOSED)”
Marie, Let's Eat! 