Hudson’s Hickory House, Douglasville GA

A few Fridays ago, I found myself heading west out I-20 after a short morning at work, bound for Lithia Springs to try a barbecue place. I had all the time in the world, and I needed to stop at a Publix to use an ATM. I remembered that there was one in Douglasville, so I went along a little further, just enjoying some music and a very pleasant morning’s drive. It wasn’t until I was on the exit ramp that I remembered that I’d been meaning to stop by Hudson’s Hickory House and that it was supposed to be around here somewhere. I recalled reading on a blog called Courthouse Bites that it was somehow near the Douglas County Courthouse, and I was certain that I could find that. It turns out that the restaurant really isn’t anywhere near the courthouse, but it is next door to the sheriff’s department.

This might perhaps be the last entry in which I wonder aloud about the origins of a particular regional style of barbecue, detailed in these earlier chapters: Wallace in Austell, Briar Patch in Hiram, Johnny’s in Powder Springs and the deliberate homage at Davis in Jasper, although I have learned that there might be another in the area that has a similar style. Apparently, the proprietors of a place that might be called Hog Wild somewhere south of Douglasville* got permission from Buford Hudson to use his style of hickory-smoked pork and thin, red-to-black vinegar sauce. It was my server’s contention that Hudson is the man who came up with this recipe forty years ago. I wish that he had been available to speak with me; I think that I would have enjoyed a chat with him.

Well, my server did not know about Briar Patch, but she did confirm that both Wallace and Johnny’s are welcome to use Hudson’s recipe, and, in return, Hudson’s uses Wallace’s recipe for stew. As with the others that use this style, the meat is, unless you ask ahead of time, served completely drowned in the thin, red-black vinegar-based sauce, and there’s a bottle of truly hot mustard-pepper sauce if you order the meat dry and would like to try both. Interestingly, the mustard sauce at these five places is not quite like the mustard sauces of South Carolina, or in the Auburn-Eufaula-Columbus triangle. Those are thinner and yellower and less potent. This sauce is more of an orange-yellow and it’s quite firey. After a few bites of the dry, quite moist pork with this tough customer, I conceded and just drowned the meat with the red-black vinegar sauce, as its creator intended.

Georgia often gets a very short shrift from barbecue writers, as we allegedly have no traditions of our own to compete with the better-known styles of Texas, Kansas City, Memphis, Owensboro or the Carolinas. I would humbly suggest that, while its influence is small and its home region mostly confined to Atlanta’s western suburbs, this is something that we can genuinely hold up as a Georgia original. I certainly haven’t found it anywhere else. It may not be to everybody’s taste, but it is unique, and it is ours.

*I found reference to a place in Carrollton with that name, and I suppose that it might be the one that my server mentioned.

Outback Steakhouse, Atlanta GA

Marie and I were invited to join some other local media to sample Outback Steakhouse’s new menu items, including a line of steaks and chops grilled over wood that complement their successful “Seasoned and Seared” blend. It was nice to visit with our friends from Atlanta Foodies and meet some other area bloggers, including Exclusive Eats, Insatiable and Talking With Tami, who posts more frequently than most adults breathe. Poor Marie, sadly, had to contend with worse than usual traffic coming from Dunwoody, and missed the first couple of courses. Some good steak and desserts cheered her up a bit.

Our regular readers know that we rarely patron national chains of any type, preferring to learn the stories of small restaurants. I was reminded, however, that beyond the quality of the food, which, at Outback, is reasonably solid, there are still stories to tell. I was really fascinated to learn that the whole roll-out process of the “Wood-Fire Grilled” menu – just imagine a little TM there, as we are dealing with the corporate world in today’s entry – has taken two years of testing, training and installing the new grills in close to a thousand stores across the continent. At the same time, Outback has embarked on a massive redesign of all of their stores, apparently the first face lift that many of these places have seen in twenty years. In a hobby where locals scrutinize, for example, the four months between the start-up and the crash landing of LeRoy’s Fried Chicken, being taken through the two years it takes to roll out a new product line is actually quite intriguing.

We met with Dave Ellis, who came up from Tampa for the event and who has been with the company since its beginnings. He told us a little potted history of the chain and shared a few fun anecdotes. I enjoyed hearing about the development of the popular Bloomin’ Onion appetizer, which required the help of a professor at Texas A&M to get a specific, spherical one-pound Spanish onion to grow under set conditions which could be duplicated at farms throughout the western states. Even with big, multi-national chains, there are funny stories to be told.

So they fed us. They fed us extremely well. They gave us small samples of both the classic “Seasoned & Seared” and the new “Wood-Fire Grilled” sirloins so that we could compare the taste. The original is made with a blend of seventeen spices, while the new has only six, and is cooked over oak wood. They were each quite good, although I did prefer the original, with its fuller flavor. The newer sirloin is just fine, but there’s a fire in the classic’s belly that the oak wood version, with its lighter spice, doesn’t match.

That said, the light spice and wood grilling does go extremely well on some of the other menu items. One of the highlights was the pork chop, which was unbelievably tasty. It’s served with a little cup of midly spicy orange marmalade and I could certainly see myself having that again down the road. We also sampled their California chicken salad, baby back ribs, an incredibly curious mahi-mahi dish topped with artichoke heats, sun-dried tomatoes and a lemon sauce, along with prime rib and the menu’s highest point, a really good ribeye that uses a slightly different spice blend that mixes a little better with this cut.

I made an exception in our rule against professional publicity photographs, in part because my own photo of the mahi-mahi was horrible, and in part because this pic does a great job conveying just how downright peculiar this dish is. Works, though.

They finished us off with a pile of desserts, including a very rich and moist carrot cake, a cheesecake with raspberry sauce, and a really unusual chocolate waffle, served with a thick, house-made chocolate sauce and a big scoop of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream. I’m sure our long-term readers will appreciate that, now that I have identified the problem, I’ve broken my bad habit of using the word “decadent” to describe whatever fool dessert gets put in front of me, although the waffle came pretty close to warranting it. Outback’s setup allows them to change out their dessert waffle specialties according to the season. Should I return when strawberry waffles are on the menu, I will have to try those.

Having said that, of course, Marie and I rarely ever visit national chains. Outback did a splendid job putting a human face on a corporate world, and showing off some very good food. I appreciated the chance to get to know them better. I’m not about to start calling the Hall of Fame Bowl anything other than the Hall of Fame Bowl no matter who sponsors it, but if you’re on the road and desiring a good ribeye, Outback, in a very pleasant surprise, has shown itself to be a good option.

Outback invited us to enjoy an additional meal on them, so a few days later, we stopped by the store nearest us, on Barrett Parkway, in the company of our daughter to try them out. I ordered that celebrated Bloomin’ Onion appetizer without thinking to ask whether either of the ladies wanted to share it. Never do this; that is far too much onion for one person to attempt on their own. Other than being forced, disagreeably, to waste about half of a perfectly good onion, we enjoyed ourselves. Marie and I split their largest ribeye, with the “Wood-Fire Grilled” seasoning and prep, with a small order of shrimp, and it was quite delicious, while the girlchild just had some soup and sides. Marie expressed a desire to come back once she is eating dairy again, so that she can enjoy one of those waffle desserts with ice cream. Reckon we’ll do that. Probably not on a weekend night, though; this place gets ridiculously busy!

One Eared Stag and Rosa’s Pizza, Atlanta GA

It took me a lot longer to get over to One Eared Stag than I would have liked. I was all set to head that way after an early shift a few Fridays back, when Marie texted me to say that she’d been in a minor fender bender. That started a chain of missed opportunities and changed plans that finally resolved towards the end of October when David and I made our way down to Edgewood Avenue to try them out.

The street looks like a sleepy little place during the daytime, but the silence is punctuated by the sound of MARTA trains and church bells. Since just about everybody’s talking about it – The Quick + Dirty Dirty named it her new favorite Atlanta restaurant, for example – I was expecting a much larger crowd than we found, but we had the place mostly to ourselves on a Thursday just before noon. It was nice enough to eat on the patio, and this really is a pleasant hideaway. The interior is designed in that bland, austere style common to many modern urban restaurants (and, apparently, little changed from when this space housed chef Robert Phalen’s previous venture, Shaun’s), but the patio, surrounded by the old brick of the buildings around it, is a lovely little oasis.

Despite the slow pace, our server is perhaps one of the busiest men in the city. He told us that he works three part-time jobs. I was reminded of a classic, Cam Kennedy-illustrated episode of Judge Dredd where somebody tried that in the 90% unemployment world of Mega-City One and went to jail for it. He cautioned David and I against ordering too many sides for our meals, as they were all pretty substantial. I thought I was splurging, as I couldn’t decide between the chickpea fries, great big thick monsters recommended by Atlanta Restaurant Blog, and the onion rings, which are completely delicious and among the best in the city. David added a pile of pork skins to the repast, served on a butcher’s block with a large pinch of sea salt and a little dipping jar of vinegar.

David’s crab roll sandwich was a sight to see. It comes on bread baked by Alon’s, split vertically so that it stands up, stuffed with the crab. Neal later said that it looked ridiculous. “Sandwiches should lie down and take their punishment,” he joked. My sandwich, an indulgent BLT with a fried egg, was indeed lying down waiting for me to slide the egg off onto a plate rather than risk the mess of melting yolk. The bacon was thick-cut and chewy, and the lettuce and tomato fresh and delicious. I briefly had menu envy over David’s cucumber and radish salad until I dug into my side of incredibly fresh greens with a light drizzle of a dressing. I’d like to think that made up a little for all the fried stuff in front of me.

We passed on dessert, as David had a mind to walk around Broad Street, and I figured that I might find something there to try. Broad Street is a curious and old little strip of mainly lunch-only restaurants, catering to downtown businessmen, GSU students and, lately, Occupy Wall Streeters. I almost went for a gelato, but I was taken by the line coming out of Rosa’s Pizza, and decided that a slice would be my dessert.

Interestingly, there are two different Rosa’s in the region. If I understand correctly, the one downtown, with a second location near me in Cobb County’s Lassiter district, is not affiliated with the Rosa’s in Johns Creek.

Anyway, this place offers New York-style by-the-slice pies. The pies are actually made ahead of time with sauce and cheese, and toppings added as guests file slowly past the oven, logjamming at the register, where a hilarious woman takes payment for orders. The staff is lovably sassy and fun. The fellow assembling toppings fruitlessly negotiated with the girl ahead of me to bring him back a beer from a neighborhood bottle shop, and she gave me some playful stink about ordering anchovies, turning her head as she held the offending box at arm’s length and yelping a Pythonesque “Wurrrrgh!”

I left the restaurant laughing. The pizza was not really anything special – my heart sank a little when I saw the premade pies awaiting reheating in the oven – but the lively and fun atmosphere had me eating it in a good mood.

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.

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.

Bloggers Invade the Buckhead Diner

A couple of weeks ago, Marie and I finally got to put some faces to some names and meet a few of our fellow hobbyists. We were invited to join a little gang called the Atlanta Food Bloggers Society – you’ve probably seen the little “plate” icon on the sidebar to your right by now – and the launch party for the group was held at the venerable Buckhead Diner, in conjunction with some new menu items that they have rolled out. Well, there is one face that we knew ahead of time; we’ve known Rebecca Mendelsohn of Atlanta Foodies, who organized this group, for a few months in our “civilian” identities before we realized that we were each bloggers. Also present that afternoon: Amy on Food, Atlanta Restaurant Blog, The Blissful Glutton, Fiddlehead Foraging and The Food and Me. All we needed was for me to pretend to be dead and everybody else could have played an awesome game of How To Host a Murder.

We met at the Diner, which I recall opening with great hoopla in 1987, because its owners, the Buckhead Life Group, wanted a chance to show off some of its new menu offerings from the new executive chef, Charles Schwab. I confess that I felt a moment’s pause about offering a “review” of the goodies that we tried, as just about every chapter that we’ve written here has been written from the perspective of us, anonymously, enjoying, and paying for, a good meal at someplace that we would like to share with our readers. I trust that our readers will understand that on this occasion, we were invited under the purview of a small social media event to greet the chef and representatives of Buckhead Life Group for a complementary presentation of the new concoctions on their menu, specifically to get the word out to our readers. I can’t, therefore, “review” the restaurant, whose sterling reputation has been speaking for itself since I was in high school anyway, as the experience was not at all like what regular diners will experience.

With that in mind, they started us off with some white truffle deviled eggs before giving us some pimento cheese-filled hush puppies that they termed “fritters.” I really lucked out here, as Marie’s nursing-mandated avoidance of dairy meant that I got her fritters. They then brought out “day boats” of ceviche, made from rotating recipes, served with plantain and sweet potato chips. The ceviche that we enjoyed included shrimp, calamari and small scallops. It was followed by a plate of spicy tempura shrimp, and that was followed by a pizza, made with a very thin crust and pesto sauce, then a Cobb salad, pecan-encrusted Maine cod, an entree of turkey jardiniere, and finally a renowned and decadent – I am definitely using that word far too frequently to describe desserts, but I mean it here – white chocolate banana cream pie.

The tempura rock shrimp was my personal favorite of the selections.

The Cobb salad, however, was possibly the consensus favorite of the group.

The turkey jardiniere is served underneath a salad of its own, with tomatoes, arugula, radishes and potatoes, with a lemon vinaigrette drizzle.

I’ll tell you honestly, there was not one thing that I disliked. They have put together a splendid menu – it is a pricey one, mind – of some incredibly tasty things, and if they did so knowing that any misstep could be magnified and communicated to readers who might (in my experience) blow things further out of proportion, then so be it. They didn’t make any missteps. Possibly the least interesting thing among the treats they provided was the pizza, but it was still exponentially superior to plenty of other pizzas in town.

I enjoyed the tempura shrimp best, followed by the turkey dish, and then probably the pimento cheese fritters. They really balanced the spice of the shrimp quite perfectly. It had a kick without lingering, but was the most pleasant possible kick. The turkey was utterly unlike the dry meat that I typically dislike. It was moist and juicy and exciting, and served with a splendid complement of veggies that I would never have guessed would go so well with it. These little paper-thin radishes, of all things, just went perfectly with it.

The Cobb salad seemed to be the overall favorite of the table, and I wouldn’t say that anybody was wrong for loving it. This has to have been one of the freshest salads that I’ve ever had; every vegetable tasted like it was picked that morning, with the avocado in particular just electrifyingly vibrant. The blue cheese – apparently Point Reyes blue rather than the Diner’s popular and famous Maytag blue – was probably my favorite thing in it, though. I could have had a heaping spoonful of that cheese.

We thanked our hosts at the Diner for showing off their treats and enjoyed sharing a little shop talk with each other. The Blissful Glutton, whose blog has sadly been a little dormant while she has been working as the editor of Eater Atlanta, has probably been doing this longer than anybody else in town, but she still has a lot of passion for good meals. That’s reassuring; we have all seen some good food blogs dry up and blow away as their writers lose interest. This was a very positive afternoon. We all have blogs that we enjoy reading, and restaurants that we love to visit, and everybody wanted to talk about engaging writers and good places to eat, without dwelling on the bad. I suppose, when a hobby remains as, sensibly, unorganized as ours, there’s really no opportunity for drama unless you just want to be a diva and call other people out for daring to disagree with you about a restaurant. Life’s just better, though, when you’re pleasant.

We touched on the curious alchemy of Urbanspoon rankings, a subject near and dear to my heart, what with so many restaurants that I’ve visited proving so colossally unpopular, unhip and uncool that I’d have to post about two thousand trips to Frankie & Johnny’s to have the same statistical impact as a single visit to Fogo de Chao. On that note, I have tried, without much success, to invite some other writers whose blogs that I enjoy to join Urbanspoon and start enjoying the benefits of the spoonback linking. It brings a good deal more traffic to our blog, and I enjoy seeing how my chief peers and I move up and down the rankings. Of course, many of these sites that I enjoy most – Buster’s BBQ Blog, Chopped Onion, Where’s the Best BBQ? – detail older roadfood and rural places, and not on the more intown trendy joints – like Buckhead Diner – that get you higher up the big city rankings, but it sure would be easier to follow good blogs like them were they in my Urbanspoon news feed.

Leslie, of The Food and Me, hoped that the rest of us might offer suggestions about prompting more comments from her readers. Short of going negative, we were all stumped, noting that pretty much the only time that any of us can reliably expect comments of any sort is when we tick off a restaurant’s owner. Or his sockpuppets. I think that we would all like more interaction with our readers, though. Sometimes, I wonder how Marie and I managed to pick up so darn many of you. Drop us a line once in a while; let us know how we’re doing. All of us!