Davis Bar-B-Que, Jasper GA

I thought that I had made a very important discovery at Jasper’s Davis Bar-B-Que – well, important in terms of looking for tradition and history in preparing food, anyway – but I was mistaken. I actually found just a fun and very tasty curiosity.

Longtime readers may recall that I’ve stumbled upon some very similar sauces and preparation styles among some barbecue shacks in Atlanta’s western suburbs. Not, apparently, highlighted by any other bloggers – and not, flatly, followed up by me the way that I should – there is a small regional tradition of serving chopped pork swimming and drowning in a thin, black-to-red sauce particular to these restaurants. Places known to serve it this way include Wallace in Austell, Johnny’s in Powder Springs, and Briar Patch in Hiram. They all send it out drowned in the thin sauce, and they all offer floppy hand-cut fries, and they all have a powerful, spicy mustard sauce on the table, which you can only use effectively if you order the meat dry. I have commented on the similarity, and I have noted that another place in the region, Hudson Hickory House, is said to offer something similar, and I have intended to go out to Douglasville and learn a little more about where this originated.

Thinking this just a western-suburb specialty, I was quite surprised to get an incredibly similar plate of chopped pork up in Jasper. Davis Bar-B-Que is located about halfway between the end of I-575 and the retail-packed traffic light of Jasper’s commercial strip, nowhere near the home base of this dish, yet here was my meat, swimming in a blacker-than-red but just as thin and very similar tasting sauce. There was a bottle of pistol-packing mustard. The fries weren’t quite so floppy here, mind.

Questions needed to be asked.

Davis Bar-B-Que is located just about a mile from the main road, behind and alongside a church, across from that church’s cemetery. From the front porch of this faux antebellum house, guests can look out across the graveyard and see the rolling mountains of Pickens and Dawson Counties. In October, it is a gorgeous and amazing sight.

The house was built in the 1960s as the home of Antebellum House Furniture, makers and distributors of Davis Round Tables. After a few decades, the family elected to enter the restaurant business instead, turning the old showroom into a dining room. The building was severely damaged during a tornado some years ago, and closed for a time as it was rebuilt from a two-story house, as depicted in an illustration on the menu, into the one-story property that it is today. There are photographs in a frame near the door showing the reconstruction.

The sauce turned out not to be a very old family recipe that made its way into the foothills of the north Georgia mountains. I mentioned, diplomatically, I hope, that it reminded me of the sauce at Wallace. It turns out that Davis’s is a deliberate homage. As Wallace served the family’s preferred style barbecue, they set out attempting to match their signature sauce and presentation. The prices, like the ones at Wallace, are great, too. A whole pile of pork, stew and a second side comes to just $7.30.

I think that, if you’re a guest in your early forties or late thirties, it’s impossible to eat at any of these places without the old ABC Saturday morning jingle about Louie the Lifeguard and not drowning your food running through your head. It might not be to everybody’s taste, and it might be more sauce than this meat really needs, but it’s all good, and certainly worth looking into. I am glad that we stopped by. We learned a little something, after all.

Walker’s Fried Pies and BBQ, Ellijay GA

We try to make our way up to Ellijay each October, but not on one of the weekends that Gilmer County goes tourist-mad with the apple festival. The I-575/GA-515 artery up through Ellijay and Blue Ridge will give travelers a gorgeous drive, but it is not really built for the incredible volume that comes that way during the festival, resulting in a big logjam. So, once the madness had faded, we drove up to get some apples at Panorama, about which more next time, and then went looking for barbecue.

I had a mind to visit two places in Ellijay. Poole’s, we learned last year, was remarkably reliable and wonderful, but we wanted to try a couple of new places. Unfortunately, one of them, Wolf Creek Canyon, had moved without anybody notifying Urbanspoon of their new address or hanging a sign in the window of their abandoned storefront on Main Street.

The other, providing more evidence for my belief that Urbanspoon means a whole lot less to both restaurant owners and potential customers the further you get from a major population center, was not listed in Urbanspoon at all, despite being in business since 1996. Walker’s Fried Pies and BBQ is just a hop and a skip east of Ellijay along GA-52. That it’s avoiding internet notice is a blasted shame, because they’re serving up some pretty good food here.

The Walker family no longer owns this business, although the building is still theirs’, and the interior is decorated with many stories and photographs about their family. The business is now run by Betty and Jerry Clonts, who smoke their meat over hickory wood. The result is only a little moist and quite flavorful. Marie and I each had chopped pork, although word in the community seems to favor the beef here. Two other parties came through while we were here, and only one of the people in the groups ordered pork instead of beef. They also offer ribs, chicken, turkey and pork tenderloin.

There are two sauces on the table. The hotter sauce is an orange homemade approximation of something like Texas Pete, and the other is a sweet, brown Memphis-style. It was just sweet enough for Marie and I both to find it agreeable. The sides are the usual suspects: beans, potato salad, slaw and Brunswick stew, although sadly, like some of the less agreeable joints in suburban Atlanta, the stew here is only available for a fifty-cent upcharge.

Perhaps the real selling point here is the selection of desserts. Walker’s makes fresh fried pies in six flavors – apple, peach, cherry, strawberry, coconut and chocolate – along with funnel cakes and fried Oreos. Marie ordered an apple pie as a side for her sandwich and was incredibly pleased. These pies are just fantastic.

I’m not certain why Walker’s has been hiding from internet travelers and barbecue bloggers for so long, but I hope they won’t stay a secret any longer. This is a good place, and certainly worth a visit when visiting in this gorgeous part of the country.

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!

Red Queen Tarts

This is Marie, contributing a tiny little article about a tiny little treat – pop tarts. Sort of, anyway. You know that my articles are mainly about dessert, right?

Well, despite my unfortunate weakness for artificial grape flavoring and seasonal sugar bombs like candy corn, I’m not really a big fan of toaster pastries that come in cardboard with silver wrappers around them. They smell like chemicals to me. I have been known to buy them for the fans in my household, and then flee with my nose pinched shut when the odor of toasted pop tart wafts through the kitchen.

So, what am I doing writing about them? Well, this article is more about pop tarts as they would be if we lived in a world where there actually were little elves who baked for the sheer pleasure of feeding people, so you could get stuff from the grocery store that had as much love in the making as the treats you swiped off of Grandma’s cooling racks on visits to her kitchen. I mean, look at these. If you opened cardboard box and took out a silver foil package and found this inside, you’d just have to believe in elves, right?

These cute little treats are a labor of love by Candice Reynolds, a.k.a. The Red Queen. She shares my opinion that the truly decadent treat should involve real care and attention to detail, and takes it just a little farther. Heirloom flour, aluminum-free baking powder, fillings made from seasonal (never-frozen) ingredients, and nearly all of what she uses is organic – some serious thought and care went into the selection of her ingredients. And after all that, as you can see she uses personal care and attention as each tart is very clearly fork-crimped. I do hope she’s using ergonomic work practices, as she apparently has quite a respectable output each week.

The crust is almost like a cookie with those lovely sugar crystals on top, but the fillings are not overly sweet, so there is no need to risk a toothache on biting into them. In fact, some, like the Meyer Lemon, make the word tart an adjective as well as a noun – and that is as it should be. Flavors vary by season and availability. So far I’ve tried mainly the fruit flavors but have heard that some like the chocolate hazelnut should not be missed.

One of the neat things that the cafeteria my my workplace does is occasionally check out local vendors and test their products on the happy guinea pigs (excuse me, customers) who come through the line. Sadly, these were a little on the pricey side to make the cut as a regular offering, but every so often a group of us will get together and pitch in for a minimum order to get these delivered to the office for a late afternoon snack. She generally can be tracked down at farmer’s markets (often found at Peachtree Road Farmers Market and East Point Farmers Market based on her Facebook page), and for catered events. It may take a little searching to lay hands on some, but they’re worth it.

Also, thanks to Adventurous Tastes for an enticing write-up (since deleted) that got me interested in further exploration (if I remember correctly, I ran across this piece while looking for inspiration on writing up an article about cupcakes), and also includes some much better pictures of these treats than the one I took!

The Georgia Rib Company, Marietta GA (CLOSED)

The Georgia Rib Company is, without question, the strangest looking barbecue restaurant that I have ever visited. There are many businesses where guests might question the layout or the decor, but this was the first time that I have ever entered a business and thought that somebody stole the sign from the actual restaurant and moved it somewhere else as a practical joke.

I had never heard of this place until I started cleaning up Urbanspoon’s barbecue listings several weeks ago. I was working through the G-named restaurants in the Atlanta section and found this place in Marietta. Reasonably certain that I would have heard somebody mention it if it was still in business, I phoned them fully expecting the number to have been disconnected. But no, they’ve just been quietly doing business in a huge building that once housed a skating rink, keeping to themselves for many months in the shadow of the celebrated and popular Sam’s BBQ-1. Seriously, you can see this building from Sam’s, and would have no idea that it was a barbecue joint unless you went inside to check it out for yourself.

So basically, you’ve got a huge barn of a skating rink building, but the interior has been retrofitted to look like the most dated, early-eighties wall-carpeted event space that you’ve ever seen. The corridor has meaningless little angles in it, and there are at least three dining rooms. We entered and found nobody in the airlock or the hostess station. Ahead on the left, there was a private room that seats close to a hundred, lights out. Further along this new wave corridor, on the right, Marie and I could hear light R&B, and we found a bar that was a little smaller than the event room. It was only slightly more alive than the closed private room; there was one couple in a booth waiting for their meal to arrive. Further down the corridor is a gigantic room, also darkened, that, in the evening, hosts live music in a barn for about four hundred.

We figured that the middle room was where we were meant to be, so we returned. The room looks like a sports bar, with plenty of college football banners and several flat-screen TVs tuned to either games or some Angelina Jolie movie, but all of the TVs were muted so that we could listen to the smooth sounds of people who, like Kenny G, could play rhythm but had no idea what the blues were. There were no staff around in this enormous complex, just that one older couple, patiently and happily enjoying each other’s company, while important games played silently with a soundtrack of a meaningless, quiet pulse of love songs for the soulless.

This was, in point of fact, the weirdest and most out-of-place that I have ever felt since a co-worker in Athens once invited me to visit her at this bar where she worked, which I’d never heard of, in the old Ramada Inn on Broad Street that’s now a Holiday Inn Express, and the bar turned out to be a pick-up joint for the Centrum Silver crowd who wanted to dance to a bad cover band playing “Smooth Operator.”

In time, some hungover teenage girl emerged to show us to a booth. She had no idea that the restaurant’s web site offered a $4.95 lunch special of a sandwich and a side. This food would have to be something else to make up for this utterly bizarre atmosphere. Fortunately, it was pretty good, and struck a pleasant chord in my memory.

Marie and I each had chopped pork sandwiches. Getting the problem out of the way, the sides were pretty disappointing. Marie had the collard greens and did not finish them, and I had the Brunswick stew, and while it was pleasant, it didn’t bowl me over.

But the chopped pork here really is something else. It is really smoky, dark, pink and dry. It’s so distinctive and so dry that, more than most in Atlanta, it genuinely needs some sauce to mix right. It’s probably not accurate to say that it is “crying” for sauce, but it is definitely coughing and clearing its throat for some. This was a real treat, finding something so wholly, utterly unlike the usual suburban standard of moist-to-greasy pulled pork that I have seen lately. There is only one sauce here, a sweet, brown, Memphis style. It goes excellently with the pork.

Much as I enjoyed the meat, I quickly found myself wishing that I had gone against convention and tried the ribs. Even though ribs are in this restaurant’s name, it just didn’t occur to me to order them, as I prefer chopped pork. However, this place must certainly know what it is doing, as the young server informed us that the owner, many years before, had once run Jilly’s, The Place For Ribs. I didn’t even half-remember that place when I saw Georgia Rib Company’s boastful slogan, “The Only Place for Ribs” and thought that a bit bold of them.

But when the girl mentioned Jilly’s, a lot came flooding back. This was a small chain in Georgia many years ago. When I was a kid, my family would occasionally visit the one on Cobb Parkway in Smyrna. Not yet interested in barbecue, I’d always just get a burger – of course – but I recall that they had amazing, messy, greasy onion rings. There were also stores, locally, in Roswell and near the East Lake shopping center in Marietta, and stores in Macon and Columbus. I enjoyed the nice rush of pleasant nostalgia for long-gone restaurants, as I often do, and affirmed that this gentleman has probably been smoking and grilling almost as long as I’ve been alive.

I don’t know the circumstances that led him to resume serving barbecue in this really weird space, of all places, but I’m glad that he’s back. Now that I’m older and know what the heck good ribs are supposed to taste like, I might need to return and try what stubbornness had kept me from trying as a child. While there’s only limited information about Jilly’s online, I’ve asked around and a few friends have since told me that they enjoyed the old Place for Ribs. If you’re among their number, swing by this oddball restaurant and see whether your own nostalgia might be tickled a little.