Jot Em Down Store & BBQ, Athens GA (CLOSED)

This is Marie, contributing an entry about Jot Em Down, a BBQ place I have a particular fondness for more for sentimental reasons than anything else. My most recent visit to Athens was a mom’s day out with friends, and the baby and I made a trip without Grant. I decided to eat at a place that used to be fairly frequently in rotation when Grant used to come up to Athens on the weekends. I had meant to go with him when I collected the place for the blog, but we have so many new places to try out and I am the one who likes to revisit old haunts, so this trip seemed the most sensible opportunity. Continue reading “Jot Em Down Store & BBQ, Athens GA (CLOSED)” →

Johnny’s Bar-B-Q and The Collegiate Grill, Gainesville GA

Well, here’s a trip that did not go as planned at all. Somewhat off my radar – as he’s not an Urbanspoon blogger yet – is a very good barbecue writer named Buster Evans. A few weeks ago, I found his blog and read an entry, from February, about a restaurant in Gainesville called 3 Li’l Pigs. They serve chicken mull! Marie and I had not been through Gainesville in a very long time, and our baby had not met our friends Matt and Kelley, so I suggested we meet up there for lunch a couple of Saturdays ago. Continue reading “Johnny’s Bar-B-Q and The Collegiate Grill, Gainesville GA” →

Melody Lane Mediterranean, Marietta GA

Here’s a most peculiar story about a restaurant that I had somehow visited twice before, when it was chocolate and when it was peanut butter, but never when it was a Reese’s treat. Melody Lane is the new incarnation of two prior ventures, one of which excited me, but I thought, wrongly, that it had vanished.

When I first moved to Marietta in 2003, I drove north on Canton Road and spotted Melody Lane Deli on my right. I stopped in for a sandwich and found it really unimpressive. It was mainly a breakfast place; making lunch sandwiches seemed like an afterthought. I didn’t give it any more consideration; life’s too short for unimpressive food.

Years passed, and David took the kids and me to this little Mediterranean grocery, located just a hair north of Melody Lane, but on the left, where they were serving up gyros and falafels to guests at a teeny little counter with four bar stools. They told us then that they would soon be moving, probably to the strip mall across the street. I said that I’d look out for them, particularly as they sold cans of Vimto, one of many soft drinks that I like but rarely find. In time, though, the grocery store closed and nothing new opened in that strip mall.

More years passed – I really have lived here too long – and I followed a recommendation from a new food blogger in the area, A Girl and Her Words…, to give Melody Lane a try. She raved about the excellent Mediterranean food available here. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “Is that really that crummy breakfast place?” By this time, I’d forgotten all about that grocery store, and didn’t realize what had happened until I spoke with our server after Marie and I had a childfree supper to celebrate our anniversary a little early. The grocery store had moved across the street by buying the restaurant!

The evening was memorable for one thing even above the food: this was the first time that we left the baby with his two older siblings for a couple of hours. Marie and I were probably just a little distracted, and waiting nervously for one of our cell phones to ring with a crisis.

We started with an order of baba ghanoush, a dish that I like at some places a lot more than others. This was one of the good ones. It was really creamy and lip-smackingly tasty. I followed that with a tabouli salad for myself. This, sadly, wasn’t the best I’d ever had. I liked the tabouli at a place a little south that has since closed a lot more.

Marie had the chicken shawarma and just loved it. The meat is broiled and seasoned with tahini sauce, parsley and garlic. By comparison, my kafta – ground beef and onions with parsley – didn’t come close. It was very good, but the chicken was just so wonderful that I got menu envy again.

This was an inexpensive and simple way to celebrate our anniversary, but we were kind of keeping things as simple as possible over the course of May as we got used to having the baby around. Now that we know about Melody Lane, I hope we’ll revisit it soon. I want an order of that shawarma chicken to myself, to be honest.

We’re taking a longer-than-normal break, but we’ll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Grindhouse Killer Burgers, Atlanta GA

Wow. You can really see the malaise creeping in everywhere. There really is a backlash against burger places in Atlanta. I think the hawt new trend right now is frozen yogurt places – Lord knows why – and so news like the opening of Grindhouse Killer Burgers’ second location is met with rolled eyes and collective yawns. The original is a lunch-only place on Edgewood in the Sweet Auburn Curb Market. I confess that I’ve never been there, nor to any curb market for that matter, but seriously, a good burger is worth celebrating, no matter how many burger joints this city has.

Tell me that Chicago foodies don’t act like this. Tell me that nobody in the Windy City acts like they’re too cool for school when somebody opens a new place to get an Italian beef. Marie and I, we get interested and excited when we hear about someplace good to eat. As should you. If it’s a good burger, it should be talked about.

Grindhouse’s burgers are indeed pretty darn good, but they are also kind of small and pricey. This might end up being a bit tricky.

They’ve opened in a great location, right next door to that ridiculous car wash on Piedmont with the occasionally animatronic gorilla out front. There’s a large outdoor patio that might have tempted us on a cooler day, but with Atlanta suffering a heat wave and temperatures in the mid-90s, we stayed indoors. Marie, the baby and I stopped by on a Thursday just as they opened and just before a giant crowd from a nearby office came in and took forever to place their orders and then occupied about a third of the table space.

I really like the interior. There’s one wall near the restrooms with a huge white “blood” spatter that serves as the screen for a loop of godawful ’70s exploitation films. When we were there, the movie of the moment was one of those Golden Harvest films where ninjas fight monks, and men argue in serious subtitles about the superiority of Shaolin kung fu over modern martial arts. Sadly, two of the other TVs were showing that dumb game show set in a taxi. It sort of dampened the mood.

The burgers were really good, but I was disappointed with the size. They’re about as big as the ones your middle school served, and for the $6.25 that I paid for my apache-style burger, it didn’t seem like I got very much. I was really hungry again a few hours later, anyway. I picked that burger based on a recommendation from our local alt-weekly Creative Loafing, who, last month, named it one of 100 Dishes to Eat in Atlanta Before You Die. With lots of oozy, melted pepperjack, onions and peppers, it’s sort of a patty melt on a hamburger bun. It was excellent, but too darn small. Nevertheless, I’m curious about some of the other concoctions on the menu. I might have to try the one with pimento cheese and fried green tomatoes sometime soon. Marie had a burger with cheddar, lettuce, tomato and avocado and was also pleased, and we shared some mighty good crinkle-fries that were perfectly crispy and salty.

But the thing that tipped it from “good but disappointing” into “we’ll be back again” was the chocolate malt. Marie was raving about that thing all day. She says, wildly, that it was an even better chocolate malt than the one she had the week before at Chapman Drugs in Hapeville. Hmmm. Yes, I wish you got a little more meat for your money here, but you can’t argue with a chocolate malt that good, I suppose. I guess that I’ll be having one of those Dixie burgers sooner rather than later.

Saravanaa Bhavan and Mirch Masala, Decatur GA

It has been several months since I went out for any Indian food. Longtime readers might recall that my favorite Indian restaurant in the region, Roswell’s Moksha, had closed, and I made a couple of fitful attempts to find a replacement. I found some pretty good food, but nothing remarkable, and I got a little discouraged and bored and resumed finding more barbecue and burger places.

In April, writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s “Food and More” blog, Gene Lee recommended three Indian restaurants in Decatur. This was part of the blog’s “Spring Dining 2011” guide and got me thinking. Maybe Marie and I could do a tour of all three one Saturday…?

Well, I was sort of stymied here, as Marie really doesn’t care all that much for Indian food. You’ll notice she has been absent from this blog’s few trips to Indian restaurants. She does like a little curry powder with her chicken salad, but otherwise most of that region’s cuisine does not appeal to her. Nevertheless, she agreed that we could give it a try if I would compromise and drop it to two restaurants. We took the baby and my older son and our good buddy David along and figured out the best way to plan these two lunches.

First up, we went to a vegetarian restaurant, where we planned that Marie would have a full meal, I would have an appetizer, and our older son would drum his fingers impatiently and wait for his larger meal at the next destination. I was sweet; I let him have an order of plantain bhaji that was quite delicious and had a nice level of spice to it.

Saravanaa Bhavan is the second restaurant by that name to occupy this space. The earlier version closed in 2008 and was bought by an international chain of hotels and vegetarian restaurants. This particular location doesn’t actually have any guest rooms, but the chain itself is kind of like a Howard Johnson’s that specializes in dosa. This is a huge, thin filled crepe and I think of it as a counterpoint to an uthappam, which is thicker, like a pancake. There’s a big window into the kitchen where you can watch the staff make the dosas and other treats.

Taking Lee’s recommendation, Marie ordered the masala dosa, which is the crepe filled with a curried mashed potato. It’s enormous, and served with four different dipping sauces. She also had an order of buttered naan and this was more food than she felt like tackling. In her defense, unfortunately, the atmosphere here did her in. While the food was all indeed very good, the restaurant ruined the air inside with the most noxious, repugnant incense by the entrance. Frankly, we couldn’t wait to leave. My tomato and pea uthappam was genuinely good and I enjoyed the flavor of everything here, but I sure do wish that I could have enjoyed it in better circumstances.

On that note, “couldn’t wait to leave” has proven, in my experience, to be a common problem at Indian restaurants from here to Toronto. There has not been a one, except the ones where you pay up front, where flagging a server down to get a blasted check has not been a chore. Neither of the places that we visited on this trip were in a hurry to see us go. We wanted to leave Saravanaa Bhavan because the air stank. We wanted to leave Mirch Masala because we were stuffed.

My heart sank as we entered Mirch Masala, which is located about three minutes’ south of Saravanaa Bhavan. It’s one of those Indian restaurants that suggests upscale by way of nice napkins and tuxedo-clad servers, but it’s hopelessly artificial. The menus are in leather cases, but the laminate on the heavy paper pages is peeling, comically, as they fall apart. There’s a 15% service fee on tables of four. Not six; four. Frankly, I hated the place so much that the best Indian food I ever had wouldn’t bring me back. Then I had some of the best Indian food I ever had and I was conflicted.

Gene Lee had recommended the chicken tikka masala here and I wanted to try it. Unfortunately, it was not on the buffet – $9.95 for weekend lunch – but priced at $11.95 for an order. I bit the bullet and was completely thrilled with it. The chicken was tender and flavored and seasoned just perfectly, and served in a deep red sauce that reminded me of molten lava. “It looks,” observed my son and channeling Ralph Wiggum, “like… hot.” He wasn’t kidding. I’ve had more lethally spicy food than this, but not often. It was majestic.

Marie ordered some rice called kashimiri pullao (basmati rice cooked with dried fruit) that she enjoyed, and they gave her enough to last for a subsequent lunch. My son and David each enjoyed some of the food on the buffet, which included both curried goat and chicken, and a spinach paneer that David said was excellent and as good as he’d ever had it. Food-wise, this place really was a winner. It’s a shame they had to spoil it by giving us such pathetic service and presentation.

Adding insult to injury, it took us about fifteen minutes after finishing our food to get a check. I don’t think this is all that complicated, really.

I’ll try again in a few months. There has to be a place in town that will give me excellent Indian food outside of a plastic quasi-upscale environment with attentive service at a fair price. Somewhere.

(Note: Saravanaa Bhavan briefly closed at the end of 2012 before reopening as Madras Bhavan, no longer affiliated with the hotel Saravanaa chain. I understand that it is still a vegetarian restaurant.)

Pit Boss BBQ, Hapeville GA

In April, I visited Hapeville after work and had a very good lunch at Hambones. That restaurant is located within sight of Pit Boss BBQ, and I considered trying them both, but didn’t feel that I had room that trip. Everything worked out just fine, because while Marie is on maternity leave, she and I are getting the opportunity to enjoy a midweek lunch or two together on my short days. I wanted to bring her back down to Hapeville so that she could have a milkshake at Chapman Drugs, giving us the chance to stop by and see what Pit Boss had to offer.

This is yet another Atlanta barbecue place that doesn’t get very much attention from the foodies and bloggers in the region, but I think that it is definitely worth a visit. It has a very loyal customer base. I think that every Delta employee who could have fit inside the building tried to during our visit, and the staff seemed to know them all by name. Unfortunately, so many people arrived around 11:15 that at least one party got discouraged by the line and left. I hope they come back; they missed out on a good lunch.

Marie and I each had the chopped pork, which comes presauced with Pit Boss’s mild sauce. It’s a great mix; the meat is very smoky and full of flavor, and the sauce is incredibly sweet. However, there was a little more sauce than I would have liked, and I preferred the other table sauce, which was hotter, instead. It’s an odd case of very good food not quite prepared the way I would like it. For sides, we had Brunswick stew and fried green beans. Neither were exceptional, but perfectly good.

Honestly, I enjoyed the food at Hambones more, but where Pit Boss shines is just how incredibly friendly and upbeat and downright wonderful the staff is. At Hambones, which becomes similarly packed for a weekday lunch, I got the impression of the (somewhat larger) staff hunkering down for the madness, and was left to my own devices once my food arrived. The ladies on the front line at Pit Boss threatened to become overwhelmed with so many guests, but before things got crazy, we had a very good experience chatting with them and showing off our baby.

Interestingly, the staff was not able to clear up a little confusion about this place. There is (or was) a listing on Urbanspoon for a restaurant with the same address but a different name, Smokin’ Sam’s. I asked whether Pit Boss used to be that other store, and the girl said they were not, but that somebody else asked her that a few weeks previously. This space had once been the home of The Flying Pig in the 1990s, but never the disputed name. I wonder where that came from.

After lunch, as promised, I bought Marie a milkshake from Chapman’s. She got a double chocolate malted and I got the same amazing peach-n-vanilla malt that I enjoyed on my previous visit. Both were wonderful, but mine, honestly, was better. Would I lie to you? It was so much better that when we got back to my work to pick up my car, I realized that I had left my book inside. So I went to grab that and give a co-worker a sip. Man, Chapman mixes a good milkshake. I’m going to have to head back to Hapeville and eat somewhere else so I can justify another one of these.

Beaver Creek Biscuits and Barbeque, Lithia Springs GA

I think that, to hear Marie tell it, my worst habit might be my swearing, which she kindly suggests might have improved a little bit over the last few years. Since I try to write this blog for all audiences, I am very cautious about swearing or being offensive. That was not a consideration last week. See, I had been wanting to go to Beaver Creek for quite some time after reading Jon Watson in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s “Food and More” blog rave about it, suggesting they might offer the best pulled pork around Atlanta. I had it on my calendar for a visit at the beginning of the month, but then the baby surprised us by arriving early, and I had to put it off. This worked out for the best; fortunately, with my older children off school, I could phone them – maybe I should get a data plan – and ask them where in greebledy-gronk sassin’-frassin’ tarnation this consarned dadburned barbecue place was. My older son had to navigate me here without using either Urbanspoon or Google.

See, Urbanspoon had the wrong address listed. Six Flags Drive, where this restaurant is not located, is north of I-20, off exit 46. The restaurant is actually on Six Flags Road, off exit 44 and just south of the interstate. But it gets worse. Google Maps – and yes, this is the second time in ten days that I am writing to report a failure there – had the wrong physical location of the (incorrect) address. Once I finally got to where 1451 Six Flags Drive should actually be, there was no restaurant there. Do you really blame me for cussing a blue streak?

So I had wasted valuable time and gasoline getting here, I had to talk my son into believing that it was more likely that the internet was actually wrong than I was not reading street signs correctly, and what’s more, this Harry Kemleman novel that I was reading had turned out to be one of the lousy ones. This was going to have to be some excellent barbecue to talk me down off this ledge. Happily, it was better than I hoped. About my only quibble, apart from the restaurant foolishly letting its website expire, is that this place definitely needs to pick one name and stick with it. This is more than just the expected idiosyncrasies in the spelling of “barbecue,” which our blog usually settles by going with the name on the building’s sign. Depending on where you are looking, this place is either called “Beaver Creek Biscuit Company,” “Turner’s Barbecue” or “Turner’s Store.” I’m going with “Beaver Creek Biscuits and Barbeque,” because that is what is on the staff’s T-shirts.

Although, between you and me, at home and with company, I am probably going to call this place “That Blankety-Blank Place Out By Six Flags That Nobody Can Freaking Find and I Drove Around for Half a Flippin’ Hour Looking For.” Well, that’s not entirely accurate. This place was absolutely packed by 11:30, drawing an enormous lunch rush from the businesses around Thornton Road, so plenty of people know where it is. Once you find this place, you’re not likely to forget it, for it is terrific. Watson was right; this is easily among the best, if not the outright, hands-down best, pulled pork in the region.

The pork itself is simply excellent, smoked just right and full of flavor. Accompanied by some decent fries and pretty good, oniony, Brunswick stew, it would have been a pleasant success without the sauces, but those turned some great meat into something memorable. Beaver Creek talks up what they call their Seminole sauce, a mustard-vinegar mix, surprisingly thin, and I really liked that. But the other sauce, the hot stuff, that’s what you’re going to want to sample. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen something like this at any of the barbecue places that I’ve tried. It’s a thick, bright orange sauce and it is the absolutely perfect accompaniment to this meat. Make sure that you order your pork plate pulled and dry so that you may experiment with each. I’m not sure what is in the hot sauce. Possibly mustard, peppers, and maybe a little mayo? Whatever, it was one of the most interesting finds that I have had on my barbecue travels. Also surprising was the complete lack of a tomato-based sauce. I’m pleased that they made that decision; it makes their business stand out a little more.

One other thing that I really liked was the inclusion of Fanta Cherry in the soda fountain. You never see that at restaurants other than Zaxby’s. One other thing that I didn’t really like so much was the unusual reaction of the woman cleaning the tables as she saw me snapping pictures of my lunch. She furrowed her brow and, with a hint of hostility and a drop of confusion, asked “Why are you taking pictures?”

If I had been reading Gregory Mcdonald, I might have introduced myself as Ted Nugent and told her I was from the health department. Fortunately, I was only reading a mediocre Harry Kemelman and told her, “My wife couldn’t be with me today. I want her to see what I’m having for lunch.”

She should probably get used to food bloggers taking photos here. Once the word gets out, a few more folk in this hobby might want to come out this way. Just remember, gang, south of I-20. I sent the address correction into Urbanspoon already.