The Sound Table and Café Intermezzo, Atlanta GA

Date night! Marie and I got a very pleasant surprise from her father when he came to visit last weekend. He gave us a big wad of money and told us to go enjoy each other’s company at a nice restaurant or two while he watched the children and read A.A. Milne to his new grandson. Unfortunately, I left it too late to make reservations at Two Urban Licks, so I went with a backup plan, The Sound Table. This is a popular new place, just starting its second year, at the intersection of Edgewood and Boulevard in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, and its chef and owners had previously collaborated on the popular Top FLR.

Marie and I enjoyed a very good meal here. We were early, before it apparently gets pretty loud, and got to enjoy some conversation without yelling across the table to each other. They have an amazing cocktail list here, for diners looking for something unusual. I was briefly tempted by a simple glass of Cointreau and orange juice – it really has been a while since I had one – but we just had water, as we almost always do.

Sound Table’s menu changes quarterly, and even then they make changes each evening based on what vegetables they can source, so guests will not have much luck reading blogs and getting ideas. That said, we did enjoy an appetizer of fried chickpeas salted with curry and a wonderful small serving of lamb meatballs with Roma tomatoes that got us ready for some excellent entrees. I ordered the hanger steak with a beet salad. This was very simple but so incredibly delicious. It was merely a small plate of arugula, beets, avocado slices and anchovies, but each complemented the other very well.

My meal was good enough that I did not quite get menu envy, but I came close. Happily, the perfectly seasoned steak was tasty enough to make it quite a standout. Marie enjoyed a grilled pork chop that was just heavenly, served over butter beans and greens. She also had a bowl – a huge one, as it turns out – of excellent cauliflower, cooked with red curry and peanuts. Everything was extremely tasty and appropriately portioned. This was a very good date night detination.

We passed on dessert, as I had planned to really give Marie’s sweet tooth a workout. Unfortunately, my desire to pick up some caramels from a reasonably new place called The Sugar-Coated Radical was foiled, as they closed earlier than I was planning. We will return some other time, now that we know to arrive before the dinner hour. We drove on instead to Café Intermezzo on Peachtree, near Collier, for some decadent cake, arriving just as the sun was going down.

One day, we might return to Café Intermezzo for a full meal; it certainly has an interesting menu. Speaking of which, the drinks menu here – or perhaps “beverage book” is more appropriate, as it’s a full fifty pages long – is just about the most overwhelming and mad thing that I’ve seen in ages. I’ve occasionally wondered whether there might be a place in town, other than the GSU dorms, that serves absinthe, and now I know. Since the days of me drinking myself stupid over some damn girl in French class are long gone, I’ll pass.

Café Intermezzo has a dessert showcase that rivals the ones we see in Cobb County at Marietta Diner and its sister places. A gigantic slice of cake here will run you about eight bucks and you know with every bite that you’re indulging in something sinful. I had choclate and Marie had cheesecake and, somewhere in the beverage book, we noticed that they sell bottles of Hank’s soda. I have been on a black cherry kick lately, although the cream soda that Marie enjoyed probably complmented her cake a little better. Although really, a tall glass of milk might have done just as well.

Eventually, we had to leave the patio and get back to the suburbs, and end our date night, as parents often do, swinging by the grocery store to pick up things for the kids. We’re just so romantic, you know.

Café de Paris, Marietta GA (CLOSED)

Last Friday, Marie’s father came to visit and to see his first grandchild. He’s been an awesome stepgrandfather to my older two kids, but this is the first grandbaby that he’s been able to cuddle and to whom he can read poems. It was a good visit, even if it did reinforce his negative feelings about Atlanta’s sprawl and traffic, and we enjoyed a couple of good meals while he was here.

He suggested that the six of us go to a French restaurant. Urbanspoon showed that Café de Paris was not very far from us and it had a good review from the enjoyable Atlanta Restaurant Blog, so that made our decision easy. Friday rush hour traffic through all this sprawl was still pretty awful, but we got there in about twenty minutes.

We all had very good meals here, although my daughter, still confused as to whether or not she actually likes coffee, found her cappuccino too bitter and had to add about a half-pound of Sugar in the Raw to it. Marie had Quiche Lorraine and her father had a shrimp carbonara dish. I had pan-fried grouper and my daughter had a Divan crepe, which comes with chicken, mushrooms and broccoli.

To be honest, the entrees all seemed very good, but I was most impressed by the soup. None of us had their lemon artichoke, which comes highly recommended, but we each had either the tomato basil or the shrimp and corn chowder, which was excellent. The chowder is not on the menu every day; it should be.

For desserts, most of us enjoyed the creme brulee, but Marie chose to have a strawberry crepe. I think she made the better choice. She was very pleased with it, and we were very pleased with the experience.

Hot Thomas Barbecue, Watkinsville GA

Many years ago, Hot Thomas ranked among my very favorite barbecue restaurants. When I lived in Athens, I would drive over to Watkinsville maybe once a month to get a chopped pork plate. Then I moved away and they hit a run of bad luck and closed for a while. Actually, I sort of found out the hard way, by driving over here on two or three occasions in the 2000s and finding only disappointment where there should have been great barbecue. Continue reading “Hot Thomas Barbecue, Watkinsville GA” →

Traveling Fare, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing a chapter on Traveling Fare, or rather more specifically Paul’s Pot Pies. It may seem a little odd considering that it’s May in Georgia, but we had a couple of very cool days that made a baked hot pie something to look forward to as an evening meal. My mother had come to visit and wanted to offer a treat, and this was just the thing.

Traveling Fare is a local Marietta business that has been around for over a quarter of a century. You can go to the small storefront just off the Square and get a lunch, or buy some of the pot pies to take home and bake for dinner.

Our latest opportunity to try these came when my mother came up to visit our new baby and wanted to provide a no-fuss meal that would still let her enjoy his company. Since the little guy tends to be a bit fussy around dinner time (probably the only time of day he regrets the whole milk diet thing) and needs extra care and attention then to be happy, a meal we could pop into the oven and forget about for an hour was just the thing.

I have to admit I would never have given them a try if it weren’t for the Marietta Square Farmer’s Market. There’s nothing like a free sample for making you want to go spend money to get more of what you just tasted. They are a regular at the market and show up with large casserole dishes that let them give quite respectably-sized samples. The pies themselves are really cute, with a hand-cut flower made out of pastry dough decorating each one.

I don’t know how many of our readers might have spent some of their starving-student or strapped-newlywed meal budget on those under-a-dollar frozen soup-with-a-crust things that went by the name of pot pie and would therefore flinch away from the mere idea. These are not those pies; these are something delectable and substantial, filling and a pleasure to eat. Also, aside from the traditional chicken or beef stew-type varieties, you can get Jambalaya with sausage and rice, creole shrimp with lots of shrimp, and several other varieties. I’m a fan of comfort food and have to admit that the chicken is my favorite, but the rest of my family prefers the Jambalaya. I haven’t had the opportunity to try all the flavors yet, but so far there hasn’t been one that was unsatisfactory or even slightly disappointing.

The storefront is quite small, and the bulk of the business seems to be take-out and catering, but if you choose to have lunch there you can chat with Paul behind the counter. The lunch menu includes some intriguing salads that I should check out soon. He’s quite friendly and willing to tell you about his products or just talk.

Troy’s BarBQ and Ole Tymer BBQ, Rome GA

Two Saturdays ago, Marie and I were enjoying a little tour of northwest Georgia that took us to four barbecue restaurants. The original plan, drafted before our baby was born, had been to continue north up GA-100 to the town of Coosa, see whether anything interesting might have been waiting for us there, and then drive east to Rome before coming home.

Unfortunately, we did have a little time budget to worry about, as we did need to get back and relieve Marie’s mother of babysitting duties. So when we got to the town of Cave Spring, we changed plans and drove to Rome from there. Coosa would have to wait for some other time. My parents and I used to drive through there all the time. They grew up in Fort Payne, Alabama, and we would go back out this way to visit my grandparents every four or five weeks.

Marie doesn’t believe that she’s ever been through Rome. I hadn’t been by in around five years. The town used to be home to a very, very minor league indoor football team called the Renegades, and I was curious enough to come check them out back when I cared a bit more about that sport. I had supper on that trip at a barbecue place whose name I could not remember, but I looked over the listings at Urbanspoon, shrugged, thought that it might have been Troy’s, and got directions. I was incorrect. I’d never been to Troy’s before, although many, many people have in the eighty years the restaurant has been in business.

Troy’s, today, is in a large, open space in a small strip mall that also houses a Ru San’s. It is a characterless, commercial site that the present owners have attempted to spruce up with photographs and signage from the restaurant’s heyday. Apparently first opened in the 1930s, Troy’s was in a large building that was later demolished for a bypass. In the 1950s, they relocated to the place that generations of Romans knew very well. Troy – I’m not sure whether that was his first or his family name – passed away a few years ago, and the new owners bought the rights to it from his heirs. They have mostly kept the classic layout of the restaurant in its fondly-remembered space, with a three-sided counter right in front of things, but the much larger space in this strip mall means that they can accommodate several more tables on either side of it.

The pulled pork here is served in a deep, red tomato-based sauce. I asked, and it is prepared that way in the kitchen; you can’t get the sauce on the side. On any other day (these days), I might have minded a little, but since the sandwiches that I enjoyed at the previous two stops each had such very different takes on meat, I appreciated getting a third style in one afternoon.

Nothing here blew us away, though I did like the slaw and Marie was taken with her butter beans. It’s pretty good stuff, served with a great, positive attitude from a terrific staff, but I think that I would like it better if it was in a different location, and not one that feels like it was built yesterday. Recipes with this much history deserve a better presentation.

I was mentioning above that the last time I came to Rome, I ate at a place whose name I could not remember. By chance, our drive to Troy’s took us right past that place! It’s a drive-through shack called Ole Tymer, and while it doesn’t have Troy’s long history, it’s closing in on thirty years in business.

By this point, Marie and I were completely full, but I pulled into Ole Tymer anyway and got a bag of food to take home and reheat. I remember enjoying the meal that I had here five years back, and the chopped pork and stew didn’t disappoint. Then, I sat at one of their concrete picnic tables and read several chapters of Marvel’s Essential Luke Cage and just enjoyed the heck out of my nice late afternoon. But on this Saturday, I took my food home and had them with our odds-n-sods supper of leftovers and freezer pizza. I daresay I had the best meal. The chopped pork was smokey but also moist, and the stew was very good.

Ole Tymer kind of needs to invest in a new sign. It looks like there’s been a change in ownership, or at least half-ownership, sometime in the last few years, but the name of the second owner is still somewhat visible on the sign, his name faded but present. Every restaurant has a story; it looks to passers-by that the story of this one is tinged with sadness.

That wrapped up our first northwest Georgia tour. There are still several places along and nearby the I-75 corridor that we can try on another loop sometime, or on a similar jaunt into Alabama along I-59. It probably shouldn’t surprise you to learn that I’ve already sketched out another little day trip. Maybe we’ll get the chance to try it in a couple of months!

Lively’s Owens BBQ, Cedartown GA

A week ago, Marie and I took a little barbecue tour of northwest Georgia. We went out I-20 almost to the Alabama line, then drove north up GA-100, took a right at Cave Spring and sauntered over to Rome before returning home to Marietta via I-75. The trip took almost six hours and took us to four different restaurants. I wanted to sample this area for several reasons, but one of the big ones was this: nobody else seems to have done it. There are many excellent food and barbecue bloggers out there, but nobody has really covered this area. I greatly enjoyed a pretty comprehensive site called All About the Smoke (3/29/12: site down) which covers northeast Georgia, but there’s nothing like it for the other side of the state. Even the magnificent, and sadly still on hiatus 3rd Degree Berns has given this region a wide berth.

I don’t reckon that anybody will be accusing me of trying to goose my Urbanspoon stats with these four entries; as near as I can tell, absolutely nobody is talking about barbecue in Tallapoosa, Cedartown and Rome. We should do something about that.

In the previous entry, I told you about our first stop, in the border town of Tallapoosa. From there, we got turned around a little bit. Marie and I use Google Maps to navigate on our trips. This was the first, and, heaven willing, the last time that the service got so completely hornswaggled by the notion of getting a fellow from point A to B. After we had eaten at Turn Around, we asked our server whether there was a grocery store in town. Marie and I had each realized that a town this near the Alabama line might have its soda aisle served by Buffalo Rock. The server told us there was a Piggly Wiggly which turned out to be within walking distance, just 200 yards further along US-78. Next door was a Jack’s fast food place, first mentioned in this blog about a year ago and still, somehow, not given a proper visit.

So we bought some Buffalo Rock and Grapico from the store and resumed our Google Maps journey. This took us back about a mile in the direction we came, and then in a loop back towards I-20. About four miles later, we emerged at a traffic light on US-78, the Jack’s visible about 200 yards to our right. Google Maps, you failed us.

Anyway, we continued on, distracted briefly by a sign pointing out the site of historic Possum Snout, past some damage and felled trees from the region’s recent horrible storms, and Google Maps failed us again as we got into Cedartown. If I hadn’t spotted a sign for South Main Street nowhere near the point the directions told us to look for it, we’d have missed it completely.

The first big surprise here is that the restaurant we were looking for is in the process of changing its name. Owens Barbecue, a family-owned business, was bought in March and is currently calling itself Lively’s Owens, although they have not yet changed the roadside sign. Owens was evidently here for thirty years in this small brown shack under gorgeous tree cover; Lively has been in charge for about two months and has introduced a few new menu items.

The pork here is not as finely chopped as many other places, and the portions seem a little smaller. I had a sandwich and stew again, and Marie just had a cup of slaw. While the restaurant’s “classic” sauce – traditional Georgia tomato-vinegar mix – is still available, the new owners are promoting their “Darbi-Q” recipe. This is a Carolina-styled sauce, thin and brown-orange. It is really good, though I’m not sure whether the menu needs to feature a “Darbi-Q” as a separate sandwich, when it’s evidently just their standard pork sandwich, drenched in sauce.

The stew didn’t hold a candle to the recipe that we tried about an hour earlier in Tallapoosa, but it was also memorable and I really liked it. This stew was in a thinner soup, with larger chunks of meat, and it was very peppery. I really like trying places like this that have their own take on a dish.

We were eating at the same time as a small group from the nearby National Guard base, and passed the time talking with them about, of all things, the Winchester House, and the recent preoccupation among religious scam artists about the end times. According to one billboard near our house in Marietta, the world’s meant to end today. Well, if it does, thanks so much for reading, and if it doesn’t, stop by on Monday and we’ll tell you about the next two places on our tour.

The Turn Around Bar-B-Q, Tallapoosa GA

Many years back, Marie and I had a good pal, Dave Prosser, who moved from Athens to Anniston, Alabama. He’s since moved farther afield, to Idaho, dug up dinosaur bones, got lost on a mountain for three days, got married, and has only come back to town once. But while he was living in Anniston, I took the kids to visit one time. This would have been 2002 or so. I realized that US-78 connected Anniston with Atlanta, and decided to take that back home instead of I-20. Crossing back into Georgia brings you to the small town of Tallapoosa, and I stopped at the Turn Around Bar-B-Que for a take-out barbecue sandwich and fries and munched on those in the car for supper.

These days, Turn Around is no longer open for supper. They’re a breakfast and lunch place only, and they don’t do a roaring trade in lunch, either. That’s just not right; this Brunswick stew is completely remarkable, and if you are reading our blog and like barbecue, you need to plan to get out here and try this stuff.

This past Saturday, Marie and I got out for her first baby break for a drive through northwest Georgia and a barbecue tour that I had planned a couple of months ago. Our baby came two weeks early; he was due on the 18th but came on the 3rd. We had originally planned to get out and do this tour on the 7th, but we used that day to treat her to some hot dogs around Atlanta instead. Marie’s mother was in town visiting and providing some much-needed help, and she watched the baby for about six hours while Marie and I stretched our road-tripping legs.

Tallapoosa is about one hour from our place in Marietta, and we got to Turn Around at 11.30. The sign out front is faded and, incorrectly, still notes their old dinner hours. Inside, the walls are peppered with grouchy, silly but nevertheless unwelcoming signs about following the house rules. Fortunately, our server was polite and agreeable, and utterly unlike the signs! Marie and I each ordered a chopped pork sandwich, and I had stew and she had potato salad. The pork is incredibly smoky and really, really dry. It’s served on a buttered sesame seed bun, but it really needs some sauce. There’s just the one here, a medium-thick red sauce of tomato and vinegar.

The pork is pretty good; I’ve certainly had worse. But this stew… well, I’ve certainly had many, many worse helpings of stew than this. It is simply remarkable, right up there with Harold’s and Speedi-Pig. It’s just not right that nobody seems to know about this stew. Seriously, if you’re on I-20 between Birmingham and Alabama, you should really swing by this place and see what I am talking about. It doesn’t appear to be anything special, just the standard ingredients of (I believe) ground pork, chicken, tomatoes and corn, but it is seasoned just perfectly.

Turn Around has recently started selling ice cream and brags about their banana splits; that’s a pretty good idea to try and draw the after-lunch crowds in and I hope that it works. This isn’t an area that I get too very frequently, and I kind of want them to still be around, serving this stew, the next time that I am.

Marie and I passed on dessert as we had several more stops to make. More about those in the next chapter…