As Atlanta-based burger chains start getting large enough to leave town, most of them head toward Nashville. Flip Burger Boutique, Yeah Burger, and Farm Burger have all put the Music City on their radars; in fact I believe that Flip just opened in Tennessee this week, or is about to. However, one of my favorites of that pack, Grindhouse Killer Burgers, is happily staying small and scrappy for the time being. Several months back, they chose to open their third location in nearby Athens, entering a very large space on Lumpkin near Five Points. I don’t recognize the building, and wonder whether it was built for this restaurant. It’s a two-story place with seating for a hundred downstairs and a hundred (21+) on the smoking-allowed patio upstairs. The three year-old complained mightily about not being allowed upstairs. Poor fellow. Continue reading “Grindhouse Killer Burgers, Athens GA”
Category: local chains
The Taco Stand, Athens GA (take two)
Back in November, I started prepping an old story that I’d written about the dearly missed Mean Bean for a reprint here. Doing so made me crave their nachos something fierce. It also sparked a craving in Marie; she wanted a spinach quesadilla from the Mean Bean’s competitor / cross-town rival, Taco Stand. She loves those things. We love Athens and miss it a lot, and would have gone that weekend, but had plans on the Saturday and saw that rain was on the forecast for the Sunday, and taking our three year-old to Athens and not letting him play at the Southeast Clarke Park is as close to child cruelty as can be imagined. We waited it out for a week. Continue reading “The Taco Stand, Athens GA (take two)”
Maurice’s Piggie Park Barbecue, West Columbia SC
Last month, I indulged on another barbecue road trip. I’ll relate the details in the next chapter, and use the space here to talk about my experience at one of South Carolina’s best-known barbecue joints, Maurice’s. It’s a pretty large family-owned business, similar in size and local impact to, say, Country’s Barbecue in Columbus and eastern Alabama, Buddy’s in Knoxville, or Golden Rule in Birmingham. The business as we can perceive it today dates back to 1953, but it claims a somewhat older lineage on the strength of its bottled sauce, which the current owners’ grandfather, Joe Bessinger, began selling in a restaurant in Holly Hill SC in 1939. (A restaurant called Villa Tronco, also in Columbia, claims to be the oldest continually-operating one in the state, and was founded in 1940.) Continue reading “Maurice’s Piggie Park Barbecue, West Columbia SC”
Taqueria Los Hermanos, Lilburn GA
I keep telling myself that Marie and I need to do a better job covering the northeastern suburbs (and the southeastern ones, and the southwestern ones, too…), but we just don’t get out that way very often. Well, a couple of Saturdays ago, my real-world job called on me to work a festival near Tucker, and I looked around for some lunch suggestions. I wasn’t specifically looking for Mexican, but the road ended up taking me a few miles north of Tucker to try something that came with a good recommendation. Continue reading “Taqueria Los Hermanos, Lilburn GA”
Tin Lizzy’s Cantina, Kennesaw GA
We hadn’t been to a Tin Lizzy’s in such a long time. Marie and I had visited their location in Buckhead a couple of times before, when we were dating. As much as I remembered the oddball, tasty, decidedly non-traditional tacos, I also remember some sage advice from a beer company’s poster in the gents’. At the time, I was still smarting from a loan that was looking like it was never going to be repaid. (It wasn’t.) The poster read “If you lend a ‘friend’ a hundred dollars and never see them again, it was probably money well spent.” I felt so much better after I thought about that. Continue reading “Tin Lizzy’s Cantina, Kennesaw GA”
Peace, Love and Pizza, Marietta GA
Up here in Atlanta’s northwestern suburbs, the psychedelic slices of Peace, Love and Pizza are totally taking over everything, man, which is an amazingly fab and gear thing. Since we last wrote about them on the occasion of visiting their second store in Woodstock, they have opened three new locations in eight months. That is pretty darned impressive. Continue reading “Peace, Love and Pizza, Marietta GA”
Lupi’s Pizza Pies, Chattanooga TN
To make up for my daughter being away for a week, and, as it turned out, not having quite as perfect a vacation as she had hoped, I asked her what sort of food she’d like when we got to Chattanooga. She picked pizza, and I looked for something promising on the I-75 side of town. Having already tried everybody’s patience by turning the ninety-minute drive from Knoxville into three and change, I didn’t want to press my luck going around and north to Soddy-Daisy or someplace and suggesting that this was still technically the Chattanooga area. No, best just to find something close to the interstate and move on. Continue reading “Lupi’s Pizza Pies, Chattanooga TN”
Marie, Let's Eat! 