Starkville, Mississippi – part two

So I’ve been talking about our trip into the Deep South and finding some pretty good food along the way. Nothing in Mississippi had really completely knocked me for a loop, but Starkville might just not be the right place in the state. All the evidence points towards the Delta region, or Hattiesburg, being full of interesting places to eat.

But that’s not to say that Starkville is completely without charms. We certainly didn’t have any bad meals here, although the stunning number of crummy national fast food joints on Highway 12 will make anybody slowly shake their head. The first full day was pretty good, but the discoveries of the second day were even better. Continue reading “Starkville, Mississippi – part two” →

Firehouse Subs, Kennesaw GA

I was reading about how Firehouse Subs recently got over a huge slump in year-to-year sales by hiring the same ad company that Papa John’s Pizza uses, and convincing all of their franchisees to pony up a larger-than-normal royalty to pay for all the radio ads they were going to run. I’m going to suggest that learning stories like this and getting a broad view of the restaurant industry this way is no bad thing; almost all of our dining out dollars are spent at locally-owned businesses, and I rarely pay any attention to the corporate world of small chains like this one, with 415 small stores in twenty states.

In fact, while the franchises did apparently see nearly-double-digit year-to-year growth – and the temptation to turn this sentence into an impenetrable parody of incoherent marketing bafflegam is a great one – its message was still completely lost on potential customers like me. I very rarely listen to commercial radio, and when I do, I switch over to a college station the instant I hear an ad start. So it wasn’t the Arbitron market synergy that got us back into a Firehouse, it was my son. We let him pick someplace in Marietta, wherever he wanted, for his birthday.

We used to eat at Firehouse from time to time, but got out of the habit around the time that Marie moved in. Since she can cook so darn well, there wasn’t much need to go out and eat as often, and so when we did, it was usually to someplace a little more special and local. In time, Dagwood’s, which is somehow still hanging in there, became our go-to place for sandwiches, and I don’t think I’d been to a Firehouse in almost four years.

In the meantime, I missed out on what could be the start of a very fun new development: they have introduced their own branded soft drink.

The first Firehouse Subs was opened in Jacksonville in 1994 by Robin and Chris Sorenson, who, like their father, had previously served their community as firefighters. Honestly, there’s an artificial over-emphasis on firefighting memorabilia and imagery, down to the dalmatian-spotted tabletops, that comes across as hopelessly manufactured and downright silly. Calling your best-selling sandwich a “hook and ladder” is one thing, but serving up the kids’ meals in a red plastic hat is just ridiculous.

Happily, the food is still quite good, impossible orders of magnitude better than competitors like Subway or Blimpie. There’s a short delay in getting sandwiches out to guests, as the meats and cheeses are all steamed before being placed in the buns. The result is tasty and different, especially because this chain does not scrimp in the quality of its ingredients.

Probably the best thing on the menu here is the meatball sub, which is served with delicious melted cheese and a really good, mildly spicy tomato sauce. My kids each had one of these. Marie enjoyed a steak and cheese with mushrooms, which was nowhere close to the best in the city but not bad, and I had a club with turkey, ham and bacon. Even though it has been years since I was last here, I remembered that I enjoy topping my sandwich with the house hot sauce. It’s not especially hot, more of a mild and sweet brown sauce made from datil peppers, but it goes extremely well with a ham sandwich. For guests wanting something much spicier, the chain emphasizes the “fire” in their name by way of a remarkable collection of bottled hot sauces, some of which are just stupid hot with scotch bonnets and habaneros and overpower the sandwich.

Yet it was the soda fountain that got my attention on this trip. Since it was for his birthday, I told my son he could have a combo meal with a drink. (We almost always just get water at restaurants, to save on money and calories. Exceptions are sometimes made for sweet tea with barbecue, but this is a rule that children, all children, really loathe.) He noticed that Firehouse has its own branded beverage in the fountain – a cherry limeade that guests can make even more tart by adding limes of their own. I thought this was a really terrific idea and it tastes quite good, too. I hope this is a successful move by the company and it leads to more of their own drinks.

I’m certainly going to remember the cherry limeade when it gets really hot in a couple of months. With the Chilito’s next door selling their wonderful horchata, I’m not going to be sure where I should stop to get something to drink.

(There are apparently something like twenty Firehouse Subs locations in the Atlanta area. Identical experiences can be had at each of them, but, corporate shenanigans being what they are, curious soda fans interested in their branded limeade might do well to phone before driving to a store, in case their home office has pulled it.)

Bocado, Atlanta GA

So I finally took the plunge! Bocado is one of Atlanta’s best-known newer restaurants, and if I’m not mistaken, every blogger in the region has already visited the place. It’s been on my to-do list for ages, but other things and other meals kept coming up. They have a really convenient location on Howell Mill right where it meets Marietta Street, and I’ve been known, occasionally, to drive right past it in the early evenings, when Williams Street is really blocked up and I need an alternate way over to the interstate. I’ve just never had the opportunity to stop in before.
Continue reading “Bocado, Atlanta GA” →

Schwartz’s Montreal Hebrew Delicatessen, Montreal QC

(Honeymoon flashback: In July 2009, Marie and I took a road trip up to Montreal and back, enjoying some really terrific meals over our ten-day expedition. I’ve selected some of those great restaurants, and, once per month, I’ll tell you about them.)

I mentioned a couple of months ago in an earlier flashback chapter that I had a lot of fun reading about the restaurants in Charleston, West Virginia as I made a decision where Marie and I would be having supper. With Montreal, this would be a no-brainer. The most popular, line-out-the-door place in the city is Schwartz’s, and that’s the way it has been for more than eighty years. Schwartz’s specializes in a smoked meat sandwich, the likes of which you can’t get anywhere close to around here. In Montreal, they cure beef brisket in a dry mix of spices, peppercorns and coriander for ten days before it’s hot-smoked and sliced to order. Then it’s served on rye bread with yellow mustard. It’s as simple a sandwich as one with a ten day prep time could possibly be, and it is definitely worth the wait in that line.

We had Schwartz’s for supper on the third day of our honeymoon. We stayed the second night in Toronto with Dave and Shaindle in their condo. They’re somewhat late risers, much later than me, anyway, and we had brunch at the George Street Diner, one of their favorite places, before packing the car and getting back out on the road. It’s an easy five-hour drive between Toronto and Montreal. Highway 401 leaves the city and keeps that name throughout Ontario before changing to Autoroute 20 as you cross into Quebec.

Montreal must have looked like the most modern city in the world in 1976, when it hosted the Summer Olympics. Today, much of the stark, white, concrete structures and overpasses that surround the city look like Logan’s Run. Once drivers get through these tunnels and mustard yellow lighting, at least on the side of town that we saw, the city is revealed to be a gorgeous, thriving and bustling metropolis, clean and full of pedestrian traffic. Our route took us north up Rue Berri past the Université du Québec à Montréal towards a bed and breakfast that I found for us. Called Bienvenue, I selected it because it was just five short blocks’ walk from Schwartz’s.

I had not stayed at a bed and breakfast in… well, hang on, no, actually, I had never stayed at one before. This actually proved to be one of the most sensible decisions that I made in planning our honeymoon. For the most part, we just aimed to pull into interstate-convenient motels whenever we got tired, but booking a place in a huge city like Montreal is a much better idea than just leaving things to chance, especially when you’re like me and don’t speak French particularly well. Bienvenue was a very nice place on a gorgeous, tree-lined avenue. Neighborhood kids had left more graffiti behind than I would prefer, but we didn’t even have to pay to park. The prices were very reasonable. We didn’t appear to be anywhere close to any comic book or record shops, although we did pass a place with the inviting sign for “bandes desinee” on our way out of town. There were several clothes boutiques along Sainte-Laurent Boulevard, and a spice shop which Marie and I visited before leaving Tuesday morning.

Monday night, though, it was time for a great big sandwich. We did not have a very long wait; arriving between waves with our often-excellent timing, we only had to stand outside for about seven or eight minutes. The restaurant has only a few long tables inside, and guests, who are called in based on how many are in their group, will usually be bumping elbows with others, with the expectation that they shouldn’t linger for very long. If you would like to have a large group at Schwartz’s, it is best for everyone concerned to plan ahead that you won’t all be sitting together, paying together, or leaving at the same time!

I was told later that we really missed a trick not ordering their slaw. Marie and I each had one of these amazing smoked meat sandwiches and a pickle, which was the most delicious pickle ever, along with a small plate of devilishly greasy fries and a nash. I didn’t know what the heck a nash was, so I ordered it. It’s a little pepperoni stick, about as big around as your pinky finger and maybe five inches long. It looks kind of naked and sad on a little plate by itself. Oh, and a glass of black cherry soda is de rigeur here.

The smoked meat is just amazingly tasty. It’s not too many miles removed from pastrami, although you usually find pastrami made from turkey and often cured with more sugar than pepper. You get a pile of it, and it is wonderful, and once we get that corporate sponsor and expense account that I daydream and fantasize about having, we’ll go to Montreal every dang summer for a vacation and return to this place every time. We had so many awesome meals a year and a half back, but this one honestly sticks out the most. Does anybody from Montreal want to start smoking meat this way down here?

OU for U Cafe, Dunwoody GA (CLOSED)

I first heard about OU for U Cafe several weeks ago, and was excited about having such a neat-sounding place available just a traffic light away from Marie’s job. Since I have a couple of short days each week, then, assuming she’s not trapped all day in meetings, I could take her to lunch somewhere in Dunwoody and get her back before her employer falls apart without her.

That might just happen when she takes maternity leave.

Despite a glowing review from Food Near Snellville, it was several weeks before Marie and I could get our schedules synched enough to have lunch together. It was certainly worth the wait; if there’s a better lunch place in this neighborhood, it’s news to me. There’s a Rising Roll Gourmet about a stone’s throw from OU for U, and it’s not a tenth as good as the delicious, kosher food in this deli.

(If, unlike me, you actually have a brain, the “OU” pun might have clued you into this being a kosher business. Me, I read that it was kosher, and I saw the name, but was somehow unable to connect the dots. Then again, it took me more than a decade to figure out why comics writer Pat Mills named a squabbling double-act “Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein.” Being married to a punster like Marie has not helped; it’s just made me close my eyes.)

Considering the suggestions made by other writers, I told Marie that both the egg salad and the falafel came recommended. That worked for her; she ordered the egg salad and a small cup of cream of mushroom soup. I thought the egg salad was pretty good but not extraordinary, but the soup was really excellent. My own lunch was sort of the inverse of hers; I had a tomato-and-stuff soup that was okay, and not nearly enough bread along with it. I should have gone with the lentil soup; everybody seems to be raving about it.

Now, that falafel on the other hand… let me tell you about this. For many years, I have told and retold the story of these unbelievable falafels that I used to get in Athens.

In the mid-nineties, there was a gentleman – I used to think he was from Turkey, but a part of me is saying that’s wrong – who came to Athens to clean house for his daughter while she was in a doctoral program at UGA. During the day, he rented a cart and started serving the sort of grub that he used to have back home from a little space on whatchacallit street, beneath Park and Leconte Halls and across from the P-J plaza, a discreet distance from the guy with the hot dog cart. I had a couple of pretty good sandwiches from him and then I tried his falafel and that was that. I had another falafel for lunch from this guy every single day for the rest of the quarter. Then the term ended, my work and class schedule became stupid, his daughter got her doctorate, and that was the end of the falafel cart.

OU for U didn’t serve me a falafel that good, but it was the first time in fifteen years that I’ve had a falafel come close enough to remind me of what I’ve missed. Alternating between a little extra chilled tahini from a squeeze bottle and some punch-packed hot sauce, this was a remarkable little sandwich. I would not mind another trip out that way at all.

In July 2012, OU’s owners, while still keeping kosher, elected to change their name and also changed the menu quite considerably. Now called Cafe Noga, they are no longer vegetarian.

Pawley’s Front Porch, Columbia SC

This is Marie, doing my bit towards handling the backlog due to the 8-restaurant day that Grant and I took together. Grant and I don’t get to spent a whole lot of just-us-together time so this was something we had been looking forward to for a while. The kids got to spend the day getting rid of their clothing allowance with their grandmother, so a good day was had by all. Continue reading “Pawley’s Front Porch, Columbia SC” →

Woody’s Famous Philadelphia Cheesesteaks, Atlanta GA

Years ago, Woody’s Cheesesteaks, a little shack at the bizarre, horribly designed intersection of Monroe and Virginia, was one of those places that I would always drive past, wondering whether the food was any good, but unable to find out because they had already closed. They used to keep really unfriendly hours, but had a pretty devoted clientele in the neighborhood.

I think that another problem has always been the warring strip malls in the region and their parking enforcement. It should make sense to park over at the Midtown Art Cinema’s lot, walk over to Woody’s and then come back for a movie, but you risk having your car towed for that. Heck, I’m afraid to leave my car at the movie lot and walk as far as the Trader Joe’s. No, you have to fight for one of the small handful of spaces at Woody’s or the teeny strip mall behind it, get a meal and then move your car sixty seconds’ drive down Monroe to see a movie, which is a criminal waste of gas and time you could spend getting a little exercise.

Well, this past Saturday, we were going to see a movie after lunch, but that was down at the Plaza, so I suppose it was okay to park here and then move the car. (You do know that I’m being a little intentionally silly, right?)

Now, back when Woody’s was originally open during its unfriendly lunch-and-a-bit hour, it did have a very good reputation for serving up, after an apparently considerable wait, some really excellent grilled-to-order cheesesteaks. The original owner, David Pastoria, was much loved, but with a little exasperation for the long lines and short hours. Or maybe not “short” so much as “erratic.” He decided to step down in 2009, and passed ownership of Woody’s to Steven Renner, who has made some changes to the place. For one thing, nowadays they’re open more often than not.

I never tried Pastoria’s original, of course, but my son and I stopped by just as they opened, meeting our friends Matt and Kelley, who came into the city to see the original Frankenstein with us at the Plaza Theatre. This is part of the monthly – at least I think it’s monthly – Silver Scream Spook Show, a complete riot of fun, silly costumes, bad jokes and go-go dancers from the local Blast-Off Burlesque troupe. Now that the Spook Show has resumed operations after a few months’ break, we are looking forward to going to see them from time to time, and having an early lunch somewhere in Atlanta beforehand.

Honestly, we need not have arrived at Woody’s quite as early as eleven to have time to make it over to the Plaza, but it gave us the chance to see the place in action before it got too busy. We didn’t have the really long wait for our orders that diners of the original Woody’s have reported, but maybe about five minutes. They serve their sandwiches in table-covering butcher paper. Matt and I each had a traditional cheesesteak, mine with added mushrooms. Kelley had a hot dog and my son had an Italian sub. We all enjoyed them, but I was a little surprised that less meat had made it into my roll than I would have thought.

It was a pretty good sandwich and quite filling, but it was not quite as good as a Mad Italian cheesesteak, and nowhere close to the awesome ones available at Roy’s in Smyrna. My son was raving about his Italian sub, but that could be the Jack Benny in him. Every sandwich my boy has is the best sandwich that he’s ever had, so he’s not the most reliable of reporters. His milkshake, made with Breyer’s ice cream, certainly was terrific. In all, it was a pretty good meal, certainly among the better cheesesteaks in the city. With much more convenient hours for dinner and late night guests – they’re open until 4 in the morning on the weekends – I could see us stopping in again if we are in the area, and if we can find a parking place without anybody being a jerk about it.