I see that it has been several months since I penned a chapter about one of my favorite soft drinks. Ironbeer is an absolutely delicious cola with a mild citrus flavor – I think of it as “orange cola,” although your mileage might vary – that was originally sold in Cuba. After that nation’s revolution in 1960, the company’s founders, in exile in Miami, restarted the business from the ground up and have slowly built a small following in Florida, Georgia and Alabama. Continue reading “Ironbeer”
Category: soda
Ok Sun, Columbus GA
Ages back, when I first went down to Columbus with Matt to meet his pals and see the town, we stopped by a diner called Gabby’s. It was a pretty filthy place. It was sort of a Waffle House crossed with one of those dumb joints that tries conning you into thinking it’s a “1950s” diner by way of a bad airbrushed picture of James Dean with his arm around Marilyn Monroe, but they served up a quite remarkable plate of hash browns via the kitchen sink, and they seemed to be the only place in the city that served Royal Crown Cola from a fountain. Quite apart from the inescapable truth that RC is just plain better than Coke, you’d think that more places in town would want to shine the local spotlight on a nationally-known beverage headquartered in the city. Of course, you’d also think that everybody in Chattanooga would want to serve Double Cola, and they don’t, either. At least several places in the Carolinas seem to be proud of Cheerwine. Continue reading “Ok Sun, Columbus GA”
The Sweet Shoppe & Soda Stop, Monroe GA (CLOSED)
I absolutely love small southern downtowns when they’re done right and show off cute local businesses. This past weekend, Marie and the kids and I drove to Athens and took US 78 from Decatur, just to have a different thing or two to look at along the way. I get the impression that 78 used to go through the town of Monroe, but somebody threw some money at Walton County in the early 1980s to build a bypass around the town. Nowadays, travelers have to struggle through sprawling chains and traffic lights to get out of Snellville and Loganville, but go out of the way to find Monroe. Continue reading “The Sweet Shoppe & Soda Stop, Monroe GA (CLOSED)”
Ed Boudreaux’s Bayou BBQ, Asheville NC (CLOSED)
I admit, concede and confess that it is really, really unfair to judge a restaurant based on its performance during a giant downtown festival that brings a couple of hundred thousand people right outside and keeps the wait staff and kitchen working overtime, all the time. However, the northern Alabama-styled white sauce at Ed Boudreaux’s Bayou BBQ on Biltmore Avenue in downtown Asheville is really, really terrible. It’s the worst, the pits, the lousiest, and I was so looking forward to it that I am aggravated enough to mention it first and foremost. Continue reading “Ed Boudreaux’s Bayou BBQ, Asheville NC (CLOSED)”
Krispy Kreme’s Cheerwine doughnuts
Word had filtered down the pipeline that Krispy Kreme, purveyor of thousand-calorie snacks, had teamed up with that other North Carolina institution, Cheerwine, for a special month-long treat at their Carolina stores. Faster than anybody was able to connect to the internet five years ago, I already had the location of a Krispy Kreme store in Asheville pulled up on Google Maps and was phoning them to confirm that store was participating in this promotion. Several people in our circle of friends found the news and forwarded it my way. “I heard about that,” I wrote a half-dozen times, anticipation rising. “I can’t wait ’til we go to Asheville.” It got to the point that I was looking forward to a damn doughnut almost as much as the rest of our vacation. Continue reading “Krispy Kreme’s Cheerwine doughnuts”
Ale-8-One
You might have noticed that I’ve enjoyed finding sodas that we don’t get locally for a very long time. Perhaps one very small downside to the internet is that research has become so much easier. It used to be a bit more fun to have to ask around to find out what the heck the thing you’d just found in the convenience store cooler was. Continue reading “Ale-8-One”
Double Cola
I’m pretty sure – although I can’t swear to it specifically – that it was my dad who mentioned Double Cola to me. It’s the sort of drink where, if you didn’t know it was a really old beverage, dating back to the 1920s, you’d walk right past it in the convenience store, thinking it just another cheap knockoff. But my dad sold it to me as something really neat, and said, incorrectly, that you could only get it in its hometown of Chattanooga. Continue reading “Double Cola”
Marie, Let's Eat! 