Smoakies Bar-B-Que, Cordele GA

The time has come, at last, to wave farewell, for now, to certain corridors and avenues in middle and south Georgia.

For the three years that we have been blogging, we have tried to take alternate paths on our regular trips from Atlanta to Saint Simons Island. For one thing, I-16 is a total bore, and for another, we’ve wanted to cover roads rarely taken, and find restaurants, meals, and stories in smaller, out-of-the-way towns. We have always anticipated moving to Asheville – and perhaps will, later this year – and, when that day comes, the big, dull expanse of central Georgia will be amazingly out of the way. It’s best to tackle it now, which is why Savannah is so poorly represented here. There will be time enough for Savannah down the line. Continue reading “Smoakies Bar-B-Que, Cordele GA” →

Food 101, Sandy Springs GA

We were invited to a launch party for the new Barrel Bar at a restaurant called Food 101 a couple of weeks ago. It’s a very interesting place; they use the slogan “New South Cuisine” and seem to have anticipated the trend by quite a few years. They opened in 1999 and are a spiritual antecedent of the restaurants and ideas that Hugh Acheson and Ford Fry have been popularizing, but they were perhaps so ahead of the curve that they don’t get much press or attention. Continue reading “Food 101, Sandy Springs GA” →

Moonie’s Texas Barbecue, Flowery Branch GA

A couple of chapters previously, I mentioned that we had intended to visit two barbecue places on our day out to the Dawsonville outlet mall, but we were frustrated by the second one that I chose being closed for vacation. So I asked Matt, as we kicked back at his house, whether he knew where a place called Moonie’s was. We don’t yet have smartphones or any of those new-fangled gadgets, you see, and that was the first one in the Gainesville area whose name that I remembered. Of course, Matt knew exactly where it was. If it’s anywhere in Hall, White, or northern Gwinnett County, he knows about it, and he gave us quick and accurate directions to it from their place. This brought us back down I-985, sending us home down a different artery out of Atlanta than the one we used to go north. Continue reading “Moonie’s Texas Barbecue, Flowery Branch GA” →

Mountain Fresh Creamery, Clermont GA

I have not had the chance to motor around north central Georgia for many, many months. In fact, I said, more than a year ago, that I needed to stop by a little ice cream parlor near the towns of Clermont and Cleveland. That’s when a writer with the remarkable nom de blog of Foodie Asshole wrote about Mountain Fresh Creamery, which had opened a few months previously. Continue reading “Mountain Fresh Creamery, Clermont GA” →

Big D’s BBQ, Dawsonville GA

When I worked in Alpharetta some years back, I used to occasionally enjoy lunch at Big D’s BBQ on Windward Parkway. They were only at that location for maybe eight months before joining the very, very long list of failed restaurants along that corridor and retreating northward to the growing sprawl around Dawsonville. Continue reading “Big D’s BBQ, Dawsonville GA” →

Photo Post 5: The Pink Panthers at Flack’s Flooring

It’s not as though I’ve driven up GA-400 way past the point where it becomes a regular-access, traffic-light managed corridor very often, but just about every time, I was distracted by an incredible collection of weird statues in front of a jukebox store called Cherokee Music between Cumming and Dawsonville. On both occasions that we visited Dahlonega’s Smith House for this blog, I said to myself that I should come by and photograph the menagerie. For no other reason, I felt that I owed it to the proprietors for reminding me of The Inspector, a DePatie-Freleng / UA cartoon that I loved as a kid. Continue reading “Photo Post 5: The Pink Panthers at Flack’s Flooring” →

Carniceria Hispana, Doraville GA (CLOSED)

One morning, as the girlchild was finishing up her long Christmas break, I cruelly woke her long before the sun rose and dragged her to work with me. This was one of my short days, and I needed to visit my bank after I finished up, and one of its few local branches is right off Buford Highway, on Shallowford. Continue reading “Carniceria Hispana, Doraville GA (CLOSED)” →