Alon’s Bakery & Market, Atlanta GA

Three Fridays ago – that is how far we are backed up right now! – I had my first solo lunch with the baby. Typically, I picked a place that’s really not as baby-seat friendly as would have been ideal for one parent, but I did not know that when I picked it! This was Marie’s first week back at work, and so, on one of my short days, the baby and I stopped by for a flying visit and a few hugs to give Mommy a nice little break from her crazy day, and then we set about finding someplace in Dunwoody to get something to eat when she had to get back to work.

I picked Alon’s based on its Urbanspoon ranking. I don’t know that I had ever heard of it before. It’s the second location for this small market that serves up some terrific sandwiches. The original is in Virginia-Highlands, and Neal tells me that the dessert display that I passed tastes every bit as decadent and wonderful as it looks. Between that and the very impressive cheese counter, I was certain to tell Marie that there was a pretty stunning selection of treats just around the corner from her office.

I think that Alon’s moved in to the space that had been occupied by Eatzi’s for many years. It’s a pretty cavernous room, and it is completely packed with counter space. If a guest is looking for lunch, they will enter through a patio, the blistering heat regulated by several ceiling fans, navigate an unavoidable logjam of people entering and trying to pay at the same place, and then work towards the back, where the sandwiches are made. I will agree with my fellow blogger Evan Mah, aka The Toothfish, who observed that the prices are a little lower than most high-end delis while serving up considerably superior food.

I ordered a hot pastrami sandwich, and I don’t know whether I’ve ever had one this good. The bread was just amazing; the crust was chewy and the rest was moist and so delicate that it seemed likely to disintegrate. The meat was served at the perfect temperature and just hinted at the sweetness that too much pastrami rolls about, lazily, in. The red onions tasted fresh and it was garnished with something called cannonball mustard. Googling this brings up Alon’s as one of the most common results. It’s nice little BBs of mustard seed in a very thin little sauce, and it goes incredibly well with the meat.

I enjoyed this wonderful sandwich with a bowl of pretty delightful gazpacho. It was not, perhaps, among the best bowls I’ve ever had, but it was quite good and it was just hot enough outside for this to be a perfectly considered treat. Normally, I just have a glass of ice water with my lunch, but I didn’t think any would be available at this market, so I enjoyed a bottle of Boylan’s cream soda. This all added up to be a pretty pricy lunch for one, but I daresay it was better than anything I could have attempted in my own kitchen.

Seating is, sadly, a real challenge here, so I would advise going outside of the peak lunch rush. The tables are jammed in a little close together, leading several people to act as though they were threading the fat man’s squeeze at Rock City as they tried to get between the table nearest me and a pillar holding up the patio’s roof. The staff member who said he would try to find a highchair for me promptly vanished without trace, so I ate with the baby seat on my table. My son got several compliments from people passing through, which is as it should be. He’s an awfully cute kid.

Pure Taqueria, Woodstock GA

So there’s this burrito place in Kennesaw that has been defying my efforts to eat there for years. I went there once and learned they were closed on Sundays. I went again and they were on vacation. I’m guessing that they take off every July 4th, because it was probably a year before Marie suggested burritos and I remembered the place and we drove that way and found them closed again. That’s three times that one place has stymied my plans. They win this round.

So we went back to Woodstock for the second time that day. For lunch, we had gone to Bub-Ba-Q, an area favorite, and enjoyed their appetizer portion of burnt ends for the first time. Since I was hoping for someplace new to our blog for supper, we followed that up with a visit to Pure Taqueria in the small city’s charming downtown. It’s located right across the plaza from Canyons Burger Company, and next door to what had been The Right Wing Tavern, a popular local place that unexpectedly closed quite suddenly a week or so before. This wasn’t a place that I was in any hurry to ever enter, but it was very surprising to learn that the restaurant that really drove that downtown’s resurgence shut down so abruptly.

When I was working in Alpharetta a few years back, the original Pure – named because the small building was once the home of a Pure Oil gas station – was one of the region’s foodie faves of the hour, always drawing huge crowds of all ages. The Woodstock location is one of two additional Atlanta sites. They have also opened in Matthews, NC and a fourth Atlanta store, in Duluth, is scheduled for a September opening.

Pure is one of those very rare places where we can’t fault anything specific, but it’s just far, far too loud and hot for us old-timers and a baby looking for a nice family dinner. The food was really quite good, and our server was incredibly awesome. Committing the giant volume of nightly specials to memory isn’t the work of novices. Marie enjoyed her burrito, and I quite liked my meatballs, called albondigas, which were served in a chipotle tomato sauce. My daughter had the chicken taquitos and said that she really enjoyed those, too.

By the time our entrees were served, however, we were already sweating buckets and tired of yelling at each other to be heard over the music. Honestly, this just isn’t a summertime place for us, certainly not on a Saturday night. Unfortunately, the restaurant’s design, evoking an old garage with the huge doors and high ceilings, does not lend itself to really good air conditioning. My daughter finally gave up and went outside, where a light breeze made the high nineties feel more livable. I’d like to revisit Pure on a weekday evening in the fall, and maybe sit on the upstairs patio when it’s cooler. If the food is consistently this good, I think that we’d all enjoy that experience a good deal more.

Papi’s Cuban and Caribbean Grill, Kennesaw GA

A few Fridays back, Marie and I found ourselves with just the baby. Our daughter had found a jawdropping sale on clothes at Plato’s Closet and I had made her an offer that she couldn’t refuse. If I forwarded her the next month’s clothing allowance so she could fill a bag and save something ridiculous like – no joke – 75%, then she could fend for herself for supper and Marie and I could enjoy some grownup time. The baby just sleeps at restaurants – long may that continue – so we could mostly get a break from kids.

Marie was in the mood for a sandwich, so I suggested that we give Papi’s a try. I had only been to this location once, right when it opened, and figured it was due a second glance. I did not know it at the time, but this is actually a small group of four restaurants, with one in midtown and three in the suburbs. They have daily specials and interesting entrees, but where they are said to excel the most is in their sandwiches.

We got to Papi’s just as the dinner rush was about to get heavy, and this apparently coincides with their closing a few tables to make space for a band in the second dining room. We did not have to wait, but quite a few other people arriving after us did. This is a very popular place on Friday evenings!

My readers who enjoy unusual sodas should certainly swing by one of Papi’s locations and check out the drinks on offer. They had quite a few cans of things that you very rarely see, including my beloved Ironbeer. A Cuban soft drink goes extremely well with a good Cuban sandwich.

In my mind, a Cuban sandwich is defined by its very good, slightly sweet bread, meats, lots of mayo and pickles. Marie had the medianoche sandwich with smoked pork and ham, and I had jerk chicken, and we both really enjoyed them. We were a little let down by the fries, which tasted rather too much like institutional mass-produced fries, and fried in the same grease used for the fish. Next time, we’ll have a different side. There certainly will be a next time. While perhaps not quite as tasty as the relocated-to-Birmingham Kool Korner, the sandwiches are still very good, and the atmosphere is fun and upbeat. I’d like to go again one day and enjoy the live music, and an Ironbeer.

Taco Roc, Chattanooga TN

I’ve mentioned before that the main draw that persuades some of my local friends to visit Chattanooga with me is McKay, a frankly remarkable used bookstore that deals in the consumption of mass quantities of books, DVDs and CDs. There are three stores in Tennessee and the scale of this place is just eye-popping. It is always crowded and books are constantly moving. They made the decision years ago to treat the guests coming to sell or trade books as suppliers and not act like customers are bringing them a burden by asking them to look through a box. You know that heavy sigh you almost always get before the guy at the used record store tells you that they probably won’t be able to sell most of what you brought in, but they’ll take about a third of it for pennies in store credit? That doesn’t happen at McKay. McKay’s not doing you a favor by taking some of this off your hands; you are doing them a favor by selling them your books, and the staff acts like it. No, they don’t take everything, but they take a darn good chunk of it and give you a fair price. Cash, too. No wonder we keep seeing Cobb and Fulton license plates in their parking lot. McKay is undercutting the bejezus out of every similar store in Atlanta. Continue reading “Taco Roc, Chattanooga TN” →

The Terminal Brewhouse, Chattanooga TN

As I took a nice sip of the root beer at Chattanooga’s Terminal Brewhouse, I kind of had that feeling that I sometimes get that Marie would be a little envious of me once she knew what I was drinking. The thought had occurred to me that I could very well have enjoyed six or seven more pints of their oatmeal stout – it had been a bad week, I was in a lousy mood, and the stout was very, very good – but I decided to be sensible and just follow up the beer with a house-brewed soda. It was magical. Continue reading “The Terminal Brewhouse, Chattanooga TN” →

Neal’s Bar-B-Que, Thomson GA

Here’s a restaurant that was just plain difficult to find. Google Maps gave us pretty good directions from Statesboro up to Thomson, a large town a little west of Augusta, but the last road that we were looking for was very badly marked and we spent twenty minutes looking around for the place. I keep telling myself to study the map a lot more carefully, and not rely solely on directions. One day, I’ll get it right.

We came to Neal’s on the strength of a short review by John T. Edge (him again!) in the pages of a magazine with the quite remarkable name of Garden & Gun. Published in the November 2008 issue, and dissected within the forums of four or five dozen travel and food message boards ever since, “100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die” suggested that a really good serving of hash and rice could be found here, so, revisiting the article in search of inspiration back in March, I added it to my to-do list.

I certainly love good hash, but it was only this year that I had it served over rice. Around Athens, where I learned to love great barbecue in the 1990s, hash is about as common as Brunswick stew. Some of those good shacks in the northeast corner of the state are gone now – I’ve probably mentioned how much I miss Carrither’s – and others, like Paul’s in Lexington, serve up a side that they call stew but it more closely resembles hash in its use of fewer vegetables and more of the whole hog. I read recently that Hollis Ribs in Athens has both hash and Brunswick stew on the menu. Now that, I have to try**.

When we stopped into Augusta’s famous Sconyers in February as part of a looping day trip through South Carolina, we had hash served over rice for the first time ever. That’s the default way to prepare it in this part of the country. I have to tell you, Sconyers gets all the press and all the praise, and it was a pretty good lunch, but what we found at Neal’s just blew that place completely out of the water. I don’t know why the heck more people don’t know about Neal’s. This is, flatly, one of the best barbecue joints in the state.

The prices are low here and the portions are huge. I ordered a chopped pork sandwich and a plate of hash, and watched as the girls behind the register dipped a ladle into a great big steel pot and give it several backbreaking stirs before lifting my serving out. The pork is dry and smoky and completely wonderful. Just a little bit of the house’s vinegar sauce is all you need. And the hash, well, good grief. Edge, who you might recall is the Professor Emeritus of Eating Real Good at Ole Miss, was absolutely right to single this out. It is completely unforgettable. I follow Edge on Twitter. I’d love to follow him around in a car one day. He obviously knows where he’s going to eat.

Another famous fellow who knows about Neal’s is Jamie Oliver, who stopped by overnight during a stop on his six-part series Jamie’s American Road Trip, which aired on Channel 4 in the UK two years ago. When we spoke with the owner, Lynn Neal, she told us about Oliver’s visit, and that the show had not aired in America yet*. Watching the episode in question on YouTube, I’m not surprised. Links to YouTube are always extremely volatile as copyrights are enforced and users delete their accounts, but at present you can start viewing the episode here. It’s fascinating viewing, but the complete opposite of the usual upbeat and fun eye candy that you see on The Food Network that celebrates eating. The show is in equal parts a celebration of regional cooking as it is a sober, harsh, and cerebral exploration of how Americans are handling the recession and Obama’s presidency. The second segment of the episode – it’s uploaded in fifteen-minute chunks – gets pretty heavy with the casual bigotry to be found in both posh Savannah homes and in Chatham County trailer parks. These aren’t roads where Guy Fieri’s camera crew often stops, anyway.

For my part, I really enjoyed the contrast. It’s great fun to watch restaurant owners on Man Vs. Food or whatever talk about their wild recipes at maximum volume, but it’s also compelling viewing to hear Mrs. Neal talk about the difficulty in providing for her staff, before Oliver and the camera crew go back behind the building to see the pitmaster, whose name is Barry, and work with him in getting the hogs cooked.

Before we got home to look up the episode, she told us how Jamie and his production team “borrowed” Barry for a barbecue competition in Lakeland, Florida. She didn’t spoil the episode and tell us how that worked out, but she did say how very well they took care of Barry while he was away and made sure to get him back safe to resume cooking. Damn well that they did. Next time we are out this direction, we are definitely coming back to Neal’s for another pork sandwich and a plate of hash. My desire to try lots of new things sometimes leaves me unwilling to make second visits out of town in favor of exploration, but that won’t be happening the next time I-20 takes us east.

Well, we may need to stop at Heavy’s in Taliaferro County as well as Neal’s, but you get the idea.

(Also, a tip of the hat to Eat it, Atlanta, whose report on Neal’s confirmed for me that they would be open as we drove through! Thanks!)

*Oliver’s series was later scheduled to air in January 2012 on BBC America.

**I never got the chance. Hollis Ribs has since closed.

Vandy’s Bar-B-Q, Statesboro GA

Sadly, Vandy’s Bar-B-Q might well hold my personal, unfortunate record for longest time between being recommended a restaurant and actually visiting it. I have mentioned that, once upon a time, I maintained a small Geocities web page about barbecue restaurants in Georgia. Some reader wrote me in what might have been late 1999 – I seem to remember mentioning it to a classmate during that period – and urged me to come down to Statesboro to give it a try. Oh, it only took me the better part of twelve years, but I made it.

Over the years, I’ve seen many more references to Vandy’s. It is one of the state’s best-known barbecue joints. It was opened by Vandy Boyd in 1929, and moved to its present location in 1943. The building is quite remarkable. It manages to look like the bad side of town in a town that does not, in fact, seem to have a bad side. What we saw of Statesboro was a charming small middle Georgia college town – and yes, I do consider this still to be middle Georgia. It’s north of I-16 and Savannah, so it’s not strictly south Georgia in my book. Anyway, Statesboro looks like a quite nice little town, and while I’m sure there must have been a break-in or three over the decades to account for the bars on the windows and the industrial door, this restaurant looks almost comically out of place.

The business remained in family hands until Vandy Boyd’s son sold it in 1984. It was sold again in 2006. It has remained an essential part of Statesboro and Georgia Southern University life ever since. It really seems that whether they eat downtown or at the satellite location at the nearby mall – which keeps much more traveler-friendly hours, is open for supper and on Sundays – everybody in the region will visit Vandy’s at least once.

When we stopped in for lunch a couple of Saturdays back, apart from the mild comedic shock of seeing such an out-of-place building, we were most impressed by the Brunswick stew. This is much more like Kentucky’s burgoo than any other stew that we have tried in Georgia. It was absolutely packed with extra ingredients that you don’t usually see in stew, including pinto beans, carrots and peas.

The chopped pork is very moist and didn’t really have the flavor that I personally prefer, but I did enjoy it all the same. It did, admittedly, go better with the sauce than dry, and this sauce is one of the region’s best-known concoctions. It’s a South Carolina-style mustard-based sauce, but it is both sweet and spicy. It reflects the light like honey. The sauce resembles the house sauce used at Turner’s or Beaver Creek or whatever the heck that very good place out past Six Flags is calling itself this month. This was interesting and a really tasty meal. I won’t hype it up and claim it is one of my favorites, but it is certainly worth checking out if you’re interested in experiencing more of the striking variations in barbecue styles in this state.

I spoke briefly with our server and some of the staff behind the counter as Marie and my daughter left to get the start the engine and get the car cooled down before we loaded the baby in it. I think that we were all a little more interested in talking about my adorable son than about barbecue, so I didn’t really learn much more about the place than I had read online, but I was amused by the big ole shelf stacked with loafs of Sunbeam white bread. They go through a lot of that over the course of a week.

I loaded up on sweet tea and we got back out on the road. Neither Marie nor I had really driven through much of this part of the state before. If eastern middle Georgia can be described, and not completely without cause, as nowhere, then we drove through the middle of it. State Route 17 really is something to see if you’re one of those weird people who insists on seeing things that nobody needs to see. Louisville, Georgia, which, like Louisville, Kentucky is the seat of a county named Jefferson, might warrant another spin through to try a place called Purvis that I once read somebody praising. Marie had actually driven part of this run, on US-1, a few times driving from Augusta down to Saint Simons Island, but that corridor avoids GA-17.

Our last stop of the trip was, coincidentally, a place on the outskirts of Augusta, and it would prove to be the food highlight of our trip. More about that in the next chapter.