West Cobb Diner, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing a chapter on the West Cobb Diner. This was a place chosen by my mother-in-law, who wanted to have an opportunity to show off her newest grandchild to her friends, so of course that makes this a place that is friendly to large groups straggling in at odd times. Much better than the places that like to keep a big group in waiting area purgatory until Mr./Ms. Always-late arrives!

The West Cobb Diner was actually on our list of places to check out before this invitation, but when we tried to go, the wait time was much too long and we had to go to plan B that day. We learned then that this restaurant is really difficult to find. It is hidden in a very nice strip mall and completely invisible from the road. I was very pleased to get the invitation, not least because I certainly don’t mind showing off the kid even though there was a competing and newer baby at the same lunch! There will always be younger babies than mine, but he is still new enough it’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that someone might want to look at some other child.

Anyway, we made it there after about half the table had been served, but with a few diners still to come. It was a friendly crowd and the only disadvantage I could tell was that the table and noise level made it a bit difficult to carry on a conversation with anyone not actually next to or across from you. The server did a great job keeping track of all of us and keeping our glasses full. She wasn’t going to let the guaranteed large-table tip limit her.

The food has a Southern-style slant, with fried green tomatoes in the starters, pimento cheese on the burgers, bacon in the beans and white gravy for the biscuits – but you can also get a steak if you want it, or thai noodle salad, or any of a number of other things not strictly Southern but which don’t appear to clash at all. One of the benefits of going with a huge crowd is seeing what everyone else gets and making a note for the future of anything interesting on their plates. My next order is probably going to be the meat loaf or the pork chops.

I got the vegetable plate, sadly passing on the non-vegetarian beans and peas, and wasn’t able to finish it all. The food is very good, well-made and stayed hot while I wandered around the table to bring the baby to various fans calling for his presence. Since I tend to eat too fast because I don’t like food that has gone cold, that’s saying something. The food is simply well-made. For a place with a fairly large menu, that is pretty good. Make sure to check out the menu board to see what is available for vegetables. As a transplanted Yankee, it does always strike me as odd that things like mac-n-cheese are counted as vegetables, but all the sides I got and those ordered by others looked great.

And of course a review by me wouldn’t be complete without a comment on the desserts. The diner has a glass case with a selection of cakes, pudding and pies that is comprehensive without being overwhelming. The servings are generous, especially the chocolate layer cake.

The Friendly Toast, Boston MA

(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, we’ll tell you about them.)

In the last honeymoon flashback, I told you about the breakfast that we enjoyed on the fifth day of our trip, at Manchester’s Red Arrow Diner. After that, we buckled up and got back on I-93 and drove south to Boston, where our friends Mike and Prairie live. Technically, they live in Cambridge, and lent us a guest parking pass for our dashboard so that we could avoid the pretty crippling parking charges in this place.

You may have heard that driving in this city is something of a challenge. You may have also heard that I don’t much like driving in Toronto. I would rather drive blindfolded in Toronto than mess with Boston traffic again. Between poorly-marked streets, traffic circles, traffic triangles, and what Prairie explained to us as a general understanding in the city that there is always one more lane than is actually marked, I was a little “country mouse in the city”-ed by the town. Turn signals, in Boston, are for the weak. Prairie was good enough to set us up with a Charlie Card and directions to get our walking tour started, intending to meet up with her and Mike that evening. Actually, it’s okay that Boston is a driver’s nightmare, because the city has an awesome public transportation grid and is very pedestrian-friendly. We walked a few blocks through Cambridge to Harvard University, looked over the cool buildings and then did a little shopping.

There are two comic shops within a baseball’s throw of each other here. New England Comics was pretty darn good for what it was (principally mainstream stuff), but Million Year Picnic was the real revelation. I’ve heard of this store many times over the years and it didn’t disappoint – they have a fantastic collection of books from publishers across the spectrum. They carry 2000 AD, always a pleasure to see, and I found two books here that I didn’t even know that I wanted. Both of these shops are within one minute’s walk of the Harvard T station, so we took the subway across the river to city center and found our way to the visitor’s center, where the Freedom Trail tour starts. We walked the first mile-and-a-bit of the trail, enjoying several gorgeous historical buildings and sites. I was particularly intrigued by the cemetary where Paul Revere and John Hancock are buried, which is full of gorgeous old headstones with Puritan death-markings. There were lots of winged skulls in evidence, as opposed to the cherubic angels which would dominate cemetaries in time.

Eventually, the Freedom Trail brings you to Fanueil Hall, which was the old Boston merchant marketplace and which is now an indoor/outdoor mall. We got sandwiches from one of the shops in the food court – it didn’t look like a chain, anyway – and concluded that we probably couldn’t walk the next giant leg to get to the USS Constitution and back before 6 pm. Besides, our feet hurt. So we took a water taxi (after some map confusion as to where, exactly, it landed) across the harbor to see where Old Ironsides is docked, undergoing renovations.

The tour took a lot longer than planned, although it really was fascinating. Our feet were pretty darn sore by the time we got back to Fanueil Hall. There, the formerly-local singer Bleu was giving a well-received instore at Newbury Comics, which is less a comic shop than a CD/gift store. As a comic shop, it’s not bad, but seriously overshadowed by others in the city. Mike and Prairie are big fans of Bleu, so we found them, snapped some pictures, enjoyed his music and bought his latest album.

The rest of the evening was great fun. We walked over to the old Customs building, which is now a Marriott property, but they keep the historical interior up and open to the public, and then down to where they were parked. We drove back out to Somerville (which is a separate town, but feels just like another neighborhood since Boston is so agreeably filled-in) to visit Mike and Prairie’s favorite comic shop, Hub Comics. Knock me down if it isn’t just a hair better than MYP, in my opinion. Of course, I might be biased by their having one of the 2000 ADs that Diamond did not ship to us down here in Georgia, but it really is a terrific shop, with a whole pile of stuff. Regardless which of the two you prefer, Boston is certainly home to two of the five best shops in North America, I’d say. (But then, I’ve never visited Isotope… yet!)

For dinner, we went to Friendly Toast. Prairie and Mike offered the caveat that the original location, in Portsmouth NH, is even wilder and better, but what you get in Boston is pretty wonderful, too. The interior is just a museum of crazy found objects and pop culture detritus, and the food is great, too. Inside, it looks like a cross between Lynn’s Paradise Cafe in Louisville and The Grill in Athens.

The Friendly Toast was quite new to Boston when we visited – the restaurant had only been open for about three months – but it had a wonderful reputation already. The owner, Melissa Jasper, had been collecting all the fun and silly decorations for years, and well-wishers had much more to give her when word got out that she was starting a second location in Boston. Nevertheless, the launch was kept pretty quiet. Word only leaked about the second store’s opening in February, and they were up and running before the end of April.

Since then, Friendly Toast has been racking up awards. The Boston Phoenix, and several of its rivals, calls it the best breakfast in the city. Esquire and TV’s Good Morning America call it one of the best breakfasts in the nation. Everybody wants to sample their King Cake, which is a pancake made with bananas, chocolate chips, peanut butter syrup and bacon.

Bucking the trend, we were actually in the mood for supper, though I believe breakfasts here are available all day. We shared some cheese fries which were served with a strawberry habanero sauce – far better than the name might imply – and my burrito with corn salsa was gigantic and tasty. Of course, now that I have read some reviews and looked over their menu in more detail, it looks like I missed out on quite a lot. It might be a long time before we can justify going back to Boston, but I figure that I know for that next time.

Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand, Atlanta GA

When Marie and our friend Victoria were each in the later stages of their respective pregnancies, we met up near their new apartment in the East Atlanta neighborhood for ice cream at Morelli’s, and resolved to get together again after our babies were born. Victoria and James were raving then about Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand, a collaboration between Delia Champion, who started our city’s much-loved Flying Biscuit Cafe, and Molly Gunn, who I understand co-owns The Porter. Weeks went by, babies were born and I started getting impatient about when the heck we were going to get together so’s I could try one of these dogs. Or slingers, as the restaurant would like to term them.

Make no mistake, though. These may be called slingers or chicken sausages, but they are definitely from the same mold as hot dogs. This is a good thing, as Marie and I certainly love good hot dogs. The new take on them here is incredibly neat and fun and very tasty. Champion and Gunn are using buns baked by the popular Holeman & Finch and locally-sourced, organically-grown chickens for their meat. The results are just a little different from even the best hot dog places in town – America’s Top Dog, Barker’s, Brandi’s – and make for a very interesting and unique taste. Plus, they’re open absurdly late. Like four in the morning late. If I lived in that neighborhood, they’d be seeing me pretty frequently in the middle of the night!

The one thing about Delia’s that does not please me is the lack of seating. There’s only a small indoor area with air conditioning to place orders, and six picnic tables outside to eat. As Atlanta enters its utterly miserable summer, this is going to keep us from paying them another visit for a few months. This is a real shame, because the food is quite wonderful.

Acting like I had not eaten anything in a month, I ordered both a Naked Slinger – far from naked, it was the sausage with their “comeback” sauce and a little of the firey five-pepper mustard – and their signature Hot Mess, a slinger buried under melted cheese, chili and jalapenos. This really is too messy a thing to eat in polite company, but somehow I avoided spilling any of it on Victoria and James’s couch.

Honestly, though, the sausage is so good that it doesn’t need all the crazy toppings. I really preferred the Naked Slinger, and thought that the meat’s flavor was really brought out by the mustard. Meanwhile, my daughter enjoyed eating the chicken as traditional sliders, and Marie had the Italian Stallion, which has the slinger served with onions, peppers, mozzarella and marinara sauce. Everything was really quite excellent.

I just amused myself, wondering whether the slinger could turn into an iconic Atlanta variety of dog, just like half-smokes are in Washington. I wish I had a TARDIS so I could pop forward a few decades and check that out.

Other blog posts about Delia’s:

The Food Abides (Mar. 17 2011)
Mr. Kitty Eats Atlanta (Aug. 2 2011)

The Varsity, Kennesaw GA

Over the last eight chapters in the blog, I have written about the four-day trip that we took to visit Marie’s brother and sister in Mississippi. These were posted here slightly out of sequence, as I was anxious to share some stories about places outside our regular stomping grounds around Atlanta. Not that anybody other than me is keeping track of these, but the next four entries (plus the next Honeymoon Flashback, later this week) are about some places that we visited before this road trip.

First up is a place that we visit with something approaching frequency, the Kennesaw location of The Varsity. I’m sure this is not a place that needs much introduction. It is as iconic as American restaurants get, and the downtown location, which I’m sure I’ll revisit and write about one day, is a major tourist attraction for the city.

The Varsity has done more things right than wrong over the years – moving their beloved Varsity Jr. location from Cheshire Bridge out to Dawsonville, because serving a long-established neighborhood is not as profitable as snagging outlet mall shoppers, must surely count as a “wrong” – and one of their neater ideas has been building satellite locations along each of the northern arteries that feed into the city. Whether you’ve followed the sprawl into the suburbs up Interstate 75 or 85 or GA-400, there’s a Varsity for you, and each of these stores do a darn good job capturing the feel of the original.

Usually, if we are in the mood for a burger, and don’t feel like making a production or a caravan or a road trip out of it, we just hop over to Cheeseburger Bobby’s, which makes one of the best burgers in Cobb County. The Varsity, let’s be fair and honest, is a fairly weak competitor in those stakes, but their fries are better than Bobby’s, and so are their onion rings, and so is their chocolate milk – you just won’t believe how well chocolate milk over ice goes with a burger until you try it – and they also add one thing that I sure do wish that Cheeseburger Bobby’s would consider for their own patties: pimento cheese.

I mentioned a few chapters back that I greatly admire the writing of John T. Edge. About a week before our trip, I read his delightful Hamburgers and Fries, one of a short series of books, very Calvin Trillin in feel and flavor, in which Edge flies around the country trying regional takes on the most classically American of foods. He has slug burgers in Mississippi and steamed burgers in Connecticut and, most drool-worthy of them all, pimento cheeseburgers in South Carolina.

I know virtually nothing about South Carolina. It’s always been a state that I have driven through; I have never stayed overnight in the state. I recognize this as a deficiency that needs correcting, and longer visits and more detailed investigations of South Carolina are on the long-term agenda. From what I understand, though – and, admittedly, a good chunk of what I understand is what I have read in Edge’s books – many of the older hamburger joints throughout the Palmetto State have long offered pimento cheeseburgers. It is apparently one of that region’s specialties.

I’m reminded of the similarity between the Varsity’s hot dogs and chili and the ones that you can get at Macon’s Nu-Way. When the Varsity’s founder, Frank Gordy, was first driving around the south nailing down ideas for what he wanted his restaurant, then called The Yellow Jacket, to serve, it’s suggested that he decided to replicate the Nu-Way experience. That was somewhat lost when the Varsity expanded and grew to its current enormous size, but you can still absolutely see Nu-Way’s influence. I wonder whether in 1928, pimento cheeseburgers were common in Atlanta, or did Gordy find a place or two in South Carolina that inspired him to do them here?

Every so often, I find myself craving pimento cheese on a burger, served all hot, gooey and greasy. Marie doesn’t often remind me that she’s a damn Yankee, but when she quickly corrects my order of pimento cheeseburgers and asks for her own with a slice of cheddar, I remember all right. Ah, but it’s those differences that keep us interesting, right?

Jack’s, Tallapoosa GA

I’m not going to name any names, but when I made an announcement – someplace that I won’t identify – that I finally went back to a Jack’s, a guy who runs a blog that I enjoy reading very much just turned up his nose quite publicly at the notion. Never mind all the good and interesting restaurants that we enjoyed on our trip through Alabama and Mississippi that I described, the only thing worth a reply, and a nose-upturned one at that, was my visit to a Jack’s.

That’s okay. This is not very good food. It would appear that, after fifty years in business, Jack’s has quite successfully managed to make a perfect clone of Burger King, and nobody calls that good. But it’s very interesting food, to me. Jack’s is wrapped around my childhood in a way that I will never extricate. I find this chain absolutely enthralling, even though they have not done very much to earn it.

When you are a child, you have a very different perspective on space than as an adult. Throughout the 1970s, my parents would routinely take me to visit family in Fort Payne, Alabama. We’d go out there once every four or five weeks. The path would almost always wind through Cartersville, Rome and Coosa, but then often take one of several different directions, depending on whether Dad wanted to get there in a hurry, or if nostalgia for his own misspent youth would send us to Fort Payne via Boaz or some other small community. I swear one was called “Blood Bucket,” but I can’t find any evidence of it anymore.

Once we were in Fort Payne, we might use my Pappy’s house as a staging point for trips to visit any number of places in northeast Alabama. None of the towns that I see looking over Google Maps seem familiar, but we would often drive to old businesses and speak to old acquaintances. There was a Jack’s in every town. I’d know that red circle logo anywhere.

When you’re a child, of course, you can’t really work out that “this is a chain almost totally exclusive to north Alabama.” You just figure that there are Jack’s everywhere, and when you are at home, Mom and Dad just don’t drive down any roads that have them. I don’t even know how often we actually stopped to eat at one. Probably not often, as I had an Aunt Rosie who wouldn’t dream of allowing anybody to eat a fast food hamburger when she had forty pounds of fried chicken, turnip greens and potato salad to feed all of us. I just know that Jack’s is part of my seventies restaurant memory the same way that the Krystal Kritters and the initial use of that creepy Burger King and his R2D2-knockoff French fry robot are.

About a month before that last bolt clicked into place and we started up this blog to document our travels and the fun we have eating, I took a drive out to Carrollton after a short day at work to try a Jack’s for the first time in a really, really long time. The restaurant had come up in conversation a few days previously when I was visiting Dad and some other friend of his had stopped by. This friend had heard, erroneously, it turns out, that a Jack’s was coming up in Douglasville or someplace nearby. That got me curious, so I drove out there, and had a… decentish meal. I imagine that it’s probably about the same caliber as the better-known (and confusingly similarly-named) Jack in the Box or Whataburger, each of which I have damned with faint praise in this blog’s pages before.

On our way back from Mississippi, I made sure that we stopped again. Marie and I had noticed this location about a month previously, when we visited Tallapoosa to try the excellent barbecue and stew at The Turn Around. It is apparently one of only three Jack’s in Georgia. There is one in Corinth, MS and sixty-some odd in northern Alabama. Around Birmingham, there are some very neat interstate exits where the local chains Jack’s and Milo’s duel it out alongside their better-known national rivals like Burger King and Wendy’s.

Jack’s isn’t essential eating, of course, but it’s always interesting to me to visit a restaurant like this that I can’t get at home. Driving I-20 through Alabama takes you past about a dozen or more exits where travelers can sample one. I think it’s worth a visit once in a while.

Rusty’s Bar-B-Q, Leeds AL

This is the first of two entries this week in which I will mention a restaurant that I can tell you less about than I would like. In fact, I can’t tell you the most important thing about it: where we heard about it. Well, I suppose “Is it any good?” might truly be the most important part, but as we typically don’t go in for negative reviews here, the fact that it gets an entry at all should be evidence that it’s a good place. Continue reading “Rusty’s Bar-B-Q, Leeds AL” →