Hottie Hawg’s Smokin’ BBQ, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

Hottie Hawg’s is a place that I’ll always associate with my dad, even though he never ate here. On the afternoon after we buried him in January, one of Dad’s good friends told me that he had been enjoying the place and that I should check it out sometime for our blog. He told me it was just off Bolton Road, leading me to wonder aloud what in the heck he was doing in this part of town, but he assured me that the neighborhood has been improving dramatically over the years. Gentrification has been making this area look a lot better since I last drove through six or seven years back, and now it is home to a funky and family-friendly barbecue joint with live music twice a week.

Last Thursday, my mother hosted a baby shower for Marie and, since the original plan was for me to drive my daughter and Marie’s mother down to Smyrna for it – those plans, as all plans might, got a little confused – Mom suggested that I get together with Neal and get something to eat. Actually, she didn’t so much as suggest it as decree it. Anyway, I asked Neal whether a few options in the Smyrna area sounded good, and he picked this place.

On that note, Urbanspoon makes the pretty bold claim that this place is in Smyrna. I would argue that if you’re inside the perimeter, inside the Chattahoochee River even, you’re not in Smyrna, but Atlanta.

Hottie Hawg’s is a very small chain, with one store in each of three states, Colorado, Florida and Georgia. A fourth store is scheduled to open in Texas later this year. They try to strike the attitude of a dive bar, but also attract families with small kids. The servers all wear black tank tops and teeny denim shorts and I can’t claim to have objected to the nice way they would open the door to the patio, both hands laden with trays, with their boots.

I really overate here, and while I’ve no excuse for it, I really wanted to try the soup of the day as well as two sides. This soup was a cup of smoked corn chowder and jalapenos with andouille sausage and it was incredibly good. It was just a little thinner than I was expecting, but I could have enjoyed a much larger bowl with no real complaints. For his appetizer, Neal had the armadillo eggs. These are huge deep-fried and very spicy peppers stuffed with brisket and were also really good.

The chopped pork plate is enormous and comes with a freaking pile of meat, unsauced but with a sprinkle of spice atop it. There are two sauces, neither made inhouse, but shipped via boxes from some corporate headquarters for guests to take home. The thick brown Memphis-styled sauce was pretty good, but I enjoyed the spicy Mustard more. Coupled with the heat of the armadillo egg that I had, I had to mop the sweat from my brow!

Neal had the baked beans, which he said were pretty good, but not as good as those at Marietta’s Williamson Brothers, which he enjoys more than I do, and the tomato-cucumber-onion salad. I had the stew, known here as Cooter’s Stew, which was the only thing that I didn’t enjoy much, and the mac and cheese, which was just terrific. This, made with no scrimping on the good stuff, was really special, and I will definitely have it again the next time the road brings me back to this place.

We left before the music started, but it got pretty busy before then. The handful of families trickled out and a younger crowd moved in, enjoying bottled beers on the patio on a very nice evening. The restaurant reveals itself as more of a neighborhood bar than a destination for barbecue lovers right now, but there is certainly worse in the city getting more attention from writers. I hope that the word gets out soon; Hottie Hawg’s is definitely worth a visit.

Other blog posts about Hottie Hawg’s:
My BBQ Blog (May 6 2011)
Food Near Snellville (Sep. 12 2011)
Eat a Duck (Feb. 15 2012)

Transmetropolitan, Athens GA

On our most recent trip to Athens, Marie and I split up the eating duties so that we could visit several restaurants and have small meals at each. It’s easier, she put it, on the budget and on the buttons. She enjoyed a very nice lunch at Last Resort while I sipped water and had a couple of nibbles, and then we went up Clayton to Bizarro Wuxtry to visit and pick up a few comics. After a short time, we needed to think about going back to Atlanta and retrieving the children, so we went over to Transmetropolitan for a snack. Of course, a snack at Transmetropolitan is twice the meal at any other place. These slices are huge! Continue reading “Transmetropolitan, Athens GA” →

The Kitchen Table Bistro, Richmond VT

(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.)

A month back, Marie wrote up a chapter about our trip to Middlebury, and the details about the lunch that we had there kind of got lost in the nostalgia that she was feeling for her college town, and the great pleasure I was having wandering around and watching her smile. I remember that we left Mr. Up’s having enjoyed the food a good deal, and then forgot about it so thoroughly with everything else going on around that I asked her to do the writeup, since at least she could contribute a couple of college-days anecdotes.

After we finished in Middlebury, we drove back up US-7 to Burlington, stopping at Dakin Farm along the way. Digging into the goodies that Marie bought from this place later proved a pretty solid argument for moving to Vermont. You may not have known before now that there was such a thing as maple baked beans, but you can get them for $4.58 a can when you buy a dozen. You will want to do that.

Anyway, we got back to Burlington and went back up I-89 and crossed Lake Champlain, which is completely gorgeous, and found ourselves in some small farmland in the town of South Hero, where Marie’s college buddy Debbie lives in this really neat old farmhouse. Marie and Debbie had not seen each other in years and had lots of catching up to do. So we visited for an hour and a bit, and the ladies talked about spices and herbs and rubs and sauces and all sorts of cooking things. Marie tried selling Debbie on Penzeys and Debbie tried selling Marie on whatever spice company she likes, and neither were very successful. I figure, you find a spice company that you really like, you stick with it.

There isn’t anything to eat in South Hero outside of Debbie’s kitchen. There may not be anything to eat in Burlington, either, but I’m not sure. Debbie had something special in mind for supper, and it was a good forty minutes south of there. We gassed up before we got back on the interstate, where I confirmed a long-held theory that every convenience store in the state sells Moxie. I may not cotton too much to what damn Yankees think of drinks, but at least they have the sense to stock Moxie in every gas station. Man, I love that stuff.

Since, after dinner, we’d be making our way further south to New Hampshire, we took two cars. Marie rode with Debbie for the forty minute trip and I followed. I’d like to think they talked about old boyfriends and pranks they played on the dean, and that time they interrupted lacrosse practice driving some jalopy across the Middlebury field, but Marie politely insists that she was far too boring in college to get up to those sorts of hijinks, and just spent what little free time and money she had buying old books and fresh pastries from the bakery. She even once let me read her college journal to confirm how boring she was, but all I was able to confirm was that her illegible handwriting was even worse in the early nineties. Debbie politely stayed quiet on the subject of Crazy Marie stories. I’m not sure that’s fair; stories about me being drunk and stupid hang from every tree in Athens.

Anyway, for supper, we had the priciest and nicest meal of the trip. Debbie wanted to take us to The Kitchen Table Bistro in the town of Richmond. This place got a super write-up in The New York Times in December of ’08, and it’s well known in the region for being the best restaurant anywhere around I-89. All of their food comes from local farmers, so their menu changes completely in each season. Their salads are amazing and the ladies shared some pot roast which would knock you over with a feather. About a year later, I was very taken with the pot roast that they serve at the Smith House down here in Dahlonega, but it is a very distant second to how nice this meal was.

I read a review of this place which described the service as, and I love this, “unhurried.” The impression I get is this: if you are driving this far out of the way to have a dinner in a rustic old farmhouse with elegant furniture and nice tablecloths, you are not coming for a meal with the intent of getting on the road to someplace else quickly. No, you’re here for the night. We were seated promptly, and had a lot to talk about, and dishes were brought to us periodically, and we were there for the better part of three hours.

So yes, the bread was wonderful and the pot roast was amazing and the vegetables were fresh and incredibly tasty. The desserts are decadent like you wouldn’t believe, and appropriately portioned, unlike those giant things you pay too much money for and can’t finish like some places here in town.

But the winner? You see that burger in the picture below? That, my friends, that is the best hamburger on the planet. That is the finest burger I have ever eaten, and I say that having eaten an astonishing number of hamburgers in my life and living in a city with more great hamburger joints than anyplace else in America. It’s over, we can all go home and turn off the grills now. The Kitchen Table Bistro has won. Men should weep; I know I did.

I’ll digress here, for the benefit of Google surfers. I’m done talking about the Kitchen Table Bistro. Ours isn’t a “restaurant review” blog so much as stories about how our fun life intersects with restaurants, and what happened next was even more memorable and fun than the amazing dinner that we had in Richmond.

Marie mentioned in her chapter about Middlebury that she wanted me to tell the tale of that night, so here goes. It was around 10 p.m., a Tuesday, and we were setting out from Richmond in a pretty healthy shower, intending to make Lebanon, New Hampshire within a couple of hours to get some shuteye. What we learned was that while I’m usually good with staying awake until midnight with not much problem, a day as busy as this one wears me out quickly. Vermont itself does not help.

After about 45 minutes of interstate, my brain finally processed what it had not been seeing all along. Well, with the darkness and rain and practically no other drivers, and exits maybe every ten or twelve miles, Central Vermont was reminding me of that Atari 2600 game, Night Driver. Suddenly I realized why: there were no billboards. There is no roadside advertising of any kind in Vermont, nor indeed in New Hampshire and most of Massachusetts. Now, at least in those two states, companies can put their logos on the gas-food-lodging signs, but not in Vermont.

For about fifteen minutes, I thought this was a terrific idea. Vermont is completely gorgeous, and I’m glad the scenery is not spoiled by billboards, like it is down here in the south. But I started getting sleepy, and then I noticed the downside to Vermont’s strategy: my eyes were looking around for ads for motels and I only saw darkness. There is a slight advantage to having all these deeply ugly towns build up along I-75, with hundred-feet-high restaurant signs and light pollution turning the night into the ugliest Christmas tree you ever saw; at least you know there’s a darn Super 8 nearby.

Since you can’t even put a logo on a “lodging” road sign in Vermont, however, it’s a little tough to let drivers know you’re out there. All drivers get in Vermont is a little “bed” icon on a thin blue rectangle beneath the exit sign. (And not the “next exit 1 mile” sign, the “exit now” one.) Well, the next exit was for Northfield, and there was a bed icon, so I pulled off.

At the foot of the exit was a further sign telling us there was lodging five miles to the right, so we went that way. Again, it’s pitch black, no lights, pouring rain, and first we miss a turn where the road we wanted went right and we went straight, and then, once we got turned around, we went down the slope from hell. The sign said it was a 10-degree decline. Oh, the little rental Chevy was going to love climbing back up that.

After about four miles, we saw another little sign saying that some inn or other was a mile and a half on the right, on Prospect Street. This was as we entered the town of Riverton, which was the darkest I have ever seen a town. It is home to Norwich University, which was pitch black, like it had been abandoned long ago. (This much made sense, later. It turns out that is a military college, so of course they observe lights out very strictly.) There were no street lights, just pounding rain, although we did see one black-shirted teenager wandering around, wet, in the dark.

We turned on Prospect, and briefly saw several gorgeous, creepy old houses in the headlights. Then we found the hotel, which was the creepiest, oldest, darkest, spookiest house of them all. Words can’t do this justice. You ever thought horror writers were making up crazy-ass scary hotels miles from any highway? It’s true. I’ve seen this movie, and I know how it ends! I mean, the best we could hope for was the opening scene of Suspiria. Besides which, the Mystery Machine needed our parking place. This was not, to put it more directly, a hotel that looked anything like a desk clerk was still going to be awake for late, unexpected travelers. That it was a pitch black and spooky hotel somewhere in a pitch black and spooky town next to a pitch black and spooky college in a roaring thunderstorm just made it worse.

Debbie had earlier offered us couch space in her farmhouse. We declined because we had a breakfast destination in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is better than three hours’ drive from South Hero. I was starting to regret that decision a little. Next month, I’ll tell you how good the breakfast was, but right then and there, all I wanted to do was sleep somewhere safe, and not go pounding on the door of the dark, spooky hotel.

Thus adrenalized, we got outta town and climbed that 10-degree slope while the car sputtered and spat and hated every inch of it. We got back on the interstate laughing about it and were charged enough to drive for several more miles, before we pulled off at the next exit to ask a gas station clerk where the hell anybody was supposed to sleep in this state and not get done in by an axe murderer, and finally pulled into a Super 8 in White River Junction, just this side of Lebanon, completely exhausted and spent.

I have a lot of sympathy and enthusiasm for the no logo movement, and think that billboard companies are just about the worst things in the universe, and I love how unspoiled and beautiful the land up here is. It was not fun at the time, and that is a really long highway to go without a single chain hotel on it, but we’ve learned a lesson. In the south, we take easy-stop interstate hotels for granted. In New England, you make reservations. We’ll know for next time!

The Last Resort Grill, Athens GA

I have loved Last Resort Grill for years. Some time before Marie and I started the food blog, I wrote up what would prove to be one of its antecedents on my LiveJournal, back when I was using that service for more than, basically, announcing new entries in my other blogs. In 2007, my little feature Twenty Southeastern Restaurants You Must Try Before You Die – actually only eighteen now, as two of them have closed – proved to be a little popular and got me thinking about expanding my food world. It’s certainly a very dated list; compiled today, I would certainly not include Gold Star Chili or Five Guys or Sticky Fingers. But tastes change. The point is, I have long considered Last Resort to be a destination restaurant, and Marie and I try to visit once a year or so, on those increasingly rare occasions that we’re actually in Athens at the same time. Continue reading “The Last Resort Grill, Athens GA” →

Bill’s Bar-B-Q, Hull GA

I have totally done Bill’s an awful disservice. I ate there once, maybe twice, back in 1993 or 1994, and I decided that I liked other, nearby, places better. It’s about a fifteen or twenty minute drive from Athens, depending whereabouts you are, north of the town of Hull and south of the somewhat larger town of Danielsville. This past Saturday, I decided it was long overdue for a return trip. Continue reading “Bill’s Bar-B-Q, Hull GA” →

The Marietta Square Farmers Market

This is Marie, talking this time about the Marietta Square Farmer’s Market, which we’ve been visiting most Saturday mornings for the last few years, even if parking there is often difficult. Since 2008, it has grown and there is usually a very nice crowd.

The organic eggs sold by vendors there taste so much better than standard commercial products that they are just about the first things I go for every visit. The first couple of years I went there were only a very few vendors who sold eggs, and they often sold out very early. This year it seems every third vendor is selling eggs, so I can actually go a little late, say 9:30 or so, and still be able to get my fix. The first year there was a lovely older gentleman who was a ball to talk to and who also sold turkey eggs as well as chicken eggs; sadly, he didn’t have a card, doesn’t seem to visit the Marietta market any more, and my memory is terribly faulty, so I can’t share his name with you.

My current loyalties are with a business called Little Red Hen Farms. While their eggs taste just as good as those from the other vendors, the deciding factor is a) I have a strange fondness for the green eggs from araucana chickens, and b) these folks sell the eggs in dozen-and-a-half lots, which seems to be just about the right amount. They also have a web site and Facebook page where I can see happy chickens walking around in grass. That means a lot to me. Another dealer I have had good experiences with is Bray Family Farms.

After getting my egg fix I wander around to the veggie dealers. The farmer’s market prices in Marietta don’t discount all that much from grocery store prices; the main benefit is in quality of product. There is a large stand at the entrance of the market that is a resale place, and they generally have all the seasonal stuff first because they get some of their things from Florida early in the season, and then they keep getting things later than the local folks because they ship from the Carolinas. The truly local folks have a more limited selection but generally their things are a little better, especially the ones who sell tomatoes. You can get a very wide variety of those, and although it is well worth paying a little extra for the heirloom types, even the standard commercial varieties taste better when they have been picked the day before. The hydroponic lettuce dealers are pretty good, too, and I can’t say that one is better than the other; that said, Lee and Gordon Greens has given very slightly faster customer service and good advice. The thing I like most about their products is that they sell the whole head of lettuce with roots, so if you wrap the roots in a wet paper towel you can keep your purchase crisp and wonderful in the fridge for a surprisingly long time. There are a few other folks who have the extremely seasonal goods – one vendor sells out of a basketful of lovely things called Dragon Tongue beans during their extremely brief season, for example. Look for whatever obscure heirloom variety makes you happy.

Another of my favorite vendors is Emily G’s Jam of Love. Yes, I know, you may balk at paying $8 for a container of jam. However, if you actually look at the ingredients list for just about any commercially available one you will see that sugar is the first ingredient, rather than the fruit. If you do see fruit as the first ingredient, check whether that’s because they use more than one kind of sweetener – usually that accounts for the placement. A really good, flavorful jam has to be mostly fruit by weight, and that’s what these folks do. They have some interesting varieties as well; their Bold Blue is a really good accompaniment to pork, for instance, and the seasonal Pear Honey is delectable. The nice thing about going to the farmer’s market is that you can actually taste the varieties before you buy, so you don’t wind up choosing at random. Though honestly, you’ll probably be happy with whatever you pick up.

A favorite of the children is the Hometown Honey stand. They sell flavored honey straws along with pollen, regular honey, and beeswax. I have to admit at having picked up a few honey straws for snacking myself. The kids also enjoy Zara May’s Handcrafted Fudge. I try to avoid getting even the samples there because my limited budget winds up being spent on things we can actually turn into dinners.

After the essentials are taken care of, I usually try and pick up some chocolate milk from Johnston Family Farm. I say “try” because it’s a stupendously good product in very limited supply, and you have to be quick or it’s going to be gone gone gone. My husband actually has to cut his portion of chocolate with skim milk because it’s that rich. After that, if there’s any money left, it’s open season on the treats and goodies.

The King of Pops vendor who recently started coming to the market has some appallingly tasty products. Grant was tempted to come join us shopping when we told him that King of Pops was selling Arnold Palmer flavored popsicles, but sadly that wasn’t among the ones they brought the following week. He bought an orange coconut for the boychild, and we shared a raspberry lime. Truly, you have never had a popsicle this good.

Paul’s Pot Pies have been welcome, albeit infrequent, additions to our menu. I recommend the creole shrimp flavor, which is not always carried – ask about it. After checking their web site as a refresher I realize that another flavor that hasn’t been in the free samples is chicken curry–I will need to check them out. Another recent addition to the “only for a splurge” is Atlanta Fresh Artisan Creamery. Their yogurt is great. I wish I could afford more of it.

The farmer’s market in Marietta may not be very large as these things go, but it is a pleasant experience every time. And if you enjoy free samples, you will definitely have a good time grazing the aisles.

Hambones BBQ and Chapman Drugs, Hapeville GA

This past Friday after work, I drove down to Hapeville, an inside-the-perimeter suburb best known for being that place in Atlanta where the airport is, and was very pleasantly surprised to find some genuinely amazing barbecue at Hambones, a restaurant that I hadn’t heard of before last month. Sadly, I don’t remember where I heard about it beyond “Facebook.” Nobody has (yet) stepped forward to let me know it was them, or one of their friends, who mentioned the place, so I don’t know whom I should thank, but man, somebody’s due a handshake.

Hambones has been open for several years on a side street off the main drag (Central Avenue) through town. In a really weird bit of real estate, it is within sight of another barbecue place called Pit Boss. I had considered just doing a sandwich and stew at each place, but it didn’t work out that way, because the amount of food that Hambones serves up is pretty ridiculously huge. I had the “Q and Stew” lunch special, which comes with a big sandwich, a bucket of stew, a shot glass of a second side and a Big Gulp-sized drink for under nine bucks, and so Pit Boss will have to wait for another visit.

On a side note, I have been totally lucking out lately in finding places with amazingly good Brunswick stew. It’s like the food gods are paying me back for that awful, wretched stew that I had at Georgia Pig down in Glynn County last month. In April, I’ve been knocked out by how good the stew has been at Speedi-Pig, Dave Poe’s and now at Hambones. The stew here is thick with chicken, pork, corn, tomatoes and lima beans and I really enjoyed it hugely.

Hambones nominally opens at 11, but in reality, the doors are unlocked a little early, because the lunch crowd this place gets is huge and in a hurry. The setup is a little unusual. They have a carry-out register at the bar, and a small register for dine-in orders. The register set-up, in any other business, would look like the place where you bring your check on the way out, rather than a “order first” window with a big menu board. The lunch line is long, and you pick up a menu on the way to the small register. The design of the place is no-frills, with mismatched chairs, large, dark interiors with a few scattered TVs tuned to ESPN, and a hideous overuse of the awful Comic Sans font on all the menus and labels. It is the polar opposite of a franchise chain, as it should be.

At any rate, when you order the lunch special, you get your choice of chopped pork, chicken or beef. They will serve it sliced or pulled for a fifty-cent fee. I also noticed that they charge fifty cents extra for fries, which is very unusual. Many places, including Dave Poe’s, will charge you an extra half dollar for the stew but call fries a regular side. I later learned that Hambones makes their fries in-house and they are very popular. Perhaps I should have tried those.

The pork is very tender and very smoky and doesn’t need sauce, but there are three on the table and they are all very good. The house sauce is a traditional red tomato-vinegar mix, and the house hot sauce is the same, only amped up with peppers. I liked this one best, but I was also quite taken with the rib sauce, a black mixture which tasted to me like there was less vinegar in it. In all, this was a quite good meal, with a lot of food served up with a lot of character for a very fair price.

I wasn’t quite done with Hapeville, because I heard about a soda fountain in town and so I went to go get some dessert. Central Avenue forms a main street through the small city. We’d driven through it some months back, during the short barbecue tour that the family took in January after the ice storm, to get from the I-75 corridor south of the city over to College Park. Driving through it, I could then feel the icy fingers of my past crawling along my spine. I think that this girl whom I inadvisedly dated for a few months way back when I was in high school lived around here.

There are just a few retail places along Central that are still open, with several restaurants keeping traffic coming through. Chapman Drugs is located next to the Freemason lodge, and there’s plenty of twenty minute street parking; just enough to grab something from the pharmacy and a milkshake or a limeade. I had two-scoop malt with peach and vanilla and it was just wonderful. Every milkshake should be that good.

Chapman Drugs is, inconveniently, not open on Saturdays. (Neither is Hambones, for that matter. I have to curl an eyebrow over barbecue joints where you can’t get a Saturday lunch.) This does raise the issue of when Marie will be able to come down here and enjoy a milkshake with me, but she’ll have a maternity leave in a month or so, and I think she will certainly be due an awesome milkshake. Maybe we can visit Pit Boss as well for lunch first and I can see which of the two barbecue places on Virginia Avenue I prefer.