The Purple Daisy Picnic Cafe, Chattanooga TN (take two)

This is Marie, contributing a Take Two on a restaurant Grant visited on his own last time. Well, he had our friend David with him, but naturally, of course, he would want his family along for the return visit. Continue reading “The Purple Daisy Picnic Cafe, Chattanooga TN (take two)” →

Ol’ Tymer’s BBQ & Blues, Fort Payne AL

I’m not going to suggest that there’s a Fort Payne barbecue rivalry anywhere near as explosive as the one in Georgia between adherents of Fresh Air and fans of Old Clinton can get. However, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that, for the last twenty years or so, you either go to Bar-B-Q Place, which we visited in 2011, or you go to Ol’ Tymer’s. Continue reading “Ol’ Tymer’s BBQ & Blues, Fort Payne AL” →

50 Taters, Scottsboro AL

We wanted to sample a couple of barbecue places while we were in northeast Alabama, and so when we finished shopping at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, we made our way to the downtown area around the courthouse square, and saw a closed-up storefront where the restaurant we were looking to find was supposed to be. We’ll chalk this up to really poor research on my part and some outdated listings on Urbanspoon. 50 Taters closed their downtown location in late 2011 and moved out to the big highway – there’s a Sprawl-Mart access road alongside US-72 that gets all the traffic – and actually has opened an additional store up on Sand Mountain in Rainsville where they now do the smoking for each location. I think that we’ve got everything sorted and corrected now, so anybody else looking for barbecue in this corner of Alabama should have an easier time getting to where they need to be. Continue reading “50 Taters, Scottsboro AL” →

Liberty Restaurant, Scottsboro AL

In June, we took a day trip to northeast Alabama. Marie wanted to buy a new tablet from the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, and saved her pennies for a couple of months so that she could get one for really cheap. It’s always a bit of a dice roll here, because you don’t know what they will have available, but frankly, they had so many extremely good quality electronics and cameras that you’ll be horrified to fly ever again because so much stuff goes missing and gets paid off by the airline insurance, and then it gets found and ends up here. Continue reading “Liberty Restaurant, Scottsboro AL” →

El Rey del Taco, Doraville GA (take two)

This is the quintessential example of a blogger-only problem, but I’ve about hit the point where the thrill of visiting a new-to-me restaurant on Buford Highway is actually not quite as guaranteed as the pleasure of revisiting one of the greats that I’ve gotten to know a little bit. So if I’m in the mood for tacos on this stretch of road, I might want to try something new, and certainly will again, but I’m also likely to want to return to either El Señor Taco, which might just have the best salsa bar in the city, or Martin Macias’s El Rey del Taco, which, two and a half years ago, was the very first Buford Highway restaurant that we featured here. (How many more we’ve been to after this!) Continue reading “El Rey del Taco, Doraville GA (take two)” →

Tom + Chee, Kennesaw GA

Here’s a very nifty surprise. Since the small chain Tom + Chee exploded in a big expansion over the last twelve months, they’ve become what is probably the only place in Georgia to serve goetta. Have you ever heard of this stuff? It’s kind of the Ohio River Valley equivalent to Mississippi slugburgers: breakfast sausage that has been “extended” with the addition of oats and onions, and seasoned with rosemary and bay leaves. Continue reading “Tom + Chee, Kennesaw GA” →