Tag: alabama

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 We’ll chalk this up to really poor research on my part and some outdated listings on Urbanspoon. 50 Taters closed their downtown location in late 2011 and moved out to the big highway – there’s a Sprawl-Mart access road alongside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” →

Al & Mick’s Bar-B-Q, Snead AL

We woke on Sunday morning and made our way home. We really enjoyed the time away from home and the very good hotel, and the girlchild was so pleased with the UNA campus that I figure we’ll be back on a campus tour in a couple of years, if not before. We really enjoyed our time in Florence and greatly appreciated the good people at Florence Main Street for bringing us out here, but we were ready to mosey on home and find something to eat along the way. On Sundays, that can, of course, be a challenge. Continue reading “Al & Mick’s Bar-B-Q, Snead AL” →

PoBoys Cajun Grill, Florence AL

Here’s an experience that we hope is never repeated. Back in April, when we made the special announcement post about Florence Restaurant Week, one of our readers left a comment inviting us to stop by the restaurant where she worked. PoBoys Cajun Grill opened in October of 2013, and even though it was not participating in the event, we decided that it would be nice to stop by and say hello. Continue reading “PoBoys Cajun Grill, Florence AL” →

Montagu’s, Florence AL (CLOSED)

This is Marie, contributing an article about twin restaurants in Alabama: Montagu’s and its older sister Frostbite. We visited as a part of Florence Restaurant Week, using a gift card that the restaurant had given to our hosts, Florence Main Street; I like sandwiches and the girlchild is passionate about froyo, so the pair became an obvious choice. These were the fourth and fifth participating restaurants that we visited. Continue reading “Montagu’s, Florence AL (CLOSED)” →

Dick Howell Bar-B-Q, Florence AL

We have a very long way to go before accurately documenting the story of barbecue in northwest Alabama, but one point that seems clear is that all of the joints in this neck of the woods are following in Dick Howell’s footprints. He opened the first roadside barbecue stand here in 1946, smoking shoulders in an open pit over hickory woods, using techniques and recipes that he had learned from working in Memphis. He introduced mustard slaw to the region, for one major example. While I prefer the taste and the flavors of the pork and the sides at Brooks Barbeque, a few miles away in Muscle Shoals, just one look at the meals shows that back in the ’60s, Sammie Brooks Sr. made the deliberate decision to replicate Howell’s product. He just did it better, in my mind. (This isn’t unheard of. Old Clinton Bar-B-Q in Gray GA is undoubtedly a clone of the nearby Fresh Air, and a superior one.) Continue reading “Dick Howell Bar-B-Q, Florence AL” →