Mountain Biscuits, Marietta GA

Here is a first for our blog. We’ve never considered a restaurant for inclusion, dined, declined and then gave them another chance before. Mountain Biscuits, a very busy place on Old 41 between the Church Street Extension and Barrett Parkway, got back on our better side after a less-than-thrilling introduction suggested just enough promise to make me want to give them another try, and while the results still were not quite perfect, the second trip was certainly warranted.

A few Thursdays back, I was looking around for something new to eat or revisit, when Mountain Biscuits came up as a “nearby suggestion” to some place on the Marietta Square that I was considering. They allegedly made a very good chicken sandwich, and so I drove over there to try it. The drive wasn’t at all bad, and the lovely old building, very photogenic, was inspiring. It is no fault of the restaurant, but the illusion of a middle-of-nowhere roadside shack is sadly spoiled by the presence of some condos across the street.

While the service was impeccable and very friendly, I found this chicken sandwich to be completely overrated and overpriced. It wasn’t bad, and I was not offended, but it was incredibly ordinary. It just tasted like an interstate fast food chicken sandwich, and I couldn’t understand why on earth I was paying $5.75(!) for something that tasted like it came from a Wendy’s or something. The bun, in particular, set off the trucked-in alarm. I crossed this place off my “to-blog” list.

But I noticed something curious as I had my lunch. From 11 to 3, six days a week, they offer lunch, with the promise of burgers and barbecue and an overindulgent plate of loaded fries that I might have ordered had the awesome, super-friendly woman at the register not told me that they were frozen fries. While they were not completely packed while I was there, they were nevertheless busy, and despite the lunch hour, every single person who came in seemed to be ordering biscuits instead of typical lunch fare. Were these biscuits really so good that they made for better 1 pm lunches than this ordinary sandwich?

My return was assured when the woman at the register started passing around little sample cups of their potato salad. While I almost never order this anymore for diet reasons, I do certainly love it, and this stuff was incredibly curious and interesting. If you will, it’s baked potato salad, and it tastes a whole lot like a loaded baked potato, with bacon and sour cream. In point of fact, while I have had better, I have never had anything like this, and I believe in celebrating unique dining-out experiences. I also felt that I should be judging a restaurant based on what they make in-house, rather than what some truck brings. If the potato salad was any indication, they really can make some great stuff here.

So two mornings later, while my daughter embarked on a lengthy and detailed makeup job for her Anime Weekend Atlanta costume, Marie and the baby and I paid them a second visit for breakfast. We joined a very long line and were rewarded with some excellent biscuits. They are not, perhaps, quite in the same league as Stilesboro Biscuits a few miles up the road, who set the gold standard, but they’re nevertheless really good. The line’s length is testimony that they are doing something very right.

I think these treats are a little firmer than Stilesboro’s, and Mountain makes them memorable by putting this wonderful concoction called Farmer’s Biscuit Syrup on the tables. It’s sort of a thin molasses and it goes incredibly well with a hot, buttered biscuit of this consistency. Frankly, should we return for breakfast one day, I won’t even bother with any meat filling. As good as the country ham was, and it was quite good, I think drowning a plain biscuit in this delicious goo and eating it with a fork would really be something. Doesn’t that sound insanely indulgent? I’ll do that on a day when I’m planning to eat two ounces of steamed cauliflower for lunch.

I do, however, operate with a pretty strict three-strikes rule where Fox News is concerned. If I do go back for a third visit and the single TV there is still tuned to that propagandist garbage, it will be the last time. Maybe I’ll wait a good while, and see whether they’re giving their lunches the same homemade attention as their breakfast, and told that guy in the Flowers Bakery truck that he no longer needs to bring them those awful buns. The baked potato salad is clearly a step in the right direction and shows what they want to be doing. Hopefully, over time, they’ll refine their lunch recipes further and turn out a chicken sandwich that’s every bit as unique, and warrants the price. If they’ve turned that divisive dirt off the TV, it’ll show that they really mean business.

Barker’s Red Hots, Roswell GA (CLOSED)

We were very glad to read that Barker’s, one of the two or three best hot dog places in the city, and sometimes, depending on my mood, the very best, was opening a second location, and doubly so when we read that it would be open in the evenings. When the main store on Windy Hill cut back its single dinner-time operation, on Friday nights, that killed our ability to visit much. Mostly, our Saturdays are devoted to getting out of town or trying something new.

Then again, perhaps we’re unusual in that we enjoy trying something new even more than returning to a reliable favorite. Most people in our neck of the woods with a Saturday free and wanting a hot dog, if they’ve any sense, will either head to the Barker’s on Windy Hill or spend the extra gasoline to motor over to America’s Top Dog, because nobody in the city cooks up a dog as good as these places. Well, I suppose the curiosity factor might lead them to Richard Blais’s new place, Hd1, which everybody started yammering about two weeks ago. I may have to get over that way soon.

Typically, during the fall, when we don’t have family plans on a Friday, we might defer to our daughter. She might want to go to a Sprayberry football game or see a movie with friends. While we plan many things in advance in anticipation of trying something new, we sometimes have to wait until the last minute on Fridays to factor in her plans. So a few Fridays back, she had no plans and Marie wasn’t keen to cook, and the girlchild suggested hot dogs, so we drove over to Barker’s new location.

I do wish they had built up our corridor instead of going to Roswell, but that’s just geographic selfishness, I suppose. There’s just no way to get here quickly from us, but if you live anywhere near Woodstock Road and King, around the Roswell High district, this is a fine little evening getaway.

The problem, of course, in taking the family to Barker’s is that it really can get expensive for a family to eat here. I blame the restaurant for having so many yummy things. Their sweet onion rings have a strong claim for being the best in the state, and the beef on weck sandwich, again clearly the best around, really is priced quite high at nearly eight dollars. Normally, we just get water when we go out, to conserve on calories and cost, but their Loganberry punch is just so wonderful that we keep coming back to it. I really do wish they’d offer some combo meal options.

Of course, I could have saved a little money had I just got two dogs like I normally do, but I just couldn’t resist this beef on weck. The meat is just so good, and the salt and horseradish complement it so well. I wish it came with fries. Yeah, okay, so they throw in a bag of Lay’s, but, really, who likes Lay’s? This absolutely delicious roast beef on such a chewy, salty and wonderful bun is not at all served well when accompanied by this imitation “potato” flavored cardboard.

Marie got two original red hots, one with slaw and one with chili. The difference between this slaw dog and the one that I had earlier in the day at the Dari Spot, north of Gainesville, was like Jekyll and Hyde. Honestly, I do have a taste for fast food dogs, but the simple satisfaction of a boiled dog with a mayo-heavy topping is, nevertheless, totally blown out of the water by a charcoal-grilled dog served with a much better blend of slaw, with the mayo not overpowering the flavors of cabbage and vinegar. What’s done over charcoal here is all the difference. One day, my daughter will consent to actually having one of these bad boys, but she is still perfectly satisfied with her steamed “city” dog, served with a ladle of melted cheese.

We’ll probably go to Hd1 before long and see what they have to offer, but for my money, Barker’s is in a very rare class indeed. I’m glad they’re serving the Roswell High community. But seriously, guys, there are some empty storefronts around Sprayberry that could use a big charcoal grill installed. Consider us for your next location, would you?

(Update 8/23/12: Sadly, this location closed in August 2012. The Windy Hill store remains open. Better luck with the next expansion, friends!)

Grand Champion BBQ, Marietta GA

A few Fridays ago, my plans got stymied and so I decided to try out a new suburban barbecue joint that’s getting a lot of press and hype. It’s called Grand Champion and, while elements of it were admittedly pretty impressive, it was an expensive lesson in not necessarily letting the hype of the day overwhelm common sense. Let’s get one objection to this place out of the way first thing. Somebody at the post office has assigned this place the 30075 ZIP code and has been making the pretty bold claim that it’s in Roswell. It is not. I’ve lived here for many, many years, friends. This is Marietta. Cobb County. The Pope High School district, to be precise. In a pig’s eye this is Roswell.

Grand Champion is the latest place to claim lineage from the old Sam & Dave’s BBQ of Marietta. Co-owner Robert Owens worked there for a spell, before Sam and Dave split up. By my count, there are now five restaurants in the region that are run by members of this team. In fact, Owens apparently bakes his mac and cheese per David Roberts’ recipe. I actually tried Roberts’ mac and cheese at Community Q just a few days before and didn’t like it very much, so I passed on it here. Speaking of Community Q, I think that might be my ceiling. They charge eleven bucks, even, for a pork plate there. Any higher than that, and I’m going to start asking why. It costs $11.50 at Grand Champion, before tax. They’re located next door to a Dollar Tree, so please don’t tell me they’ve got steep ground rent to cover.

I went with a pulled pork plate with collard greens and Brunswick stew. Sadly, it appears that Owens picked up the most obnoxious lesson from Huff and company, and considers Brunswick stew a “premium” side and charges more for it. This atop the already steep price. Can we cut this nonsense out right now, Atlanta? There are five hundred barbecue joints in this state and somehow, the only ones who think that stew – stew! – is a premium anything are in the northern Atlanta ‘burbs.

Having said that, some of the food is pretty good. I’ve frequently bit off more than I can really chew with collards, and lose interest quickly, but these were better than most. The stew was indeed very notable, and rich with flavor. The sauces, in squeeze bottles on the table, were also good. The North Carolina vinegar was nice, but I really liked the dark brown Kansas City sauce a lot.

Unfortunately, the pulled pork wasn’t very smoky and it was also quite greasy, so I’d have to dock quite a few points for that. I don’t know what on earth they did to make it so greasy as to remove or overwhelm any taste of smoke from this pork, but it had the consistency and character of crock pot roast beef. It was limp and forgettable, until the Kansas City sauce brought it to life. I hate to sound like a Woody Allen character, but the food wasn’t very good, and the portions were so small!

That is the least amount of food that I have ever paid for as a “plate” in a barbecue restaurant, and very nearly the most money that I have spent. Say what you might about inconsistency in the kitchen, an off-day, or different palates and different tastes, but honestly, there’s an understood rule about judging barbecue places that, while rarely spoken, trumps all other considerations. Simply put, if I’m going to pay $12.46 for a plate of barbecue with two sides, I better not be leaving hungry. I left hungry.

Fortunately, I had business in north Cobb about an hour later, so it wasn’t much of a detour to pop into Cherokee County and swing by Hot Dog Heaven in downtown Woodstock and get something to eat.

I have read much about Hot Dog Heaven over the years, and I’m very sorry that I visited on a day when Miss Becky was not working. There are many great stories about this superhuman example of effervescent Southern hospitality dishing out Chicago-styled Vienna Beef brand dogs at low prices, and I regret that I didn’t get to recount one to you dear readers.

What I can tell you is that here, you get a great big treat for not a lot of money. I did just have lunch, and didn’t want to overindulge or load down on calories, so I just parked out front by the Betty Boop and had only a “Maxwell Street”-styled Polish sausage with grilled onions, sport peppers, and brown mustard, and chewed that delicious thing down while the Travel Channel had one of their peculiar programs about food that only very weird foreigners eat. I don’t know who the market for octopus or beef tongue ice cream is, but I guarantee you that the hot dog that I was enjoying was superior.

Woodstock might just be a little bit of a drive for a Vienna Beef dog, Chicago-style, but the wonderful, laid-back and silly atmosphere is a great little place to kick back and get away from things. I’d like to stop by again the next time I’m in the area, and try a few of the other things on their menu.

Osteria del Figo Pasta, Atlanta GA

Our Nashville-based friends Brooke and Tory came to town for Dragon*Con, and we had our usual Sunday night get-together with them during all that madness. I have to thank the convention for never scheduling anything unmissable on Sunday evenings, although this year, a special screening of an episode of Torchwood, with commentary by one of the actors, did mean we got together slightly later than I would have hoped.

I picked them up at the hotel while Marie and the children went ahead to Osteria del Figo on Howell Mill. I figured that we’d ask our guests what sort of food they were in the mood for and have a nearby restaurant already selected to breeze them there. I’m pretty sure I had every reasonable possibility other than pasta covered. If it wasn’t just down the street from our own house, twenty miles north of downtown, we’d probably have gone to Frankie’s, but I was momentarily stumped about a good, inexpensive Italian place near the convention hotels. A quick little look over Urbanspoon suggested this would be a good choice, and it really was.

The restaurant is easy to find; it is on the corner of Howell Mill and Huff, and it appears to have ample parking, which is kind of a rarity in this neighborhood. There’s a too-small airlock area, where guests line up to place their orders with a cashier. This part is a little slow, owing to a dense menu utterly full of possibilities. There are a good number of house specials, but also similar “build your own pasta” creations like you see at some of the larger national chains, with 18 sauces over 25 noodle selections. Speaking of which, there are currently seven Figo locations in Atlanta, but they don’t appear to have expanded to other cities. Most of the combinations here start at $8, and you can add meats for various prices. Figo prides itself on its meatballs, offered in a variety of recipes, for $1.50 each. This is a good place to get quite a lot of food for a reasonable price.

It looks like you can make some really fun meals up here. I went with spinach ravioli with amatriciana sauce, which is a red sauce with pancetta, tomatoes, peppers and olive oil. It was terrific. Marie had primavera over linguine and our daughter had pesto sauce over penne noodles. I am keen to visit again for lunch one day and give the artichoke ravioli with four cheese sauce a try. First Bite had that when she visited a couple of years ago and it looks very tasty.

As we waited for our food, we talked about visiting Nashville in a couple of months. This has been pretty much the longest I have gone without a trip to Nashville in a decade, and frankly, I miss the place, but this has been something of a ridiculous and crazy and busy year. So I tossed out a skeleton of a plan of what I’d like to do when we get there, and one or two places that I’d like to visit or revisit. Naming all these wonderful restaurants and wonderful meals had me quite hungry for my ravioli!

Well, after we had talked about Prince’s and Rotier’s and Ellington Place and Mas Tacos and Pied Piper and other such yummy places, and let the baby get lots of love and cuddling and attention, we enjoyed a really good meal. The food here is simply splendid, and we all enjoyed sampling each others’ dishes. Pasta really was a fine idea of Brooke’s, honestly. I’m very glad that we tried this place.

After we ate, the baby let us know that he really was in the mood to go home and be nursed and go to bed, so my daughter and I drove the ladies back to their hotel, but not before stopping at Flip Burger Boutique for a milkshake. I was sorry that Marie missed out, but Flip, incredibly noisy and ridiculous, isn’t baby-friendly at all. Unfortunately, they were out of the requested Cap’n Crunch shakes, but we enjoyed the Peach Melba and Krispy Kreme and Strawberry Shortcake and the remarkably curious Burnt Marshmellow with Nutella. (“It tastes like camping,” Tory exclaimed.) Everybody visiting Atlanta should try one of these.

There was a really odd loop of music videos going on the bar here, including Radiohead and, of all things, “Primary” by the Cure, which still strikes me as very odd to see anywhere other than the old Staring at the Sea VHS. My daughter is currently totally in love with the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. I pointed out the Cure, told her, truly, that MCR pilfered every idea it’s ever had from the Cure and, back before he ate all the pies, 1981-model Robert Smith was an awfully good-looking fellow. She disagreed with emphasis. Then I pointed out the bassist, Simon Gallup, and told my daughter that the girl I took to the prom was more totally in love with him in 1988 than she is with Gerard Way, today. She had to pause on that point. I never got much in the way of follow-up.

(Update, 11/12/11): As I promised myself weeks ago, I tried that artichoke ravioli with four cheese sauce. Marie and I went with our daughter and Neal to the Figo in Vinings and gave it a try.

It was every bit as tasty as I had hoped. My daughter had the paprika penne with arriabiatta sauce and was also very pleased with it.

Sabor do Brazil, Marietta GA

So how many Brazilian restaurants do you imagine you’d find within eyesight of the Micro Center on Powers Ferry in Cobb County? At least three. “Four,” said my daughter. “Oh, wait, never mind, that says ‘Brazilian Wax’.” Naturally, we went to the wrong one first. The wrong restaurant, not the wax place.

Back on Labor Day weekend, Marie was down at Dragon*Con, gaming with her brother and sister, while I stayed home to watch the children. David suggested that we meet for supper at the Brazilian restaurant across from Micro Center, and I thought he meant Botemkin, the popular bistro on Terrell Mill that opened in late July to some praise and hype. This has never happened before, and I darn well hope it will never happen again, but the three of us twiddled our thumbs and drank water waiting for him – I’ve mentioned before that David’s manners are impeccable, and he’s not the sort to be late without phoning – until I got impatient and called him. Well, my daughter and I twiddled our thumbs; the baby just cooed and gurgled. No, of course, David was waiting for us over on Delk Road at Sabor do Brazil, a much less expensive buffet place. Sheepishly, we apologized to the servers and withdrew.

Sabor do Brazil is a tiny little restaurant with a small dinner buffet, nicely priced at $8.99 on weekends. Honestly, the food was not at all bad, but pretty uninspiring. I had a large salad earlier that day for lunch, so I just started with a small plate with some tomatoes, black beans and rice, a little skirt steak in gravy, some fried bananas and baked flan. It was okay. Much more interesting was what I had to drink. They make their own cashew juice here, and that was very tasty.

But honestly, I go to restaurants sometimes and just have an okay meal, and figure that there’s really no reason to write a blog post about it. Even as I planned to go back for a small helping of tilapia in a tomato sauce, I figured we are really behind enough between “meal” and “blog” that I can occasionally skip a writeup.

Then a young fellow came by the table and let us know that the barbecue was ready, if we wanted to come get some. Everything changed.

Now, it is a rare day when I must flat out contradict what any of my peers in this hobby state on their blog, but I’m afraid that Malika Harricharan of Atlanta Restaurant Blog is quite mistaken to claim that this place doesn’t serve the skewers of meat roasting in an oven that you typically find at Brazilian steakhouses. Perhaps they don’t offer this at lunch, when she stopped by, but they certainly do at dinner. By my definition, this clearly is not barbecue, as the young server described it, but holy anna, is it ever terrific.

Well, most of it is. They have a number of meats roasting here, and I was not really taken with the pork ribs, which were too fatty. The beef with bacon was tremendously good, and the sausage was remarkable. Best of all was the picanha, which is top sirloin. They set the skewer upright on a plate and slice it downwards, with guests using tongs to help pull the meat away. It was tremendously good food, and I overindulged with great pleasure. David and my daughter each called it a day long before me, although in David’s defense, not knowing about this “barbecue” option – it’s just an extra dollar for the meat, a remarkable steal of a deal – he had loaded his plate with the buffet and didn’t have much room to dig in to the picanha.

Other than the young fellow who invited us to try the “barbecue,” we were served by the teenage daughter of the owner. I asked how long the restaurant had been here, and she said just about ten years. Not knowing who she was, I asked, as I do, how long she had worked here. “Oh, since it opened,” she replied. When I raised an eyebrow and asked, “Really?”, she got adorably flustered and told me, “I’m the daughter’s owner, I mean, I’m the owner of the daughter, I mean, I’m the owner’s daughter,” and that she was busing tables when she was seven.

She told me about the cashew juice, which is called simply caju in Brazil. I had no idea that the nuts that we eat are just a kernel of a much larger fruit that, in South America anyway, is used in its entirety. The fruit is eaten as a dessert or used in cooking, or the caju is extracted for a beverage. According to Wikipedia, in India, this juice, fermented, is used as the basis of an alcoholic drink called, depending on the process, either feni or gongo. Learning new things about food, and not just the stories behind restaurants, is one of the best things about writing this blog and talking to businesses. Now, I wonder where I can get a glass of feni, and how hard it’ll kick me onto my backside.

Six Feet Under, Atlanta GA

Six Feet Under has a pretty shaky reputation among food lovers, I’m sad to say. I’ve always enjoyed the meals I’ve had here, ever since my daughter came home about seven years ago after a weekend with her mother, breathlessly exclaiming how they went to a cemetery and had crab legs. That took a little work, getting to the bottom of that story.

At the time, her mother lived in town, and would have liked to have made this a regular destination for the kids, but it was always a special treat, owing to her low finances. On one occasion, among many, she had grumbled that she hadn’t any money to do anything nice with the kids on one of her weekends. I succumbed to generosity and packed up my children with $40 and a note that the girlchild, aged maybe six, haltingly penciled from my letter-by-letter dictation, explaining that she and her brother wanted fresh fish and had robbed a convenience store to get the enclosed money, and to please take them to the graveyard for fresh fish. We know that nostalgia is a prime ingredient in the very best restaurants, but how can you not absolutely love a place that inspires stories so darn cute?

Looking around, however, I do see many mixed reviews, and discouraging grumbling from quarters who find their prices too high and their portions too small. Sadly, they might be right in that one regard. I visited for lunch a few Fridays ago, and the prices on their web site are no longer accurate. They have gone up, and I paid $14.50 for what turned out to be a fistful of shrimp and scallops baked in parchment.

Oh, but they were such good shrimp and scallops…

Six Feet Under, in one of the most deliciously appropriate names in the business, is indeed across the street from Atlanta’s gigantic Oakland Cemetery, with a high deck overlooking the beautiful view. Actually, I enjoy the view of the restaurant’s second location, on 11th Street, even more. That’s just about the best view of the city’s skyline. I have eaten at each location twice now. On one of my evening trips to the 11th Street store, when Marie and I were eating downstairs, there was a power cut that knocked out the electricity for about five blocks. Fortunately, we pay with cash and weren’t held up when we wanted to leave. Driving around all those blocks of Northside and Howell Mill without any lights was eerie and wonderful; I’d have hated to have missed that while waiting for a credit card machine to come back online.

The original location is the real destination for travelers, and I would certainly rank it among Atlanta’s best seafood places, though I think that I enjoy Tin Can in Sandy Springs a little more. It’s a fabulous, ramshackle building in the lovely Grant Park neighborhood, and very popular with a big crowd. There is a small lot behind the building, but I ended up joining many others in parking on the streets behind the restaurant, about two blocks away.

I sat at the bar and really enjoyed that pricey order of shrimp and scallops. They’re baked in parchment with butter and lemon and are just wonderful. I had them with a spinach salad, homemade chips and hush puppies. Everything was completely delicious, and the ladies and gentlemen working the bar did a great job paying attention to all their guests.

Six Feet Under prides themselves on being a green business, with a composting program and, at their 11th Street store, a windmill. It’s definitely a place to show off to out-of-town guests, and, every once in a while, a nice treat for us. Don’t even have to rob a convenience store to eat here. Well, one more price hike and you might have to, but until then, it is good eating.

Community Q BBQ, Decatur GA

So Community Q opened better than two years ago, and it’s taken me this long to check it out. The praise has not quite been unanimous – among others, Foodie Buddha was underwhelmed by it in December of ’09 – but enough of my fellow hobbyists have been clear in their praise that I figured it warranted a try, especially since my most recent barbecue trip had been pretty unsatisfying. Continue reading “Community Q BBQ, Decatur GA” →