One day last month, Marie and the three year-old and I needed to run up to Chattanooga to pick up the girlchild, and we decided to make a day of it, with lots and lots of things to do. Now, on the previous week’s drive to Alabama, we made it a mostly barbecue trip, but this time out, we only revisited a single barbecue joint, about ten miles north of the state line up I-75 near the town of Ooltewah. I had gone to Couch’s four years ago and, especially since it’s such a unique style of presentation, I wanted to try it again and let Marie see what it was like. Continue reading “Couch’s Barbecue, Ooltewah TN (take two)”
Tag: barbecue
Betty’s Bar-B-Q, Anniston AL
In early 2014, one of the five or six best barbecue restaurants in Alabama closed after a run of 63 years. It was called Goal Post and it was really terrific. It was a place that I had wanted to visit for ages on the strength of its terrific sign. See, anybody can say that some barbecue is good, and sometimes you can trust the source and sometimes you don’t know them, but you see a picture of a sign as amazing as Goal Post’s, and you just have to see it in person. Art’s like that. Continue reading “Betty’s Bar-B-Q, Anniston AL”
Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q, Bessemer AL
We try to avoid letting personal sadness get into the blog much, but, as some of our friends know, we had some pretty terrible turmoil in our lives some months after my dad passed away in 2011, and, the following year, it got a lot worse before it got resolved. The bottom line is that, for many years, my daughter has seen very, very little of her mother, who lives in Kentucky, and we have, for many of the same reasons, seen very, very little of my older son, who lives there with her. Continue reading “Bob Sykes Bar-B-Q, Bessemer AL”
Archibald’s Bar-B-Que, Northport AL
There are, of course, hundreds of barbecue restaurants this side of Texas that we have yet to visit, but it’s fair to say that we have not heard about most of them yet, and that there are only a handful left with a huge reputation – a “you must eat here” footprint that most everybody in the barbecue hobby knows. Payne’s, Sweatman’s, and Stamey’s come to mind, and so, for a long time, did Archibald’s, which has been on my short list for about five years thanks to so many glowing reviews from the regulars at the Roadfood forums. Continue reading “Archibald’s Bar-B-Que, Northport AL”
Golden Rule Bar-B-Q, Irondale AL
For our final stop on this road trip, we visited one of the oldest restaurants in the southeast. Golden Rule Bar-B-Q is on at least its fourth set of owners, and the current home of its flagship store is, again, at least the fourth, but it traces its history back to 1891, when a family named Williams opened the original stop on the long Alabama to Birmingham highway. In the late 1930s, a gentleman named Jabo Stone, who had married into the Williams family, became the owner. He sold it in 1969 to Michael Matsos, and, in 2010, CM Foodservice, LLC took over Golden Rule as well as Matsos’s popular Michael’s Steakhouse. They run a few other small brands with locations dotted around the southeast, including La Paz, which, until recently, had a store within walking distance of my childhood home in Vinings GA. Continue reading “Golden Rule Bar-B-Q, Irondale AL”
Germantown Commissary, Germantown TN
After our lunch in Mississippi, we returned to Memphis, picked up our daughter, took her shopping, and then went to Marie’s sister’s house to spend the afternoon with her. They played Carcasonne – I’m open to most any game, but this one’s appeal has long eluded me – and, several hours later, the convention finished, their brother Karl joined us for some Munchkin, and then we convoyed out east along Poplar Avenue for ages and ages, to the suburb of Germantown. Continue reading “Germantown Commissary, Germantown TN”
Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q, Memphis TN
As the day wrapped up, and after we enjoyed a trip to the amazing Shangri-La Records, we picked up Marie and her sister from the con, dropped her at work, and drove on to our fourth barbecue destination, and then ran into a disappointment. I’d been looking forward to visiting Payne’s as our final stop on the Saturday expedition, but I did not do the proper research. They’re only open for lunch. We wouldn’t have one of their celebrated pig sandwiches on this visit after all. So we went back to the hotel for me to reconsider plans, and everything turned out all right. I even got to learn about a long-vanished chain of barbecue restaurants that I did not know about previously. Continue reading “Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q, Memphis TN”
Marie, Let's Eat! 