Tag: barbecue

Tops Bar-B-Que, Memphis TN

Well, I done Tops wrong, to be blunt. I had mistakenly assumed that they were a sort of Memphis version of some other regional fast food barbecue chains, like Whitt’s or Rick’s in middle Tennessee / northern Alabama, or Buddy’s around Knoxville, where meat is smoked in one location and moved around to others and kept in warmers. It turns out that Tops, which has fourteen stores in the area – one of which is across the river in Arkansas, and another two in Mississippi – smokes the meat in each location. They use an indoor pit in each store, and the children and I visited the oldest existing restaurant on Rhodes Avenue in East Memphis, thinking, incorrectly, that they do all the smoking here. Continue reading “Tops Bar-B-Que, Memphis TN” →

Cozy Corner Restaurant, Memphis TN

My plans for the day o’ barbecue in Memphis took a hit when the venerable, and extremely popular, Cozy Corner Restaurant was damaged by a fire in January and was forced to close. Happily, a few days before our trip, Southern Living writer Robert Moss tweeted out that they would reopen in temporary digs across the street. The owners of Encore Cafe had reached out to them, giving Cozy Corner a stopover home with an abbreviated menu while their restaurant was repaired. Continue reading “Cozy Corner Restaurant, Memphis TN” →

Leonard’s Pit Bar-B-Que, Memphis TN (take two)

A couple of chapters back, I mentioned how quite a few restaurants in this part of the country go to town on the Elvis memorabilia, even if there may be some disagreement as to how much influence that The King had on their cash registers while he was living. Leonard’s does not play up the Elvis angle, but he really did seem to enjoy this place. There are stories aplenty about how he’d rent the previous location, at 1140 South Bellevue, for all-night parties in the early 1960s. Continue reading “Leonard’s Pit Bar-B-Que, Memphis TN (take two)” →

Bama Boys BBQ, Henagar AL

Three of the four times that we’ve visited Scottsboro, we have next driven east across the beautiful BB Comer Bridge, and thought that it must surely be the final time because they keep threatening to dismantle it. Fortunately, the Alabama DOT is slow, even slower than their counterparts in Tennessee, and they haven’t got around to it yet. You can see a couple of photos from our last trip back in August, when we were hopeful that the locals could preserve the bridge for pedestrians. I keep an eye on their progress, because I love the beautiful old thing, and encourage all our readers who are interested in preservation and history to check out the Friends of the Comer Bridge on Facebook. Continue reading “Bama Boys BBQ, Henagar AL” →

Blue Sky Barbecue, Woodstock GA (CLOSED)

One indecisive Saturday recently, the girlchild asked to stay in bed, and so her brother and I went out to eat something. I was so indecisive that I started one direction and changed my mind, and then turned the other way. I finally figured out which direction out of our neighborhood that I should go when I remembered hearing that a barbecue place opened on the outskirts of Woodstock last year. It’s called Blue Sky Barbecue and it’s just off GA-92, less than a mile west of I-575 on the way to Acworth. Continue reading “Blue Sky Barbecue, Woodstock GA (CLOSED)” →

Hodge’s Bar-B-Que, Decatur GA

Exploring restaurants and writing this blog occasionally sees us finding quiet bits of history that really don’t seem to have been documented much, anywhere. Take Hodge’s Bar-B-Que on Candler Road, for example. I noticed the old place, on the left going north from I-20, while in the neighborhood many months ago, along with what turned out to be a much newer barbecue joint, Papa Joe’s. I flipped a coin to choose which one to visit first, and this place didn’t make it, so it went into the “when it’s convenient” pile, which is the much longer edition of the “go here, soon” document. Continue reading “Hodge’s Bar-B-Que, Decatur GA” →