Johnny’s Bar-B-Que & Steaks, Powder Springs GA

Somewhat overlooked in all the talk of regional barbecue styles is that there is a little outpost of restaurants in western Cobb County and Douglas County that all have very similar takes on presentation, sauce and preparing the chopped pork. I know that I’m not the first one to notice this. I wish that I could take credit for it, but somebody who actually deserves credit – and, you probably know me, I’m just not very good about remembering where I read things – noted an interesting similarity between the chopped pork at Austell’s Wallace Barbecue and a place in Douglasville that I have not yet tried, Hudson Hickory House in Douglasville. I made the connection, but didn’t note it anywhere, between Wallace and Briar Patch Restaurant, which is near Dallas and Hiram. A couple of weeks ago, I revisited Johnny’s Bar-B-Que and Steaks for the first time in four or five years and realized just how similar this place is to the others.

If you pull up these on a map, you’ll see that they’re all in the same little quadrant, north of I-20 and east of I-285. Now, I can’t speak with certainty about Hudson Hickory House, but I have seen a photograph of a chopped pork plate at Courthouse Bites and read a description of the meal at BBQ Biker and I think I’m on pretty safe ground when I discuss it in general terms. All four of these older restaurants serve very soft chopped pork that is presauced and swimming in a very thin, red-to-black, mild and very tangy vinegar-based sauce, while also offering a much hotter mustard-based sauce on the table. The fries are freshly-cut, whole potato-style and very greasy. BBQ Biker describes Hudson’s as “floppy,” which can certainly be used to define the fries at the other three restaurants. The stew at each is very thick, heavy on the onions but not too many other vegetables.

When I do get the chance to visit Hudson’s, and I will, soon, I will definitely have to ask about the similarities that I’m seeing here. I’ll make a note to go after the lunch rush so somebody might have a chance to talk with me. It might not be to everybody’s taste, but this is an absolutely fascinating discovery. Barbecue lovers, you need to get out here and dig into this region and see what I’m talking about!

A couple of Saturdays ago, Marie’s mother came to town and we had a pretty good time and enjoyed some good meals, although I think her favorite of the dinners out must have been our lunchtime trip to Vingenzo’s in Woodstock. That really is some unbelievably amazing pizza. She doesn’t actually care for barbecue, madly, and so, for supper, I tried to come up with someplace that we hadn’t covered in the blog before that I knew also offered pretty good steaks and burgers. David had taken Neal and me to Johnny’s several years ago, and while I didn’t remember the details, I remembered that it was a big Saturday night family dinner place, so I asked whether we could meet at David’s place and ride over there.

If you’ve eaten at Wallace recently, then Johnny’s will give you a case of déjà vu. It’s not merely the similar style of cooking the pork; the interior and the design is very familiar. The great big room with rustic 1930s bric-a-brac on the walls feels very comfortably similar, like you’ve been here before.

I was pretty taken with the food at Johnny’s, though I would have preferred to try the meat dry. The sauce is gently tangy and not very sweet, but the mustard sauce on the table is among the hottest barbecue sauces that I have tried recently. It’s a menace, and makes a great dip for the “floppy” fries. Marie had the ribs and enjoyed them very much, her mother had a burger with some really good baked beans that she liked more than the main course, and David had a steak that didn’t set his taste buds alight, but he said it was pretty good.

Well, now the next question – as soon as I’ve made my way to Hudson, anyhow – is how many more restaurants in the area serve barbecue in this style? Four big established places in such a small radius definitely makes a trend, but I wonder how widespread it is? More research, as ever, is needed!

Neal’s Bar-B-Que, Thomson GA

Here’s a restaurant that was just plain difficult to find. Google Maps gave us pretty good directions from Statesboro up to Thomson, a large town a little west of Augusta, but the last road that we were looking for was very badly marked and we spent twenty minutes looking around for the place. I keep telling myself to study the map a lot more carefully, and not rely solely on directions. One day, I’ll get it right.

We came to Neal’s on the strength of a short review by John T. Edge (him again!) in the pages of a magazine with the quite remarkable name of Garden & Gun. Published in the November 2008 issue, and dissected within the forums of four or five dozen travel and food message boards ever since, “100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die” suggested that a really good serving of hash and rice could be found here, so, revisiting the article in search of inspiration back in March, I added it to my to-do list.

I certainly love good hash, but it was only this year that I had it served over rice. Around Athens, where I learned to love great barbecue in the 1990s, hash is about as common as Brunswick stew. Some of those good shacks in the northeast corner of the state are gone now – I’ve probably mentioned how much I miss Carrither’s – and others, like Paul’s in Lexington, serve up a side that they call stew but it more closely resembles hash in its use of fewer vegetables and more of the whole hog. I read recently that Hollis Ribs in Athens has both hash and Brunswick stew on the menu. Now that, I have to try**.

When we stopped into Augusta’s famous Sconyers in February as part of a looping day trip through South Carolina, we had hash served over rice for the first time ever. That’s the default way to prepare it in this part of the country. I have to tell you, Sconyers gets all the press and all the praise, and it was a pretty good lunch, but what we found at Neal’s just blew that place completely out of the water. I don’t know why the heck more people don’t know about Neal’s. This is, flatly, one of the best barbecue joints in the state.

The prices are low here and the portions are huge. I ordered a chopped pork sandwich and a plate of hash, and watched as the girls behind the register dipped a ladle into a great big steel pot and give it several backbreaking stirs before lifting my serving out. The pork is dry and smoky and completely wonderful. Just a little bit of the house’s vinegar sauce is all you need. And the hash, well, good grief. Edge, who you might recall is the Professor Emeritus of Eating Real Good at Ole Miss, was absolutely right to single this out. It is completely unforgettable. I follow Edge on Twitter. I’d love to follow him around in a car one day. He obviously knows where he’s going to eat.

Another famous fellow who knows about Neal’s is Jamie Oliver, who stopped by overnight during a stop on his six-part series Jamie’s American Road Trip, which aired on Channel 4 in the UK two years ago. When we spoke with the owner, Lynn Neal, she told us about Oliver’s visit, and that the show had not aired in America yet*. Watching the episode in question on YouTube, I’m not surprised. Links to YouTube are always extremely volatile as copyrights are enforced and users delete their accounts, but at present you can start viewing the episode here. It’s fascinating viewing, but the complete opposite of the usual upbeat and fun eye candy that you see on The Food Network that celebrates eating. The show is in equal parts a celebration of regional cooking as it is a sober, harsh, and cerebral exploration of how Americans are handling the recession and Obama’s presidency. The second segment of the episode – it’s uploaded in fifteen-minute chunks – gets pretty heavy with the casual bigotry to be found in both posh Savannah homes and in Chatham County trailer parks. These aren’t roads where Guy Fieri’s camera crew often stops, anyway.

For my part, I really enjoyed the contrast. It’s great fun to watch restaurant owners on Man Vs. Food or whatever talk about their wild recipes at maximum volume, but it’s also compelling viewing to hear Mrs. Neal talk about the difficulty in providing for her staff, before Oliver and the camera crew go back behind the building to see the pitmaster, whose name is Barry, and work with him in getting the hogs cooked.

Before we got home to look up the episode, she told us how Jamie and his production team “borrowed” Barry for a barbecue competition in Lakeland, Florida. She didn’t spoil the episode and tell us how that worked out, but she did say how very well they took care of Barry while he was away and made sure to get him back safe to resume cooking. Damn well that they did. Next time we are out this direction, we are definitely coming back to Neal’s for another pork sandwich and a plate of hash. My desire to try lots of new things sometimes leaves me unwilling to make second visits out of town in favor of exploration, but that won’t be happening the next time I-20 takes us east.

Well, we may need to stop at Heavy’s in Taliaferro County as well as Neal’s, but you get the idea.

(Also, a tip of the hat to Eat it, Atlanta, whose report on Neal’s confirmed for me that they would be open as we drove through! Thanks!)

*Oliver’s series was later scheduled to air in January 2012 on BBC America.

**I never got the chance. Hollis Ribs has since closed.

Vandy’s Bar-B-Q, Statesboro GA

Sadly, Vandy’s Bar-B-Q might well hold my personal, unfortunate record for longest time between being recommended a restaurant and actually visiting it. I have mentioned that, once upon a time, I maintained a small Geocities web page about barbecue restaurants in Georgia. Some reader wrote me in what might have been late 1999 – I seem to remember mentioning it to a classmate during that period – and urged me to come down to Statesboro to give it a try. Oh, it only took me the better part of twelve years, but I made it.

Over the years, I’ve seen many more references to Vandy’s. It is one of the state’s best-known barbecue joints. It was opened by Vandy Boyd in 1929, and moved to its present location in 1943. The building is quite remarkable. It manages to look like the bad side of town in a town that does not, in fact, seem to have a bad side. What we saw of Statesboro was a charming small middle Georgia college town – and yes, I do consider this still to be middle Georgia. It’s north of I-16 and Savannah, so it’s not strictly south Georgia in my book. Anyway, Statesboro looks like a quite nice little town, and while I’m sure there must have been a break-in or three over the decades to account for the bars on the windows and the industrial door, this restaurant looks almost comically out of place.

The business remained in family hands until Vandy Boyd’s son sold it in 1984. It was sold again in 2006. It has remained an essential part of Statesboro and Georgia Southern University life ever since. It really seems that whether they eat downtown or at the satellite location at the nearby mall – which keeps much more traveler-friendly hours, is open for supper and on Sundays – everybody in the region will visit Vandy’s at least once.

When we stopped in for lunch a couple of Saturdays back, apart from the mild comedic shock of seeing such an out-of-place building, we were most impressed by the Brunswick stew. This is much more like Kentucky’s burgoo than any other stew that we have tried in Georgia. It was absolutely packed with extra ingredients that you don’t usually see in stew, including pinto beans, carrots and peas.

The chopped pork is very moist and didn’t really have the flavor that I personally prefer, but I did enjoy it all the same. It did, admittedly, go better with the sauce than dry, and this sauce is one of the region’s best-known concoctions. It’s a South Carolina-style mustard-based sauce, but it is both sweet and spicy. It reflects the light like honey. The sauce resembles the house sauce used at Turner’s or Beaver Creek or whatever the heck that very good place out past Six Flags is calling itself this month. This was interesting and a really tasty meal. I won’t hype it up and claim it is one of my favorites, but it is certainly worth checking out if you’re interested in experiencing more of the striking variations in barbecue styles in this state.

I spoke briefly with our server and some of the staff behind the counter as Marie and my daughter left to get the start the engine and get the car cooled down before we loaded the baby in it. I think that we were all a little more interested in talking about my adorable son than about barbecue, so I didn’t really learn much more about the place than I had read online, but I was amused by the big ole shelf stacked with loafs of Sunbeam white bread. They go through a lot of that over the course of a week.

I loaded up on sweet tea and we got back out on the road. Neither Marie nor I had really driven through much of this part of the state before. If eastern middle Georgia can be described, and not completely without cause, as nowhere, then we drove through the middle of it. State Route 17 really is something to see if you’re one of those weird people who insists on seeing things that nobody needs to see. Louisville, Georgia, which, like Louisville, Kentucky is the seat of a county named Jefferson, might warrant another spin through to try a place called Purvis that I once read somebody praising. Marie had actually driven part of this run, on US-1, a few times driving from Augusta down to Saint Simons Island, but that corridor avoids GA-17.

Our last stop of the trip was, coincidentally, a place on the outskirts of Augusta, and it would prove to be the food highlight of our trip. More about that in the next chapter.

Fat Matt’s Rib Shack, Atlanta GA

Fat Matt’s is one of those places that is so small and so popular that I have never been a regular. I really don’t enjoy the challenge of parking at a place where it is such a chore to either get in or get out, and there have been more occasions in the past where I had planned to eat there, been discouraged and left than there have actual instances of me sitting down to some food and, most evenings, live blues. This is a pretty good place to eat, though. Sometimes, that discouragement that I’ve felt has bubbled into serious aggravation that the fates were against me.

For many years, they operated a second business in the building next door. Fat Matt’s Chicken Shack is now closed, but for a good while there, you could enjoy some of the best fried chicken in Atlanta. The only plus side to it shuttering is that there are one or two extra parking spaces available now.

Well, lines out the door are usually not a green flag for me to come eat, and indeed it had been many years since we’d stopped by for some food. Early last month, however, Roadfood.com added a couple more places to their small library of Georgia restaurants. So Marie and I buckled up the baby, promised my daughter a bowl of stew, and asked David to come along and eat with us. We arrived at 11.30 on a Saturday, right as they opened. There was one space available to park – behind the old Chicken Shack – and a line out the door. There’s always a line out the door.

The review at Roadfood.com suggests that the building once housed a Krispy Kreme. It is certainly an old one, and it doesn’t seat very many, even with a patio. When there’s a band playing, it is packed and loud and sweaty and all kinds of wonderful, if you enjoy a slab of very good ribs in the company of lots of strangers guzzling beer.

How Fat Matt’s manages to make such tasty barbecue is a genuine mystery, as they roast over charcoal rather than wood. The meat is moist – perhaps overly so, as it comes presauced with their tangy red tomato-based mixture – and flavorful, but that unmistakable smoked wood taste that informs the best barbecue is not present here. For many years, fans have been marveling at how this place can break whatever rules that people hold dearest about barbecue so casually and still turn out such tasty food.

For my part, while the chopped pork is very good despite not being what I’m usually looking for in barbecue, I really wish they would not presauce it. I’d love to try it dry one day. The Brunswick stew is pretty good, but not among any of our favorites. The rum baked beans are just terrific, though. There’s just enough of a hint of rum to be noticeable, and they make an excellent accompaniment to the meat. I really love these! Honestly, the only thing this place does that I cannot get behind is serving up boring old Lay’s potato chips. If they must offer chips from a bag, I wish that they were Golden Flake brand.

After lunch, we drove the hop and skip – it’s not even an “and jump” away – over to Grindhouse Killer Burgers for dessert. David wanted to try one of these burgers that everybody’s talking about and pronounced it pretty good, while the rest of us enjoyed some malts. Marie had already made the bold claim that the chocolate malt here is one of the very best in the city. I had a vanilla and, honestly, it was pretty darn good, but not even close to being as good as the amazing malts at Chapman Drugs.

There’s a heck of a lot of good eating within walking distance on this leg of Piedmont and Cheshire Bridge. I’m curious to try Sheik Burritos some day soon. I’ll probably have to follow that up with a malt from Grindhouse as well.

Rusty’s Bar-B-Q, Leeds AL

This is the first of two entries this week in which I will mention a restaurant that I can tell you less about than I would like. In fact, I can’t tell you the most important thing about it: where we heard about it. Well, I suppose “Is it any good?” might truly be the most important part, but as we typically don’t go in for negative reviews here, the fact that it gets an entry at all should be evidence that it’s a good place. Continue reading “Rusty’s Bar-B-Q, Leeds AL” →

Dreamland BBQ and Taco Casa, Tuscaloosa AL

My dad never went to Tuscaloosa. I always thought that was weird.

When he was younger, he saw his beloved Crimson Tide play many times at Legion Field in Birmingham, and, once he and my mom moved to Atlanta, back when Georgia Tech was in the sort of proto-SEC, he’d see the Tide play in Atlanta at Grant Field. Yet he never saw the Tide at what is today Bryant-Denny Stadium, which is briefly visible, towering over the trees, as you make your way down Tuscaloosa’s main commercial strip, McFarland Boulevard. At least, I think that was the stadium. I’ll feel a bit silly if it wasn’t. Continue reading “Dreamland BBQ and Taco Casa, Tuscaloosa AL” →

Starkville, Mississippi – part two

So I’ve been talking about our trip into the Deep South and finding some pretty good food along the way. Nothing in Mississippi had really completely knocked me for a loop, but Starkville might just not be the right place in the state. All the evidence points towards the Delta region, or Hattiesburg, being full of interesting places to eat.

But that’s not to say that Starkville is completely without charms. We certainly didn’t have any bad meals here, although the stunning number of crummy national fast food joints on Highway 12 will make anybody slowly shake their head. The first full day was pretty good, but the discoveries of the second day were even better. Continue reading “Starkville, Mississippi – part two” →