Bub-Ba-Q, Woodstock GA

When Bub-Ba-Q opened its second location in Woodstock in the summer of 2009, there was considerable hoopla on a message board that I used to frequent, and which no longer exists. I mention it in this vague way to show that yes, I can table those unfunny attempts at recurring jokes when I promise to do so. If I’m not mistaken, this Woodstock branch is located in a space that was occupied for a few years by a Slope’s, which is a small chain of barbecue restaurants with four or five locations in the northern suburbs.

The original Bub-Ba-Q is in the town of Jasper, and I’ve not visited it yet. The restaurants are a culmination of a lot of hard work and something that I don’t believe I’ve come to on this blog before: a touring schedule. Before Bub-Ba-Q set its sights on a strong restaurant presence, the owners were out on the festival circuit, spreading the word and improving their product at cookoffs and invitationals. This is a world that I might need an expense account to really appreciate properly, should any kind sponsors be out there ready to send me to Kansas City or that great big one in Lynchburg that runs every October. The Jack Daniels’ World Championship Invitational is the one to beat. Last year, Bub-Ba-Q came third overall, with its amazing brisket second place among all challengers.

They are best known, however, for a meal that I have not yet tried. They offer a deep-fried pork burrito that’s served smothered in Brunswick stew and called a Hog-a-Chonga. It’s probably not really in keeping with my nature to shy away from something that sounds so decadent, but really, what I like best at a barbecue restaurant is a simple plate of chopped pork with two sides, and Bub-Ba-Q does a splendid job of it.

Last week, Marie and the kids and I got together with several friends for supper here. We’ve started a little rotation among some of our buddies in town for doing something once a week, evolving from a long-established weekly movie night to incorporate dinners. That this gives us more opportunities to write chapters here on the blog as well as socialize and see our friends is a nice side effect. I also confess that I hope we’ll get to enjoy occasional restaurants that I wouldn’t think to try on my own as other members of the gang pick things.

Kimberly, who we hope is saving Randy from ever again eating at one of those Chinese buffets, picked Bub-Ba-Q. Also present were our friends Todd and Samantha, and Neal, who ordered that second-place-in-the-world brisket and was very pleased with it. My son had a pork sandwich along with fried mac-n-cheese, another terrific house specialty, and Marie had their very good ribs. I had my standard plate of pork with baked beans, which were pretty good and corn fritters, which were excellent.

Ed Boudreaux’s Bayou BBQ, Asheville NC (CLOSED)

I admit, concede and confess that it is really, really unfair to judge a restaurant based on its performance during a giant downtown festival that brings a couple of hundred thousand people right outside and keeps the wait staff and kitchen working overtime, all the time. However, the northern Alabama-styled white sauce at Ed Boudreaux’s Bayou BBQ on Biltmore Avenue in downtown Asheville is really, really terrible. It’s the worst, the pits, the lousiest, and I was so looking forward to it that I am aggravated enough to mention it first and foremost. Continue reading “Ed Boudreaux’s Bayou BBQ, Asheville NC (CLOSED)” →

The Butt Hutt, Athens GA

I’ve been absolutely fascinated by chicken mull since we first discovered it back in the spring at that fundraiser up in Danielsville. It really shines a light on my deficiencies as any sort of food writer, doesn’t it? I lived in Athens for a dozen years and, despite the “think global, act local” bumper sticker, I never heard of the stuff for a decade after moving. That said, it’s certainly not a common dish in the region, nor is it even really known far and wide under that name. Wikipedia has an entry for it, but there it’s called Southern chicken stew. They may not make it with squirrels or turtles anymore, but mull is one of the region’s last, best-kept secrets, and not very many restaurants keep it on the menu. Continue reading “The Butt Hutt, Athens GA” →

Coletta’s, Memphis TN

On the Sunday we were in Memphis, I chose to wear my Zeb Dean’s T-shirt. I packed it even before we established the bizarre truth that Marie had not selected a barbecue restaurant for us to try. It’s just that I’m going to carry my home town pride with me, and even though Danielsville’s not my home town, I wasn’t about to visit a barbecue-happy city like Memphis without wearing my local colors somehow, much in the same way that I want to pack my Bulldog shirt when I’m in somebody else’s football town. Continue reading “Coletta’s, Memphis TN” →

Interstate Bar-B-Q, Memphis TN

I’ll tell you the number one, guaranteed best way to start a good-natured argument: get into it with somebody local about where the best barbecue in Memphis might be found. Folk here take their pork seriously. The locals eat a whole mess of it, with a thick, sweet sauce and lots of slaw. The strangest thing about this trip, in retrospect, was that we were in a city world-renowned for its barbecue for a good twenty-four hours before we actually had any. Marie, who mostly arranged our meal itinerary this weekend, did this before, when we went to coastal Georgia and didn’t have any seafood. I love my wife, but sometimes she misses the forest for the trees. Continue reading “Interstate Bar-B-Q, Memphis TN” →

Sugar’s Ribs, Chattanooga TN

I started visiting friends up in Nashville a little over ten years ago now, and so I’ve seen a particular building off I-24 in Chattanooga on the way home many, many times. It was a breakfast place for ages, but in 2007, it became Sugar’s Ribs, and the combination of neon and a great big sign proclaiming the Big Time BBQ available therein made the place irresistible. Continue reading “Sugar’s Ribs, Chattanooga TN” →

Old Hickory House, Dunwoody GA (CLOSED)

When I was a kid, before I knew better, I always ate cheeseburgers at barbecue restaurants. My parents frequently went with friends to one of two places in Smyrna, Old South Bar-B-Q on what’s now Windy Hill Road, but what Neal reminds me was then called Cherokee Street, and the Old Hickory House that, if I remember correctly, used to be on 41 near I-285. It was one of those restaurants across the street from the Steak & Shake and the Lexus dealership – which itself used to be a Service Merchandise – and I think that my parents started having occasional Friday night suppers there after the Red Sirloin closed. You probably don’t remember Red Sirloin. We ate there almost every Friday at 6 pm for years, and I agonized every single sortie for two of those years that we were going to miss Wonder Woman on CBS at 8.

But I’m not talking about Red Sirloin, I’m talking about Old Hickory House. In the late 70s and early 80s, this was something close to an Atlanta tradition. I believe that there were at least ten of these dotted around the suburbs, and they regularly advertised on TV and radio. Everybody who grew up here remembers their old jingle, “Put some south in your mouth, at Old Hickory House…”

The chain of restaurants even had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in the national spotlight. The scene in Smokey & the Bandit where Burt Reynolds first gets the better of Jackie Gleason while he’s waiting impatiently for a “Diablo sandwich and a Dr. Pepper” was filmed at an Old Hickory House in Forest Park. I believe that Bandit hides his Trans Am behind the restaurant’s sign shortly afterward. That location is long gone, as are most of the others. For the longest time, only three remained. One of those was in the lobby of a Days Inn just off Roswell Road in Sandy Springs, but it was replaced by a Chinese restaurant in the late 90s. The last two holdouts of this old tradition are in Dunwoody and Tucker.

This past Saturday, Marie and I went out to the Old Hickory House with our daughter and with David, who’s dieting and had to think long and hard about imbibing too much in the way of sweet barbecue sauce and ruining his blood sugar. What we found feels very much like a restaurant that is still serving up some pretty good food, but also on its last legs. The restaurant looks a lot like like it was built in the 1970s and hasn’t changed or been renovated at all in close to forty years; it’s just aged and seems dim. Dim and grim.

It was very quiet and slow on this Saturday evening. Not many customers were dining, and we were the youngest. Considering how I spent the first three paragraphs of this chapter reminiscing about the good ole days, that might tell you something. One week previously, we had been at Zeb Dean’s in Danielsville for Saturday night supper, where there were only a few seats free and the joint sparked with electricity and loud conversation. Here, most of what joie de vivre there was came from our server, an agreeable fellow named Junior, who made us feel very much at home.

It just didn’t feel much like a home where we wanted to stay for long. The food was not bad, although the sauce was far too sweet and mild for my liking, and the fries, which were just terrific, really reminded me of my misspent youth, foolishly eating cheeseburgers when I could have been trying barbecue, except that “it looked weird” or some other childlike excuse for not eating what you came to a restaurant to eat. The Brunswick stew here is quite good. One neat standout on the restaurant’s menu is their dressed dog, where they smother a dog with Brunswick stew. I haven’t had one of those in a really long time.

The experience somewhat reminded me of what we felt after lunch at the Mad Italian a couple of months ago; the memories of a restaurant’s glory days were more pleasing than the meal itself. Maybe the next time we ask David to join us for something to eat, we should make sure it’s a restaurant too new to be compared to its more interesting past.

Other blog posts about Old Hickory House:

3rd Degree Berns Barbecue Sabbatical (Feb. 8 2010)
Eat Buford Highway (Mar. 30 2010)
All the Single Girlfriends (May 27 2011)