B & D Burgers, Savannah GA

I had hoped that on this most recent trip to south Georgia, we would be able to do a much better job covering the city of Savannah and exploring its restaurants. Unfortunately, we only visited one new place, but it was certainly a terrific one. Marie had originally wanted to spend a couple of hours enjoying some good toddler time at the recently-opened Savannah Children’s Museum, and while they played, the girlchild and I were going to visit a couple of places. Unfortunately, it was raining. This children’s museum is still in its initial fundraising stages and has only opened one area to the public, and it is outdoors. They didn’t want to play in the mud and rain, madly. Continue reading “B & D Burgers, Savannah GA”

Martin’s, Austell GA

Ages back, sometime in this blog’s infancy, I intended to follow a metaphor to its conclusion and tell you good readers a little about Martin’s. As metaphors go, this is not the most accurate, but you know how Birmingham is home to a fast food chain called Milo’s and it is surrounded in the suburbs by another chain called Jack’s? Well, Zesto in Atlanta is similarly surrounded in this city’s suburbs by Martin’s. Kind of. I mean, there are something like 140 Jack’s all over north Alabama and peeking into neighboring states, and there are only fifteen Martin’s, almost all of which are in the northwestern suburbs and nowhere near an interstate exit, but it’s a little bit similar. Continue reading “Martin’s, Austell GA”

Circumnavigating the Tennessee River Valley – part six

I was running a little ahead of schedule as I made my way out of Florence, having enjoyed myself a great deal. Good thing, too, because I had an idea that I might enjoy a little leg-stretching and would need the minutes. My next destination was Dub’s Burgers in the town of Athens, and I found that there was a classic dairy bar just a tenth of a mile’s walk away. I figured that a quick counter meal at Dub’s and a walk to Kreme Delite and back wouldn’t take forty minutes, and then I could get on to my next destination and walk around the parking lot a few times before meeting with friends. This would not work out quite right. Continue reading “Circumnavigating the Tennessee River Valley – part six”

Circumnavigating the Tennessee River Valley – part four

Well, I can’t say that I was not warned. Let’s just put that on the table.

So, some years back, as my interest in regionally specific cooking began to grow, I read John T. Edge’s excellent and breezy Hamburger & Fries, a cute little book that talked about green chile burgers in New Mexico and steamed burgers in Connecticut and pimento cheeseburgers in South Carolina – those I know darn well – and something called slugburgers in upper northeast Mississippi. Now, New Mexico and Connecticut are pretty far outside our realistic travel radius, but Mississippi sounded doable. Continue reading “Circumnavigating the Tennessee River Valley – part four”

Scratch Fresh, Alpharetta GA

Several months ago, Todd at A Hamburger Today (linked below) wrote another of his indispensable reports about an Atlanta-regional burger that I needed to try. As you’re no doubt tired of reading, it then sat on my to-do list for the better part of forever until Lee at Roots in Alpharetta mentioned it in passing recently. Scratch Fresh is located in a strip mall just north of Windward Parkway on GA-9, in a space that, when I worked in this community five or six years back, was home to a Jersey Mike’s Subs. Now it’s home to a family-owned business that packs ’em in every morning for biscuits and, at lunch time, serves up one of the best burger options in the area. Continue reading “Scratch Fresh, Alpharetta GA”

Copycat In-N-Out Burgers

Here’s a quick little cooking post for you guys. Neither Marie nor I have ever had the opportunity to try an In-N-Out Burger, since we’ve never been that far west, but we do read the local blog Adventurous Tastes, of course, and last month, she posted about her recent experiences playing with a copycat recipe of the restaurant’s signature double-patty burger. She found this recipe at another blog called Buns in My Oven. Continue reading “Copycat In-N-Out Burgers”

Remembering Roger at Steak ‘n Shake

I think that like all of us, even the directors of films that didn’t pass muster with him, I had to pause for a moment of heartbreak when Roger Ebert passed this month. I don’t believe there’s a person in the United States that has penned any kind of film or TV or music or literary or video criticism in the last thirty years who has done so without the influence of “Uncle Roger.” Since I’ve walked those avenues, both professionally and blog-a-fessionally, for more than twenty myself, I’ve always been acutely aware of his writing and his passions. I stopped reading him regularly quite some time ago, around the point where feature films stopped thrilling me the way that they once did, but I almost always went back to check his opinion on whatever movie I had just seen. Or whatever Pedro Almodovar has made lately; I never actually get out to see his movies anymore. Continue reading “Remembering Roger at Steak ‘n Shake”