On our way back from Memphis, we took a lengthy detour to try some burgers which a favorite food and travel book had championed. Continue reading “Bill’s Hamburgers, Amory MS”
Tag: burgers
Huey’s and Muddy’s, Memphis TN
(Marie takes the wheel for this story about two places we visited on our first evening in town.)
Every year or so we take a trip to Memphis to visit family and eat good food. Sometimes in that order. In Grant’s case, it’s all about the full-day barbecue tour; the teen is all about visiting the cute boutiques where she will blow her clothing allowance on something she knows she won’t wear but loves anyway. The little guy has crowned a new favorite playground on his list (he still doesn’t understand travel times very well and asked to go back twice after we returned home!). This time, we were there to see my sister graduate from art school. Usually, Memphis does its best to make sure we remember that Shel Silverstein poem about being so hot we need to take our skin off and sit around in our bones. This time it did the reverse. It was in the very low 60s for the outside graduation ceremony, and I had to put on a t-shirt over my nice outfit!
Anyway, since I also like things that are not barbecue, I consulted with my sister about the neat places around where she lives, and the five of us wound up spending our first night in town having dinner at Huey’s midtown location, and dessert afterward at Muddy’s Bake Shop because I’m all about the sweets. Continue reading “Huey’s and Muddy’s, Memphis TN”
Staggs Grocery, Florence AL
In May, we all set off on a four-day trip to Memphis, where Marie’s sister was graduating from college. I’d been planning and charting and getting ideas together for weeks, and decided that we’d take a slight detour by going north across Alabama instead of fighting the rush hour traffic into and around Atlanta to use the interstates. That route, through Birmingham and Tupelo, is the most direct, but taking GA-140 to Huntsville and using US-72 ALT took us back to the Shoals, which is probably my favorite region of Alabama.
Going this way allowed us to revisit the beautiful city of Florence, which I love, and stop by Staggs, an old, former grocery store that now sells breakfast and burgers. I wish I had paid attention and visited this great little place the last time we were here! Continue reading “Staggs Grocery, Florence AL”
Big Spring Cafe, Huntsville AL
For our next stop in Huntsville, we drove with our friend Helen just a few miles down the road to check out the city’s oldest restaurant. While Big Spring Cafe has only (heh, only) been in its present location on Governors since 1970, the restaurant originally opened downtown in 1928. It is a much-loved old greasy spoon, and it serves a pretty darn good hamburger. It’s on at least its fourth owner, and I don’t believe that it’s ever stayed in the same family’s hands for more than a couple of decades, but considering the difficulty in keeping a restaurant open for even a few months, I believe that any restaurant with this kind of history, even one with as many asterisks as this one has, deserves a round of applause for making it for so long. Continue reading “Big Spring Cafe, Huntsville AL”
C.F. Penn Hamburgers, Decatur AL
For the second stop on our trip, I wanted to visit the last remaining location of C.F. Penn Hamburgers, a very old chain that started selling slugburgers in the 1920s and grew to three or more locations in north central Alabama. A couple of my blogging buddies had visited the old storefront in Decatur, not, I must clarify, with glowingly positive reviews, but vintage places like this just should not be missed. Continue reading “C.F. Penn Hamburgers, Decatur AL”
Silver Skillet, Atlanta GA (take two)
Every once in a while, I have treated myself to breakfast at the wonderful Silver Skillet, a sixty year-old diner on 14th Street in midtown Atlanta. In 2010, I wrote about the place, and, as we’ve been spending time and money at Atlanta’s older restaurants lately, I figured we should go back, and have lunch. That, I’ve never done before. Continue reading “Silver Skillet, Atlanta GA (take two)”
Scottie’s, Powell TN
In much the same way that there’s a small confusion between the Whataburger chain that is based in Texas and the What-a-Burger chain that is based in North Carolina, there’s also a distinction between an old, defunct chain of fast food restaurants called Scotty’s, which had a girl in traditional Highland costume as a mascot, and Scottie’s, which was a much smaller chain of diners with perhaps a dozen locations in Kentucky and Tennessee. The chain came to our attention via the forums of roadfood.com, as so many places do, and our interest was piqued by a visit that writer RL Reeves paid to the long-since independent location in Powell last year. Our server told us that Scottie’s opened in 1962, and has been independent since the current owner’s family purchased it in 1978. Continue reading “Scottie’s, Powell TN”
Marie, Let's Eat! 