Dub’s Place, Chattanooga TN

Every once in a while, you stumble onto the neatest surprise, and, still full from our lunch at Couch’s in Ooltewah, we made our way to the Red Bank neighborhood expecting to find a simple, no-frills fast food dairy bar for a snack and instead found that this place takes its fast food very seriously. Continue reading “Dub’s Place, Chattanooga TN”

Rosewood Dairy Bar, Columbia SC

“You know,” the old-timer said, “those pictures you’re taking, I was talking with my boss once, and he said there’s all sorts of people who take all sorts of pictures of old restaurants. Then they put ’em on the internet!”

“Yes,” I said, lowering my camera. “That would be me.” Continue reading “Rosewood Dairy Bar, Columbia SC”

Ammons Drive-In and Dairy Bar, Waynesville NC

We agreed that it had been a disagreeably long time since we visited Asheville, and so began scheduling a trip. Earlier this month, we drove back to western North Carolina to spend a day in this beautiful country and the city that we really, really love. This time, we took a much different path getting there. Continue reading “Ammons Drive-In and Dairy Bar, Waynesville NC”

Circumnavigating the Tennessee River Valley – part nine

I left Leo & Susie’s ahead of schedule, and I’ll tell you folks, it is a good thing that I did because Birmingham’s rush hour turned out to be every bit as bad as I’d heard. I won’t complain about Atlanta’s again for at least three weeks. Complicating things up front, there’s about a two-mile stretch between not-quite-finished I-22 and I-65 that hasn’t been completed yet, and eastbound traffic exits onto a road called Coalburg, and absolutely everybody takes that down to 41st Avenue and cuts over. These roads were not meant for this volume of traffic. It’s like driving across trenches. Then you get on the I-59/I-20 connector and it’s every man for himself. For the rest of my life, I’m going to do my level best to avoid Birmingham Fridays between four and six. Continue reading “Circumnavigating the Tennessee River Valley – part nine”

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”

Photo Post 10: Where We Did Not Eat

In this entry, a few very short recaps of some places that we photographed. Longtime readers might recall that I have a soft spot for old-fashioned walk-up dairy bars. Very few of these have survived into the modern day, particularly in Georgia. One of the few that we’ve found in Georgia, and the nearest to us, is the Jiffy Freeze in Canton. Earlier this month, Al.com had a short feature about five others in northern Alabama and one near Chattanooga, half of which we have featured here and one of which I hope to see next month. Continue reading “Photo Post 10: Where We Did Not Eat”

Drinking in Nashville

Nashville looks very much like a town in which a man can go a-drinkin’. The bars open early and don’t seem to close until late, and there appear to be more hospitals per resident than any other place this side of Miami to take care of what you do to your liver. But if you’re a family like ours, where three of us don’t drink alcohol and the one that does maybe has a single beer a month, it’s also a terrific place to drink all sorts of other wonderful things. When my daughter and I first got to the Music City on this trip, we skirted around the south side of the metro area via I-440 and started things off with a great milkshake at Bobbie’s Dairy Dip. Continue reading “Drinking in Nashville”