TupTim Thai, Brunswick GA

This is Marie, making the first of a couple of contributions from a side trip I made independently. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but there was this one place that I went with my father that really ought to have included Grant to help out. We needed more plates on the table to taste from, and an additional person to make one more appetizer practical. Continue reading “TupTim Thai, Brunswick GA” →

Steak ‘n Shake, Kennesaw GA

A few years ago, the Steak ‘n Shake chain, which has 500 stores in 22 states in the southeast and midwest and is, by my definition, large enough to be called national, decided to introduce a terrific promotion which my daughter and I used to enjoy greatly. They have a “happy hour” with half-price milkshakes from 2 to 4 every weekday afternoon, and again from 2 to 4 am overnight. When I took a job that left me with a couple of weekday afternoons free, and my daughter was in elementary school, this meant that I could take her by the Steak ‘n Shake nearest us on Barrett Parkway – said to be the busiest and most profitable in the whole chain – and join the mob for a daddy-daughter milkshake treat.

Those days are actually gone for us, since she started middle school and no longer gets home until close enough to suppertime to make a milkshake “ruin yer dinner” impractical. I slightly resent the loss of quality time, but then again, that’s just one of the many downsides to having your kids grow up.

The milkshakes here are terrific – my particular poison is a mix of their banana and orange cream – but the food is only slightly on the preferable side of average. The beef is okay, albeit pressed into sadly small and weedy patties, and the fries are thin enough to make you wonder whether there’s any potato in there, but the chain does offer a dish which is actually worth a second look. It’s not the same as what you can find in Cincinnati’s chili parlors, but Steak ‘n Shake does offer their version of a 5-way.

I’ve only been through northeastern Kentucky four times, but on each of those occasions, I’ve made it a point to stop at either a Skyline Chili or a Gold Star. I imagine that people more familiar with Cincinnati would be pleased to tell me about a better, more humble, non-chain restaurant to get chili made in that city’s style, and perhaps the next time I’m in that region, I’ll give that a try. In these restaurants, you get the area’s particular chili recipe – very finely chopped ground beef served in a light stew containing (as Wikipedia terms it) “unusual ingredients such as cinnamon, cloves, allspice or chocolate,” but without the traditional chili peppers or chili powder like you would expect from other regions.

This chili is intended to be eaten over noodles or on a hot dog, and not in a bowl on its own. Over time, some traditions developed about how to order this dish in area restaurants. A two-way is simply the chili poured over spaghetti noodles, and a three-way adds a giant mound of shredded cheese. A four-way adds either beans or diced onions, and a five-way contains the lot.

Steak ‘n Shake’s version can’t be characterized as a proper Cincinnati 5-way, because the beef is not spiced the same way, nor is it chopped as finely as what you would see in a Skyline. It’s just average canned chili beef in a “special” sauce of ketchup and Worcestershire. At any rate, I got to thinking about it after reading an amusing thread about the chain’s chili over at Roadfood.com, and it made me peckish enough to want to get back over there. In a bit of nice timing, my daughter had early release last week for parent-teacher conferences and so we had an early supper together. With milkshakes, of course. It wasn’t bad at all. It was no Gold Star, but it will do until the next time I can get to Cincinnati, anyway.

Jiffy Freeze, Canton GA

One of my favorite little traveling roadfood resources is Chopped Onion, a splendid little website that specializes in detailing, not just the usual barbecue and meat-and-three joints that we look out for when making our road trips, but also hot dog and ice cream places. The site’s owner has a particular interest in old, “vintage” Dairy Queen restaurants that have not updated and upgraded their appearance. I certainly understand the fascination; long before that company nailed down its franchise look and feel and started aggressively enforcing its trademark, there were dozens of “dairy queen” restaurants all across the country that were only loosely connected with the parent corporation via use of their soft serve goo machine, just as there were once many dozens of “tastee-freez” stores and many dozens of “zesto” stores, and most of these, by far, are lost to history and memory.

This country’s move towards corporate standardization and homogenization left behind many hundreds of buildings that were constructed in the 1950s and 1960s to sell “dairy freeze zesto”-styled menus, with fast food burgers and hot dogs with a variety of slaws and soft serve goo. Eventually the hammers of trademark lawyers came down and these businesses were told to get a proper franchise agreement going or make it on their own. Most of them must have closed long ago and the stores, eventually, were bulldozed. Some, a small handful, decided to use the existing building and community goodwill to effect a name change and try making it on their own.

Jiffy Freeze looks to be one of these. While I’m not certain what it was originally, the building reminds me of an older Dairy Queen Brazier construction with neither indoor seating nor a drive-through, but they’ve been calling themselves Jiffy Freeze with no hoopla or much in the way of advertising since the mid-1970s. I was very much reminded of Mrs. Story’s Dairy Bar in Opelika, which we visited last month, although this place has a considerably larger menu. I’m not entirely sure that you’re going to get the best Philly cheesesteak in the area here, but it looks like they will try and make one for you.

This past Saturday, we were meant to have made a road trip out I-20 to Madison and Augusta, but finances were unexpectedly low, discouraging us from spending the money on gas. This left us free to attend a “couples shower” for Randy and Kimberly at her parents’ house north of Canton, for which we’d earlier sent regrets. People should really know better than to invite us for anything on a Saturday without at least ninety days’ notice. Especially during the football season. The really surprising thing is that this genuinely is not a pretentious affectation of mine; the calendar is quite honestly penciled in through mid-January. At any rate, dropping a visit to Augusta, for now, meant that we could spend an evening with our friends, and visit a little more with Kimberly’s incredibly neat and interesting father, a pastor and musician with fantastic stories to share.

I don’t know anything about the town of Canton, but a little research pulled up this Jiffy Freeze place. I thought that would be an ideal after-shower destination, but I phoned and learned that the darn place closes at the absurdly early hour of 8 on Saturday. Grudgingly, we’d have to stop in on our way to the party. Then, we ended up leaving almost a half hour late to pick up Todd and Samantha for our trip up I-575. Just as well that was a very tasty slaw dog!

Since we’d be eating in just a little while, we just split a footlong with slaw and Marie had a very, very tasty fried peach pie. The pie was a little smaller than many places make them, but it was nevertheless very good. The slaw was very creamy with mayo and made for a simply fine snack. The one disappointment, and it was a mild one, was learning that the “Mississippi Mud” that my daughter ordered was just a prepackaged chocolate ice cream sandwich from, I think, Blue Bunny. She thought it was really good, and I’m always curious to see these sorts of products when they’re unknown to me, but I was kind of hoping she’d actually get to try that actual chocolate pie for the first time.

I can’t swear that Jiffy Freeze is worth a really long drive, but it’s certainly a nice little curiosity for anyone passing through Cherokee County on I-575, and if you like good, creamy slaw, it’s worth a try. I’m very glad that little roadfood places like this are still around and drawing a crowd.

Sublime Doughnuts, Atlanta GA

About six months ago, a regular guest where I work brought in a big box of Sublime Doughnuts as a thank-you for the front desk. The treats were duly sliced into bite-sized samples for all the staff to try. Allegedly, a couple more boxes have come this way for Wednesday afternoon birthday celebrations, but, criminally, I don’t work on Wednesdays. I recall thinking that my sample was just wonderful and resolved that I needed to get back to have a lovely little breakfast from them as soon as it was feasible.

Six months went by and I finally thought to stop in for an afternoon snack. I need to try harder, don’t I?

The business was founded by a local fellow, Kamal Grant, a couple of years ago. He picked a career that’s for morning people: he’s there, in a shop on 10th Street once occupied by some other doughnut baker who chose to misspell the word the way that those dunkin’ people do, every morning at 4 am getting his doughnuts and pastries ready for a hungry audience. I really like the way that many of his creations don’t look like hockey pucks. Some, like his red velvet cake, do, but his version of a Boston creme, for example, is called the A-Town Cream and is shaped like a letter A. Elsewhere on the racks, you’ll see little hearts, stars, twists and ribbons, all of them decadently delicious.

Earlier this summer, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution named Sublime as their favorite guilty food pleasure in the city, singling out their A-Town Creams and their Reese’s peanut butter doughnuts. It looks like my peers in the food-talkin’-bloggin’ community are similarly sold on the place.

We – Marie, my daughter and my parents – stopped by on Saturday after our lunch a few miles south at Harold’s. After a quick detour to look at the federal pen and the requisite teasing of my daughter that this is where she’ll end up if she doesn’t straighten up, we drove north up Pryor and Central, up avenues where my dad, navigating and reminiscing, used to work, while we listened to the Dogs beat up on Vandy. Left on Marietta and right on Spring / West Peachtree as Vandy caught a break and had a field ruling of a fumble overturned as an incomplete pass, we started passing $10 and $20 lots for Tech fans coming into midtown to tailgate. Tenth Street, which borders one side of the Tech campus, was full of yellow and navy and black and gold. Apparently there’s now a Petro’s Chili and Chips outpost actually inside Bobby Dodd Stadium. It’s a little aggravating to be within walking distance of a Petro’s and know that the most convenient one is still three hours’ drive north.

My dad was talked out and tired and didn’t want to get out of the car when we arrived, but the fellow behind the counter at Sublime had an awful lot to say. He showed off and described all the treats on display. I got a different pastry for Marie, Ivy and my mother, and while they all came with different flavors, they all shared a wonderfully light and fluffy touch. Grant’s trick in the kitchen, reported by John Kessler in the AJC, is to fry the doughnuts at a very high temperature for a shorter period; that apparently gives them the most puff.

These are absolutely wonderful pastries, and although with prices this low and a profit margin so slim, it will certainly take a long time for Grant to grow this business, he’s got an awful lot of goodwill backing him up. I hope that Sublime thrives and becomes a destination for everybody in the city. Even all those Tech students lining up 10th need something to eat.

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Harold’s Barbecue, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

There are so many barbecue restaurants in this state that I’ve never tried. Even the old ones, like Harold’s, which has been around since 1947, I’ve just never got around to before. Well, on Saturday, we had originally intended to take another short road trip, this time out to Augusta. Unfortunately, the bank balance is a little low, so we elected to save the gasoline and find a new meal intown instead. There are four restaurants in Atlanta that are reviewed on roadfood.com that we have not written up for our blog yet. A roll of the dice brought up Harold’s, so I rang my parents and asked if they’d like to join us.

Harold’s is a simply perfect destination for a Saturday lunch. It’s very easy to find, just a quick little hop off the downtown connector at exit 244 and south less than a mile. It is in a pretty rough-looking neighborhood about a stone’s throw up the street from the federal pen. If you’ve never seen this gigantic building, you should, as it’s an architectural masterpiece. Unfortunately, Harold’s itself is in a pretty basic and deeply ugly building, and the bars around the windows and the air conditioning units don’t inspire great confidence in the local residents’ rap sheets.

I apologize for repeating much of the online information about this restaurant, but some things are so blatant that I can’t avoid coming back to it.

I’m very glad we finally stopped into this Atlanta institution. Despite the “keep driving, and fast” exterior, the inside is cozy and relaxing, and also quite chilly, since one of the air conditioners seemed to be working overtime. There’s a glorious smell of thick smoke throughout the building, and interior walls in the kitchen that are blackened from more than sixty years of smoking. It’s a building with a lot of history; we were taken care of by Harold and Hugh’s granddaughter, who’s been here for forty years herself.

As for the food, the chopped pork is pretty good. It’s very soft and dry, almost incandescently white. Unfortunately, I didn’t like either of the sauces at all, and made the considerable mistake – the novice mistake – of just pouring the hot sauce all over my food before testing it. Theirs is a thick, red, tomato-and-pepper concoction that leaves a Tabasco-style aftertaste and overpowers the subtle, smoky taste of the soft pork. While I would certainly recommend Harold’s, I would caution anybody going to try a little on the side before indulging too much.

The main dish is pretty good, but the sides are just outstanding. The Brunswick stew is probably the best anywhere near Atlanta. It’s really thick, with a very heavy corn flavor, and lots of tomatoes and stringy shreds of meat. The corn taste reminded me of the wonderful Zeb’s in Danielsville. The plates are served with a generous helping of cracklin’ cornbread. Crumble just a little of that into your stew and scoop it right back out, and that’s perfect. If I have had cracklin’ cornbread – named for the little pork cracklings that Food Network describes as “little pieces of pork fat, fatty meats, or ham skin which are left crisp and brown after the lard or fat has been rendered from them” – before, I don’t recall it. Honestly, there’s not a great deal of meat in the bread, but it’s so tasty that didn’t feel that I was missing anything.

The slaw is also excellent; a perfect blend of mayo and vinegar that goes extremely well with the stew and pork. It’s simply a perfectly balanced meal, even if the sauce was disappointing.

Harold’s attempted to expand just a little from this neighborhood, but unfortunately it didn’t last. There were two outposts south of the city, in Jonesboro and in McDonough, and a third up near us in Kennesaw, but apparently all three have closed. Only the original remains, which, honestly, is kind of the way it should be. Older joints with this much history, well, visitors should go to them for the experience almost as much as the food. With stew this good, I hope to be back for both before too long.

Poole’s Bar-B-Q, East Ellijay GA

I had to track down Randy before I wrote up this chapter and let him know what I was going to say, for fear that he might think that I was making a passive-aggressive swipe at him when I say that Poole’s is probably the most improved restaurant that I have ever visited. They’ve gone from a regional curiosity to something downright amazing.

Last week, Marie and Ivy and I drove up I-575 to the mountain town of Ellijay to buy some apples. There’s a really great place on the right just after you enter Gilmer County called Panorama Orchards, and while you could very well load up with all sorts of jams and jellies and salsas, you can also spend late summer and early fall loading up on fresh apples. Marie got several pecks – Fujis, Mutsus, Arkansas Black – to share and to snack and to bake into pies. That’s a very agreeable way to spend an hour.

A little further north, and technically in the town of East Ellijay, there’s an intersection where, within spitting distance of each other, you used to be able to find a Pizza King, a Burger King, a Waffle King and a Mexican restaurant called El Rey. The Waffle King has gone now – I suspect this old chain might well have left Georgia entirely – but I still think of this place as “King’s Corner.” A zigzag right and a left from there brings you to the Pig Hill of Fame, and one of the state’s silliest and tackiest restaurants. Once upon a time, Colonel Oscar Poole fell afoul of some county sign ordinance or other and responded by turning his property into a glorious eyesore. The building is painted in vibrant, bright colors, and the land behind the restaurant is covered with small, flat, wooden pig signs which customers can buy for a small fee and have their names listed there until weather erodes them away.

Poole himself is quite a trip. I only saw him in person once, briefly, years back, but I can’t think of a restaurateur in the state who’s been photographed as often as him. He’s a little hard to miss. He’s kind of a cross between Grandpa Munster and Uncle Sam. He even drives a car that Grandpa might have found funny.

If you read between the lines of earlier chapters, you might have picked up that I don’t care for having politics inserted into my meals when I go out. You might have also have detected that the politics to which I object would be the Republican variety. But really, what makes a place unfriendly isn’t a discussion of ideas, it’s that grim, quiet, paranoia that unhappy people spend time seething about. It’s when loudmouths start parroting whatever hate radio talking point passes for discourse, and loudmouths have been doing this long before anybody heard of Barack Obama. I’ve been quietly declining to return to restaurants owned by such morons for many years.

Poole, on the other hand, may be as Republican as they get, but he is having the time of his life. He wants to tell everybody how fantastic a job he has, and how his faith and outlook and damn hard work and, yes, political views, have helped made him a success. He’s optimistic and wild and carefree, and basically everything good about people. If you don’t leave this place with a smile, something must be wrong with you, because his upbeat and fabulous attitude is evident in all the staff, the decor, the photographs and the building itself. You are guaranteed a very good time here.

For quite a few years, however, this didn’t translate into very good barbecue. Randy stayed up here in the mountains for a few years and we ate here a couple of times (maybe in 2003-04) and then ate again at the antacid counter of the local drug store. It was, then, a place to visit for the considerable spectacle, but the pork was just so greasy that it really disappointed.

I told a lot of people this. I used to have an old barbecue review page on Geocities and shared this disappointment with everyone who came to it. I don’t know whether Poole ever saw that page or whether he concluded on his own that his pork was too fatty and gross and his recipe needed changing, but I can tell you this: I once had two meals here, about a year apart, which were marred by the heavy, greasy aftertaste, and a meal this past week which was easily among the best plates of barbecue that I’ve had in the state of Georgia. Top ten, easy. I was prepared to sop up the pork with a paper towel before I started eating, but was very pleasantly surprised. The pork was dry and very smoky, and so incredibly flavorful. I can’t remember ever having a meal at a restaurant that much of a 180-degree turn towards the positive before, ever. It wasn’t just the pork, either. We also had onion rings, Brunswick stew, baked beans, green beans and mac and cheese as sides, and everything was incredibly tasty.

The restaurant was amazingly busy on this Saturday – they call in extra, volunteer help for Ellijay’s apple festival, which brings in thousands of tourists – and we arrived along with a huge tour group from a Baptist church in Louisiana, most of whom were wearing LSU shirts. Let’s see, they had this great barbecue for lunch and the Tigers beat Florida in The Swamp that evening. Sounds like everybody there had a fine Saturday.

(Of course, the small irony in comparing Oscar Poole to Grandpa Munster is that Grandpa Al Lewis was about as left-wing as they get, although equally bombastic and fun. No offense, Col. Poole.)

Folks Southern Kitchen, Marietta GA (CLOSED)

The story of Atlanta’s Folks Southern Kitchen is another one where the small chain’s heyday seems to be behind them. However, unlike a couple of the earlier stories I’ve told here about, say, The Mad Italian and Old Hickory House, where the last remaining outpost of a chain is struggling to remain relevant, Folks still seems to have a pretty good bit of life in it. I say this even though the chain, which once numbered twenty stores in north Georgia, is down to ten around I-285. Two more, in Cumming and McDonough, were recently converted to a new “concept,” Rusty Rooster Cafe, which apparently serve very similar food in a “fast casual” setting. That we’re talking about food in terms like “concepts” and “fast casual” is probably a warning flag to many food lovers that the food’s quality might have been a little lost under the weight of marketing.

Folks was originally called, and you’ll love this, Po Folks. The first store opened in 1978. I’m not sure which that was, but I recall that the one on 41 and Windy Hill must have opened around that time. It had a bright red roof and all of the signage and menus were written in a tacky font meant to represent the scrawlings of an illiterate hillbilly. My own folks got takeaway from them quite frequently – their sweet tea was said to be the best of any restaurant – but I don’t remember ever actually eating there.

In 1994, the chain converted all of its locations from Po Folks to Folks Southern Kitchen. The reds were changed to greens, the hillbilly scrawls were replaced with a more elegant script, and, since Folks weren’t po no mo, the prices went up. It was this incarnation that expanded to its peak in number of stores, but a few years ago, the contraction began. I recall that they shuttered the restaurants in Roswell and Smyrna right at the same time, and probably a few others as well. I rarely see any advertising for this chain anymore.

Without making too much hoopla about it, my daughter loves Folks, and when we gave her a turn to pick an activity for our weekly dinner-or-movie night, she suggested this place. So last week, Marie and I took her to supper, meeting up with Neal, Samantha, Randy and Kimberly. Circumstances forced us to have a pretty long dinner; our server was congenial and attentive, but also incredibly slow. I thought that we’d never get our checks at the end of the evening.

Marie ordered the rainbow trout and declared it very tasty. It came with some mixed vegetables and sweet potato waffle fries. Sweet potato fries seem to be quite trendy lately, but these are the first ones that I can recall that are done waffle-style. My daughter had a chicken pot pie that she enjoyed very much and a side of Brunswick stew. I almost always just have a veggie plate here, since everything they offer as a side is as good or better as their entrees. This time out, I had fried green tomatoes, calico beans and corn nuggets.

Everyone really enjoyed their meal, but special praise was reserved for the bread. Folks serves up these incredibly tasty peach muffins that everybody really enjoys; Randy and Kimberly ordered another half-dozen to take home. Marie bucked the trend by having a biscuit and everyone else asked whether she was feeling all right.

And that’s the story of Folks. They may be smaller than they once were, marketing-synergy-speaking gobbledygook may be vomited all over their web pages, and the place may be as quiet as the grave in the evenings, but the food remains quite good. They talk big about their recipes being made from scratch and prepared fresh daily, and while it may lack the individual attention and focus of something smaller, it’s still a reasonably good dinner out, for rich or po.