Scott & BJ’s Bar-B-Q, Athens GA

Years ago, in some of the earliest chapters at this blog that mentioned barbecue around Athens, I lamented the closure of Carither’s, a very good restaurant that had been in an old red brick building on Milledge, near the old Bi-Lo and the bypass. I found it probably in 1995 and ate there off and on for the next decade. I was not the only one. The legendary ABC sportscaster Keith Jackson once called it the best he’d ever had. Continue reading “Scott & BJ’s Bar-B-Q, Athens GA”

Em’s Kitchen, Athens GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about breakfast in Athens. I’d first run across a mention of Em’s Kitchen on one of my favorite mommy blogs, the wonderfully eclectic My So-Called Mommy Life, from a post way back in the spring. Sadly, we go to Athens far less often than I’d like, and we didn’t get around to trying the place out until now. It is a breakfast and lunch place which does brunch on the weekends. Continue reading “Em’s Kitchen, Athens GA”

Cơm Vietnamese Grill, Atlanta GA

Back in August, Leslie from The Food and Me suggested that we meet up for supper at Cơm, the quite popular Vietnamese place on Buford Highway. It’s been doing good business for almost a decade and has been very influential both in the business world – when Nam Phuong opened, with its nice atmosphere, furnishings, and presentation, it was said by some to be an imitation of Cơm – and in making fans out of curious eaters. Leslie and I agreed that we should have more get-togethers with more bloggers, and then I hemmed and hawed and waited too late to properly invite people, but Food Near Snellville was able to make it, as did our friends and frequent fellow diners Vincent and Helen, and then Leslie got called into work and wasn’t able to join us. Boo! Continue reading “Cơm Vietnamese Grill, Atlanta GA”

Verde Taqueria, Atlanta GA

Every Labor Day, Dragon Con brings in some friends and family from around the southeast. This year, we were happy to go to a new place with our friends from Nashville, Tory and Brooke. We hadn’t seen Brooke in a stupidly long time; she missed coming to town last year, and the last few times I’d gone to the Music City, she was either working or, in one case, too sick to be social. So we were particularly glad to see her. And Tory, who’s always a joy. And their friend Holly, who came to town with them. Holly was wearing a WKU shirt and I mentioned that they started their season big with a win over the Wildcats. Holly wasn’t entirely sure that she knew that WKU even have a football team. Tsk. Continue reading “Verde Taqueria, Atlanta GA”

So Kong Dong Tofu House, Doraville GA

On the 30th of last month, Food Near Snellville racked up a big milestone: 500 Atlanta-area restaurants written up. So you know what I did that evening? I tweeted my congratulations to him, dropped off the girlchild at a football game, picked up Marie from work, and went out to meet Adam and Emily from Spatialdrift at our 500th Atlanta-area restaurant: So Kong Dong on Buford Highway. Continue reading “So Kong Dong Tofu House, Doraville GA”

Highway 61 Revisited – part two

In case you missed part one of this little travelogue, this is a little journey up the first 25 mile stretch of GA-61 from Carrollton, through Villa Rica and the unincorporated community of New Georgia to Dallas and the intersection with GA-120. Along this corridor are five rarely-discussed barbecue restaurants and, one day last month, I visited all five. Continue reading “Highway 61 Revisited – part two”

Highway 61 Revisited – part one

Backstory: A few months ago, I got a whim to visit the small city of Carrollton in west Georgia, to see what barbecue and books could be found. Matt and his wife Kelley came along, and we had a good day, and I came home with an astonishing list of nine previously unknown-to-me barbecue joints along the way that warranted a return trip to document. Nine! A little research when I returned revealed that only one of them, Merle’s, had been written up by another hobbyist blogger, but let this be a lesson to any of us, blogger or writer of books published by university presses, who thinks to make a claim that they know the be-all and end-all of a region’s barbecue. Nine! Continue reading “Highway 61 Revisited – part one”