Mountain Biscuits, Marietta GA

Here is a first for our blog. We’ve never considered a restaurant for inclusion, dined, declined and then gave them another chance before. Mountain Biscuits, a very busy place on Old 41 between the Church Street Extension and Barrett Parkway, got back on our better side after a less-than-thrilling introduction suggested just enough promise to make me want to give them another try, and while the results still were not quite perfect, the second trip was certainly warranted.

A few Thursdays back, I was looking around for something new to eat or revisit, when Mountain Biscuits came up as a “nearby suggestion” to some place on the Marietta Square that I was considering. They allegedly made a very good chicken sandwich, and so I drove over there to try it. The drive wasn’t at all bad, and the lovely old building, very photogenic, was inspiring. It is no fault of the restaurant, but the illusion of a middle-of-nowhere roadside shack is sadly spoiled by the presence of some condos across the street.

While the service was impeccable and very friendly, I found this chicken sandwich to be completely overrated and overpriced. It wasn’t bad, and I was not offended, but it was incredibly ordinary. It just tasted like an interstate fast food chicken sandwich, and I couldn’t understand why on earth I was paying $5.75(!) for something that tasted like it came from a Wendy’s or something. The bun, in particular, set off the trucked-in alarm. I crossed this place off my “to-blog” list.

But I noticed something curious as I had my lunch. From 11 to 3, six days a week, they offer lunch, with the promise of burgers and barbecue and an overindulgent plate of loaded fries that I might have ordered had the awesome, super-friendly woman at the register not told me that they were frozen fries. While they were not completely packed while I was there, they were nevertheless busy, and despite the lunch hour, every single person who came in seemed to be ordering biscuits instead of typical lunch fare. Were these biscuits really so good that they made for better 1 pm lunches than this ordinary sandwich?

My return was assured when the woman at the register started passing around little sample cups of their potato salad. While I almost never order this anymore for diet reasons, I do certainly love it, and this stuff was incredibly curious and interesting. If you will, it’s baked potato salad, and it tastes a whole lot like a loaded baked potato, with bacon and sour cream. In point of fact, while I have had better, I have never had anything like this, and I believe in celebrating unique dining-out experiences. I also felt that I should be judging a restaurant based on what they make in-house, rather than what some truck brings. If the potato salad was any indication, they really can make some great stuff here.

So two mornings later, while my daughter embarked on a lengthy and detailed makeup job for her Anime Weekend Atlanta costume, Marie and the baby and I paid them a second visit for breakfast. We joined a very long line and were rewarded with some excellent biscuits. They are not, perhaps, quite in the same league as Stilesboro Biscuits a few miles up the road, who set the gold standard, but they’re nevertheless really good. The line’s length is testimony that they are doing something very right.

I think these treats are a little firmer than Stilesboro’s, and Mountain makes them memorable by putting this wonderful concoction called Farmer’s Biscuit Syrup on the tables. It’s sort of a thin molasses and it goes incredibly well with a hot, buttered biscuit of this consistency. Frankly, should we return for breakfast one day, I won’t even bother with any meat filling. As good as the country ham was, and it was quite good, I think drowning a plain biscuit in this delicious goo and eating it with a fork would really be something. Doesn’t that sound insanely indulgent? I’ll do that on a day when I’m planning to eat two ounces of steamed cauliflower for lunch.

I do, however, operate with a pretty strict three-strikes rule where Fox News is concerned. If I do go back for a third visit and the single TV there is still tuned to that propagandist garbage, it will be the last time. Maybe I’ll wait a good while, and see whether they’re giving their lunches the same homemade attention as their breakfast, and told that guy in the Flowers Bakery truck that he no longer needs to bring them those awful buns. The baked potato salad is clearly a step in the right direction and shows what they want to be doing. Hopefully, over time, they’ll refine their lunch recipes further and turn out a chicken sandwich that’s every bit as unique, and warrants the price. If they’ve turned that divisive dirt off the TV, it’ll show that they really mean business.

Grand Champion BBQ, Marietta GA

A few Fridays ago, my plans got stymied and so I decided to try out a new suburban barbecue joint that’s getting a lot of press and hype. It’s called Grand Champion and, while elements of it were admittedly pretty impressive, it was an expensive lesson in not necessarily letting the hype of the day overwhelm common sense. Let’s get one objection to this place out of the way first thing. Somebody at the post office has assigned this place the 30075 ZIP code and has been making the pretty bold claim that it’s in Roswell. It is not. I’ve lived here for many, many years, friends. This is Marietta. Cobb County. The Pope High School district, to be precise. In a pig’s eye this is Roswell.

Grand Champion is the latest place to claim lineage from the old Sam & Dave’s BBQ of Marietta. Co-owner Robert Owens worked there for a spell, before Sam and Dave split up. By my count, there are now five restaurants in the region that are run by members of this team. In fact, Owens apparently bakes his mac and cheese per David Roberts’ recipe. I actually tried Roberts’ mac and cheese at Community Q just a few days before and didn’t like it very much, so I passed on it here. Speaking of Community Q, I think that might be my ceiling. They charge eleven bucks, even, for a pork plate there. Any higher than that, and I’m going to start asking why. It costs $11.50 at Grand Champion, before tax. They’re located next door to a Dollar Tree, so please don’t tell me they’ve got steep ground rent to cover.

I went with a pulled pork plate with collard greens and Brunswick stew. Sadly, it appears that Owens picked up the most obnoxious lesson from Huff and company, and considers Brunswick stew a “premium” side and charges more for it. This atop the already steep price. Can we cut this nonsense out right now, Atlanta? There are five hundred barbecue joints in this state and somehow, the only ones who think that stew – stew! – is a premium anything are in the northern Atlanta ‘burbs.

Having said that, some of the food is pretty good. I’ve frequently bit off more than I can really chew with collards, and lose interest quickly, but these were better than most. The stew was indeed very notable, and rich with flavor. The sauces, in squeeze bottles on the table, were also good. The North Carolina vinegar was nice, but I really liked the dark brown Kansas City sauce a lot.

Unfortunately, the pulled pork wasn’t very smoky and it was also quite greasy, so I’d have to dock quite a few points for that. I don’t know what on earth they did to make it so greasy as to remove or overwhelm any taste of smoke from this pork, but it had the consistency and character of crock pot roast beef. It was limp and forgettable, until the Kansas City sauce brought it to life. I hate to sound like a Woody Allen character, but the food wasn’t very good, and the portions were so small!

That is the least amount of food that I have ever paid for as a “plate” in a barbecue restaurant, and very nearly the most money that I have spent. Say what you might about inconsistency in the kitchen, an off-day, or different palates and different tastes, but honestly, there’s an understood rule about judging barbecue places that, while rarely spoken, trumps all other considerations. Simply put, if I’m going to pay $12.46 for a plate of barbecue with two sides, I better not be leaving hungry. I left hungry.

Fortunately, I had business in north Cobb about an hour later, so it wasn’t much of a detour to pop into Cherokee County and swing by Hot Dog Heaven in downtown Woodstock and get something to eat.

I have read much about Hot Dog Heaven over the years, and I’m very sorry that I visited on a day when Miss Becky was not working. There are many great stories about this superhuman example of effervescent Southern hospitality dishing out Chicago-styled Vienna Beef brand dogs at low prices, and I regret that I didn’t get to recount one to you dear readers.

What I can tell you is that here, you get a great big treat for not a lot of money. I did just have lunch, and didn’t want to overindulge or load down on calories, so I just parked out front by the Betty Boop and had only a “Maxwell Street”-styled Polish sausage with grilled onions, sport peppers, and brown mustard, and chewed that delicious thing down while the Travel Channel had one of their peculiar programs about food that only very weird foreigners eat. I don’t know who the market for octopus or beef tongue ice cream is, but I guarantee you that the hot dog that I was enjoying was superior.

Woodstock might just be a little bit of a drive for a Vienna Beef dog, Chicago-style, but the wonderful, laid-back and silly atmosphere is a great little place to kick back and get away from things. I’d like to stop by again the next time I’m in the area, and try a few of the other things on their menu.

Sabor do Brazil, Marietta GA

So how many Brazilian restaurants do you imagine you’d find within eyesight of the Micro Center on Powers Ferry in Cobb County? At least three. “Four,” said my daughter. “Oh, wait, never mind, that says ‘Brazilian Wax’.” Naturally, we went to the wrong one first. The wrong restaurant, not the wax place.

Back on Labor Day weekend, Marie was down at Dragon*Con, gaming with her brother and sister, while I stayed home to watch the children. David suggested that we meet for supper at the Brazilian restaurant across from Micro Center, and I thought he meant Botemkin, the popular bistro on Terrell Mill that opened in late July to some praise and hype. This has never happened before, and I darn well hope it will never happen again, but the three of us twiddled our thumbs and drank water waiting for him – I’ve mentioned before that David’s manners are impeccable, and he’s not the sort to be late without phoning – until I got impatient and called him. Well, my daughter and I twiddled our thumbs; the baby just cooed and gurgled. No, of course, David was waiting for us over on Delk Road at Sabor do Brazil, a much less expensive buffet place. Sheepishly, we apologized to the servers and withdrew.

Sabor do Brazil is a tiny little restaurant with a small dinner buffet, nicely priced at $8.99 on weekends. Honestly, the food was not at all bad, but pretty uninspiring. I had a large salad earlier that day for lunch, so I just started with a small plate with some tomatoes, black beans and rice, a little skirt steak in gravy, some fried bananas and baked flan. It was okay. Much more interesting was what I had to drink. They make their own cashew juice here, and that was very tasty.

But honestly, I go to restaurants sometimes and just have an okay meal, and figure that there’s really no reason to write a blog post about it. Even as I planned to go back for a small helping of tilapia in a tomato sauce, I figured we are really behind enough between “meal” and “blog” that I can occasionally skip a writeup.

Then a young fellow came by the table and let us know that the barbecue was ready, if we wanted to come get some. Everything changed.

Now, it is a rare day when I must flat out contradict what any of my peers in this hobby state on their blog, but I’m afraid that Malika Harricharan of Atlanta Restaurant Blog is quite mistaken to claim that this place doesn’t serve the skewers of meat roasting in an oven that you typically find at Brazilian steakhouses. Perhaps they don’t offer this at lunch, when she stopped by, but they certainly do at dinner. By my definition, this clearly is not barbecue, as the young server described it, but holy anna, is it ever terrific.

Well, most of it is. They have a number of meats roasting here, and I was not really taken with the pork ribs, which were too fatty. The beef with bacon was tremendously good, and the sausage was remarkable. Best of all was the picanha, which is top sirloin. They set the skewer upright on a plate and slice it downwards, with guests using tongs to help pull the meat away. It was tremendously good food, and I overindulged with great pleasure. David and my daughter each called it a day long before me, although in David’s defense, not knowing about this “barbecue” option – it’s just an extra dollar for the meat, a remarkable steal of a deal – he had loaded his plate with the buffet and didn’t have much room to dig in to the picanha.

Other than the young fellow who invited us to try the “barbecue,” we were served by the teenage daughter of the owner. I asked how long the restaurant had been here, and she said just about ten years. Not knowing who she was, I asked, as I do, how long she had worked here. “Oh, since it opened,” she replied. When I raised an eyebrow and asked, “Really?”, she got adorably flustered and told me, “I’m the daughter’s owner, I mean, I’m the owner of the daughter, I mean, I’m the owner’s daughter,” and that she was busing tables when she was seven.

She told me about the cashew juice, which is called simply caju in Brazil. I had no idea that the nuts that we eat are just a kernel of a much larger fruit that, in South America anyway, is used in its entirety. The fruit is eaten as a dessert or used in cooking, or the caju is extracted for a beverage. According to Wikipedia, in India, this juice, fermented, is used as the basis of an alcoholic drink called, depending on the process, either feni or gongo. Learning new things about food, and not just the stories behind restaurants, is one of the best things about writing this blog and talking to businesses. Now, I wonder where I can get a glass of feni, and how hard it’ll kick me onto my backside.

Australian Bakery Cafe, Marietta GA

So Melissa, my former boss who urban-evacuated herself to the side of some mountain up near Ball Ground, and I were walking around the Marietta Square with the baby, figuring that one of the many restaurants there would tempt us. I had mentioned that there was an alleged Australian bakery there, and no sooner did her eyebrows raise did I realize that I had no idea what the heck that meant, either. Was this a place we could go to try one of those vegemite sandwiches that Men at Work sang about, or just a place that sells cookies shaped like koala bears?

It turns out it’s really more of the former, but while I didn’t see any koalas in the display case, you can get cookies shaped like the continent of Australia. Well, of course.

This isn’t entirely a silly affectation. The bakery is run by Mark Allen and Neville Steel, two childhood friends from the town of Boort, who met again in the late seventies studying at William Angliss Food College in Melbourne. Various explorations in the food business followed, with Allen moving to the US in 1991. Here (apparently on the west coast), he introduced Americans to the Australian meat pie, a sensibly-portioned single serving of various meats and fillings baked in a wonderful crust. Allen and Steel reunited in Marietta in 2001 to bring these meat pies to the east coast, and provide a stopping point for homesick ex-pats. It’s their contention that many Australians and New Zealanders swing by on visits through Georgia for a taste of home, and to pick up some Australian groceries, including, of course, jars of vegemite.

Melissa and I stopped by on a Thursday and there was a pretty good lunch crowd. The shop is decorated with as much over-the-top Australian memorabilia as is possible, including flags of each of that country’s states hanging from the ceiling. The staff is incredibly friendly and nice, and did an appropriate job admiring my baby.

I had the lamb curry pie with a side salad and thought it was just splendid. It really wasn’t at all spicy, which my tongue was craving, but it was seasoned just right and satisfied me all the same. The crust was just super flaky and it tasted so fresh. It left me very curious what their dessert pies are like. I washed this down with a terrific Bundeberg brand sarsaparilla, which Melissa grabbed by mistake when reaching for the ginger beer. It was lighter than I expected, but I bet it goes great over ice cream.

I probably should have taken some home. A glance over the grocery shelves turns up all sorts of unusual goodies, from sodas to the yeast spreads to fun-looking candies with silly names (Tim Tams?). I may have to stop in again sometime and do a little shopping.

LaBella’s Pizzeria, Marietta GA

I don’t mean any disrespect – here, I’m in the very first sentence and I’m already channeling Jon Stewart from that pizza business in June – but, I’ll tell you good readers truly, when Marie suggested that we try to find a real New York City pizza in Marietta and came up with Baby Tommy’s Taste of New York, I had to ask, “Are you kidding me?” Don’t get me wrong; she made a great choice, and it’s a very good pizza place, one that I happily recommend that anybody in the area visit, but I just could not believe that she needed to look around for a New York pizza. You know what’s the only restaurant – seriously, the only restaurant – to have a menu on our fridge? It’s LaBella’s Pizzeria, which is over on Sandy Plains within walking distance of Sprayberry High School. It’s remarkable. It’s one of my five favorite pizza places in Atlanta. (Presently, the other four are Vingenzo’s, Varasano’s, Fritti and Fellini’s.)

Of course, such is the nature of our hobby and always trying new things that it had been a year and a half since we had a pie from LaBella’s. And I’m sure Marie had a perfectly reasonable motive in looking around for someplace new. We already know that LaBella’s is wonderful, so why not try somebody different and see what they can do? That’s fine by me, it’s just a strange equation. Looking for the best New York pizza in the region is simple. Look for the guy who used to own a pizza place on Long Island. He should know what he’s doing.

We first visited LaBella’s about three years ago with our friend Mandy, whom we don’t see enough, and I was just knocked down. The crust is just perfectly thin, the cheese isn’t too stringy, and the sauce is really tangy. It’s a tiny little place with maybe five oddly random tables and chairs all shoved together to give people just a little room to eat.

You know what makes this feel like a proper New York pizza in my fantasizing mind? They’re not afraid of anchovies. Seriously, around these parts, if they’re on the menu at all, they are hidden. Here, if you order a house special, you’re getting anchovies, as you should. Marie and my daughter both hate anchovies. Of course they do. My ideal slice of New York-styled pizza simply has anchovies and pepperoni. Even though we got out of the habit of visiting when we started the blog, there have been many times over the last year and a half when I was oddly peckish for anchovies and wondered whether we could get a pie from here.

The three of us stopped by one Friday evening at the beginning of the month – yes, the delay between a meal and a blog chapter is getting mighty long – for a nice, hot pie. The huge pizza oven takes up most of the room in the restaurant’s small space. It’s not very comfortable in the summer, but on cold nights, this is a fine place to be. We arrived just as Rick Sorrentino, who co-owns the business with his son, Stephen, was leaving, and only had a couple of words before he left. They’re terrific people here. Most of their business is take-out – come to think of it, most of the pies that I’ve had here, I’ve carried home – and it’s such fun, watching regulars come and go, greeting the staff like old friends.

There have been a couple more Sundays when I’ve phoned on my way home from work to ask whether they’ve still got any zeppoles. The answer’s usually no. They only do these little doughnuts on Sundays and they go fast. But a couple of times, I’ve brought home a paper bag full of greasy, fried deliciousness and, whatever Marie’s cooked for dinner, these make a great dessert. I need to call about zeps more often. We’re missing out.

Gigi’s Cupcakes

When Grant was planning the itinerary for an afternoon together, he included Gigi’s because of my taste for sweets and our daughter’s more specific adoration of cupcakes. Sadly, neither of us showed much enthusiasm. The girlchild was under the weather and wanted to sit out this food trek, asking only for a comfort snack of Krystal to be borne home to her after we were done. In my case the problem was the memory of another dedicated cupcake store in Nashville. When I reminded him of that visit, Grant diplomatically replied that he understood I had been “underwhelmed” by that place. So I figured I would hold my enthusiasm until we went to his selection. More on that later. Continue reading “Gigi’s Cupcakes” →

Baby Tommy’s Taste of New York, Marietta GA

At the end of May, Fox News personality Sarah Palin took her family to New York City, where she met with NBC personality Donald Trump before the watchful eyes of sixty-eleven news photographers who wanted to watch the conservative duo chow down at a New York pizza place. Attempting to adhere to the philosophy of there being no such thing as bad publicity, and failing terribly, Trump took the opportunity to show a visiting celebrity one of his town’s legendary pie places. To folk like me, who’ve never visited Manhattan, it looked like he might have done all right. I was quickly informed, by the invaluable Jon Stewart, that Trump did it horribly, godawfully, wrong.

In what must rank as one of the funniest television moments of the year, Stewart, in a vulgarity-spewing tirade, absolutely lost his lemon with just how badly Trump represented his city. If you have not seen these brilliant ten minutes, please look it up and watch Stewart try to be respectful, and fail, as Trump’s list of crimes against pizza grows and grows. Don’t spoil the fun by reading about these crimes before you press play.

I sent that link to Marie a couple of weeks back and she quickly wrote me back, noting that it really had been a while since we enjoyed a proper New York-style pizza. Almost immediately, she had read and asked around and suggested that a little place on Cobb Parkway, south of the Big Chicken and next door to that army-navy store, might be one of the closest things we have to a real, authentic, Manhattan pizzeria experience. I’ve been driving past this place for years and not noticing it, which is not surprising when you consider all the sprawl that buries businesses on this ugly stretch of road. She was right; we were long overdue for a visit.

Doctor Who once taught me a lesson in recursive logic. I was reminded of it when I asked the fellow at the register what made this place the most authentic New York pizza place in the area. He answered, “All our customers tell us we are.”

I think that I got a little bit more information from the owner a little later on. Apparently, what you want to see in a New York pizza place is a big counter with pies being sold by the slice. The smell needs to hit you as you walk in the door. You want an even spread of cheese and sauce, a certain curl to the crust, and a conservative but noticeable char on the underside.

Marie and I shared a Primavera-style pizza (mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, black olives and onions) and I also had a knish, served with two packets of Gulden’s brand mustard. I thought it was pretty good, although I wasn’t mad about the cheese on the pizza.

I particularly liked the really generous pile of toppings that we were given, but Marie found it a little overpowering. Since by now you have all watched that clip from Jon Stewart’s show, I’m not spoiling anything by saying that my eyebrows raised as Marie got up and fetched a knife and fork to tackle her slice. Having been instructed by Varasano’s some years ago how to correctly hold and eat a slice, I wasn’t surprised when Stewart really blew his top about Trump eating pizza in New York with a fork, and told Marie, with a smile and a tut-tut, that Stewart would surely not approve of how she was eating.

“There are too many toppings on the pizza,” said Marie, “and Jon Stewart can bite me.”

Personally, I thought that a bit harsh. We wouldn’t have even been enjoying this particular pizza without him!