Dave Poe’s BBQ, Marietta GA

For Marie’s birthday in March, she and I enjoyed a nice lunch at Sam’s BBQ1. When I wrote it up, I noted that not too long ago, Sam was in business with a fellow named Dave Poe, and they had opened a second location on the other side of Marietta, on Whitlock. We’d actually eaten at this one before, in 2007 or 2008, around the time Marie was thinking about moving in, but to be honest, I wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever to that meal at the time, as I was aggravated with one kid or the other over something. Never do this. Never eat when you’re annoyed. You won’t enjoy the meal and you’ll forget almost immediately that you ever had it. If you must eat when you’re annoyed, make it something you won’t enjoy anyway.

So Sam & Dave split up shortly after the release of their single “Knock it Out the Park,” which failed to chart. Or maybe that was a different Sam & Dave. Sam got BBQ1 and Dave got this place on Whitlock and, because Cobb County might as well be Antarctica as far as the Atlanta foodie community is concerned, both restaurants slipped completely off my radar, even though I live here, and it took me ages to even remember that either place was around. Well, on Friday last week, I finally got back over to Dave Poe’s place for lunch, and, I promise, this time I’ll remember the experience. I even wrote it down in a blog and everything.

There’s a lot to like about Dave Poe’s, and one of the standouts is the slogan “traditional 19th century pit-cooked.” They use lots of classical imagery on their website advertising, not merely “old Americana” and Coca-Cola nicknacks, but stylish museum pieces with garish, amusing copy atop them speaking longingly about the restaurant, tongue firmly in cheek. The fun and very original design totally belies the restaurant’s location in a nearly-dead strip mall, with a parking lot that’s been used for mortar practice.

Early last month, Jon Watson, writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s “Food and More” blog, compiled his list of the metro area’s five best examples of pulled pork. Dave Poe’s and Sam’s BBQ1 ranked joint fourth on the list, as Watson could not determine any difference between the meat at the two places. Granted, I tried them a month apart and not on the same afternoon, but I have to agree that they tasted the same, and there’s no crime in that. This is extremely good pulled pork. (Watson’s is a very interesting list, by the way. You should have a look at it; two of the other four restaurants there are on my to-do list as well.)

I drove over there with Randy and Kimberly, and we enjoyed very similar lunches. They had some fried okra that they said was quite good, but we each had pulled pork, fries and Brunswick stew. Now here, I see that I can’t make a comparison between this place and Sam’s, as Marie and I did not get any stew there last month. This stew is really terrific and I enjoyed the daylights out of it. To have found stew this good at this place and at Speedi-Pig in the same month is a very pleasant surprise! That said, Kimberly said that she preferred the stew at Bub-Ba-Q in Woodstock, which is certainly quite good, but I really like this even better. I liked it so much that, two days later, Marie and my son and I had business in east Cobb, so we had supper at Sam’s BBQ1. I conspired this just so I could try Sam’s stew and confirm that, yes, it is just as good.

Unfortunately, Sam’s does have it all over Dave’s in one regard: the sauces. The ones here are fine – there’s a more-tomato-than-vinegar sauce and a more-vinegar-than-tomato one, and they are each pretty good, but Sam’s has that amazingly delicious mustard sauce that I completely loved. Mind you, the pork is so moist and smoky that it would be fine without any sauce at all, but Sam’s is one of the best mustard sauces that I’ve ever had. Perhaps the next time that Sam and Dave meet up to talk about royalties owed by Atlantic Records, Dave should ask Sam about the mustard sauce, and Sam should ask Dave the name of his graphic designer. And each of them should ask their realtors to suggest a location that’s not in such a blighted, dead chunk of retail failure.

Willie Rae’s, Marietta GA (CLOSED)

Here’s another long overdue visit to a very popular destination in Marietta, this one right on the square. I added Willie Rae’s, which is about to celebrate its eleventh anniversary, to my to-do list many months ago after seeing a good writeup of it somewhere. This is a place that tries, with some success, to mix up a menu of southwestern, southern, and Creole-styled dishes in an upscale environment surrounded by lovely, folksy artwork on the walls.

They don’t always pull it off. One black hole on the menu is the inclusion of Lay’s potato chips as a side to some of their dishes. Try as I might, I just don’t see the point of lavishing attention on a burger in the kitchen and then serving it with plain Lay’s. But when they get it right, the results are magnificent.

Location is everything in the world of restaurants, deciding what is hip and cool. If Willie Rae’s was inside the perimeter, people would have been raving about it for ages. Sitting quietly on the Marietta Square, it’s easily ignored by the ITP crowd. Interestingly, walking around the square, you can see quite a few very good restaurants, none of which attract much commentary or blogging. Hollie Guacamole! and Tommy’s Sandwich Shop are both pretty good, as are Johnnie McCracken’s and the Marietta Pizza Company. There are four or more very nice, upscale restaurants, at least three places to get desserts, including a cupcake place – one of the latest trends – and Traveling Fare, which sells wonderful pot pies at the weekly farmer’s market, but despite ample free parking, nobody wants to venture up here except office workers and people with court business.

Well, if you do feel like braving the mean streets of Cobb County, you’re certain to get a pretty good meal at Willie Rae’s. I arrived early and looked around in a cute toy store two doors down while waiting for them to open. Within twenty minutes, there was a pretty good crowd in the place, proving that just because us weirdos with blogs aren’t yammering about it, business is still pretty good.

I was a little disappointed that I would have to pay a bit more than I wanted for some chips and salsa – apparently you can only get some by paying six bucks for a really big appetizer with cheese dip and an avocado sauce as well – so I had a small cup of very good jambalaya instead. It was served piping hot in a coffee mug on a little saucer and they didn’t scrimp on any of the meats. This was really tasty, although I don’t know that I’d like a full-sized serving of it with so many other interesting things on the menu.

I had the chicken burrito, served with a very good Caesar salad. The burrito was absolutely packed with really tasty chicken and just a few peppers. I was so pleased to pay a good price for a meal here and really get my money’s worth in very good, seasoned meat, not a big pile of rice or other fillers. The burrito was covered in a wonderful cheese sauce. I think I might have asked for a very small cup of salsa for the chicken, but it was just fine without it. It’s really a good feeling when a place meets your expectations so fully, you know?

I’d love to see some of my peers with larger audiences come up to the square and give these places a try. If Willie Rae’s was on Howell Mill, or in Asheville, people would be raving about the food and the atmosphere. The food certainly warrants it, and you’re guaranteed to get a kick out of all the fun artwork. Well, people are raving, just not people with blogs.

Sam’s BBQ1, Marietta GA

I’ve been telling myself for at least five years that I needed to get over to Lower Roswell Road and check this place out. Friends, if you live in Cobb County, don’t make the mistake that I did and put this off any longer. Sam Huff has been cooking up some amazing pulled pork that you seriously need to try. He apparently lives out in West Cobb, in that Lost Mountain community that I had driven through just two days previously, and was a regular on the competition circuit for years, winning all kinds of awards for his pulled pork, ribs and brisket. Six or seven years ago, he partnered up with Dave Poe and they opened what would become two restaurants in Marietta. They’ve since gone their separate ways, and Poe got the other place on Whitlock. I drove past it two days previously as well. That was an odd weekend.

Two Sundays ago, Marie and I were going to do something to celebrate her birthday. She just wanted a day together, away from kids, with a few general ideas about what she’d like to do. As I assembled a battle plan and a road trip that would take us via back roads up through Roswell and Alpharetta, I looked for lunch in the area and realized we could get some barbecue at Sam’s place. Even better, Sam’s wasn’t one of those irritating closed-on-Sunday joints that have been complicating my life. We drove right past a place that I wanted to try, Amos’s, which is near Ball Ground, on our trip. Closed.

Sam’s occupies two storefronts in a beat-up old strip mall near Johnson Ferry Road. One of these is the takeout store and the other is the restaurant. Sam’s has been answering the same questions about their food for so long that it’s led to some playfully exasperated T-shirts and signs explaining how many people can be fed with a pound of pork, that their meat is pulled and never chopped, that take-out orders are two doors down, and other rules. This has led to playful teasing from the regulars about supposedly misunderstanding the policies. During our visit, I saw two groups come in to enjoy lunch who ribbed the kid at the register that they wanted carry out. Poor kid.

The pulled pork here really isn’t very smoky, but it’s very moist and flavor-packed. It’s served dry, and guests can help themselves to three sauces at a pump station next to the drinks. The most popular, unsurprisingly, is a sweet Kansas City-styled tomato-based sauce, but, while good, I found this the least of the three. The vinegar and the mustard sauces were both outstanding. I don’t know which I prefer; both really complemented the meat really well and I haven’t enjoyed the combination of great pork and great sauce so much in weeks.

The sides were very good, too. I ordered the lunch special with a sandwich, baked beans and a glass of sweet tea, and Marie enjoyed a plate of pulled pork with green beans and potato salad.

I definitely plan to go back soon for another meal. This is absolutely among the better barbecue joints in the Atlanta area.

Douceur de France, Marietta GA

This is Marie, talking about one of my favorite places in Marietta, a little French bistro about a mile south of the town square. The two primary attractions (for me) are the croissants and the eclairs, but that is mainly because we don’t get to eat there very often. They only do breakfast and lunch, and open about a half hour too late for me to even think about having breakfast there before work. Before my work changed locations, I would occasionally decide that the traffic report was promising enough for me to get something (usually one or two plain croissants) on my way, but since we moved that has dwindled to the pair of times I decided it was worth getting to work late to bring in something for the team to eat and picked up a dozen croissants for them and an eclair for me.

Anyone who knows me should be fully aware that the bakery case alone would bring me back to this delightful little place all by itself. We have had some quite satisfactory lunches here as well, however. I am very thankful to our friend David, who directed us to try it out, I think in reference to a conversation I had about the merits and deficiencies of the eclairs recently obtained from less authentic places. I particularly like it that there are European brand items for sale up on the shelves behind the counter, and that the only one who greets you with “bonjour” is the one who has an actual French accent.

A real croissant made properly out of tasty ingredients is a completely different thing from the horn-shaped dough balls that go by the same name from grocery stores. A proper croissant should drop flakes all over your plate when you tear off a piece, and the interior should be full of air holes, moist, and a bit stretchy. You should have difficulty cutting the thing in half for buttering or sandwich toppings unless your knife is very sharp. Also, unfortunately, it will be far less satisfactory the next day, as it should never have preservatives of any kind. The owners are from France, and the pastries definitely show the education that Luc Beaudet, the pastry chef and co-owner (with his wife) has obtained. The rotating case next to the register is quite compelling, and a good way to entertain yourself while waiting for your check to be rung up.

Now this is not the most perfect French-style restaurant in my book – that award was won away by a delightful little place in Knoxville written up in this blog last month – but it is definitely the best place within easy driving distance, and the competition in Tennessee did not provide the eclair that I ate on the day that I got my positive pregnancy test which was, indeed, the best eclair ever obtained from that place or any other. The meals I have had there, although not frequent enough, have been exceedingly satisfactory.

On our most recent visit, our son declared the chicken salad the best he’d ever had. Even granting that any meal he enjoys is the best he’d ever had while he’s eating it, the taste I had seemed more than satisfactory. On this last visit I had the tourte au poulet, in part because I was actually in a mood for cream of mushroom soup which was sadly not on the soup rotation that day, and this item has a mushroom cream sauce. It was beautifully flaky outside and nicely flavorful inside, and very filling although not terribly large. I personally am quite pleased with the portion sizes here, though it’s quite likely that larger appetites will want to order extra sides to fill up.

We would eat there far more often if they had Sunday hours. As it is, however, my business is assured just based on my two favorites.

AJ’s Famous Seafood & Po Boys, Marietta GA

Some years back, I played, and by that I mean, “dumped a lot of disposable income on,” a collectible miniatures game – you’ve got the same Wikipedia I have, look it up – and would occasionally go over to Great Escape Comics and Games here in Marietta for a tournament. For the most part, I thought that the food options around this store, which is a pretty good one, and certainly worth a visit, were quite limited. There was the now-closed Mad Italian, of course, where I should have eaten more frequently, but I thought that darn near everything else up and down 120 around that shop was some dumb fast food chain. I was proven wrong a couple of months ago when Samantha shared a terrific Thai meal at Lemon Grass with us, and now I’ve found a very respectable, tiny seafood restaurant just across the street from Lemon Grass. AJ’s Famous Seafood & Po Boys is a couple of doors down from the Kroger and I’d never have known about it had my plans not changed last week.

See, I was hoping to go to Athens last Thursday, but the region was hit by a pretty awful, albeit mercifully short, ice storm. Frozen rain came down in buckets Wednesday night and the police said that there were a thousand accidents in the Atlanta area that night. It melted off very quickly and by lunchtime Thursday, things were back to normal, but everybody’s nerves were frazzled and I didn’t know whether I wanted to risk any ice patches between home and Athens. So around eleven, I started getting peckish and had no idea what I wanted to eat. Well, actually, I had a pretty good idea, but that will have to wait until my next trip to Athens. So I pulled up Urbanspoon to see what might sound good in Marietta that I had not noticed before. There it was, a restaurant that I should have been visiting since they opened in 2005 and I was looking for something to eat on that stretch. What a ridiculous development!

AJ’s sandwiches are available as a full-sized po boy, or on a bun, like I had. They also serve up their varied fish, shrimp or oyster options as dinner-sized platter portions with several sides. Their bread is crispy but soft, and comes dressed with lettuce, tomato, pickle and one of several spreads. I just went with mayo with my shrimp, saving their house “AJ sauce” – somewhere between remoulade and thousand island dressing and quite tasty – for my appetizer. I don’t often order appetizers, unless it’s a really memorable standout. An alligator taco certainly qualifies.

Now, see, this is what I love about paying a little more attention to the quality of the food that I’m finding. Five years, this place has been serving alligator, and I had no idea. I love gator; I’ve only had it a few times, but I think it’s terrific. Apparently, AJ’s will occasionally offer up a gator and sausage chili. Holy bajole, I’d like to try that. Anyway, the taco comes with a good portion of fried gator, with cabbage, onion and cilantro.

Now, my big shrimp bun was very good, but I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have been just as pleased, and not quite as stuffed, with three alligator tacos and a side of red beans and rice. For a last-minute fill-in meal, this was really a nice treat, and I look forward to stopping by again one day soon.

Vatica Indian Vegetarian Cuisine, Marietta GA

I’ll tell you, friends, this was not the meal that I was hoping to find. It was very, very good, and calls out for investigation from more people who love unusual flavors and unique foods. Well, I knew going in that a vegetarian Indian restaurant was unlikely to replace the dearly-missed Moksha in my affections, and this didn’t, but it was a very different and very positive experience all the same. This is definitely a restaurant that Atlanta’s foodie community should quit overlooking and come visit.

For one thing, Vatica’s owner is by leagues the most engaging, friendly and welcoming host of any Indian place that I’ve ever visited. Having done just a cursory bit of research into what I could expect here, I explained to him that I knew virtually nothing of vegetarian Indian dishes, but that I understood this place specialized in something called thali, which is basically a buffet brought to your table. He told me that he’d make me a very good thali and tell me all about it.

About five minutes later, I had a huge circular tray in front of me, with small bowls of a variety of foods. He told me what each was. My meal included rice, a spicy stew called dal, potato curry, lentil curry, sweet potatoed curry, an onion yogurt called raita, a pita-like bread called roti, the delicious, thin spicy wafers called papadam, a potato and onion samosa and a little fruit cup. I apologized for inconveniencing him, but I’m actually allergic to sweet potatoes. So those went, and he brought me a small bowl of curried squash instead.

This place definitely has it down right. That sounds like a heck of a lot of food, but everything was in very sensible, small portions. If you’re looking for a broad sampling of flavors, you can do pretty well here, getting ten different things for nine bucks and change. I was most taken with the dal and with the potato curry, but everything was very tasty. I was further surprised when, about halfway through my meal, another fellow came by with a tray to refill whatever I wanted more of, so I had second helpings of the dal, the potato curry, the lentils and another couple of papadam wafers.

Honestly, this was a good – no, a very good – lunch, but I also realized as I ate that really, what I’ve come to expect, unfairly, from Indian cuisine is really tasty meat in a really spicy, scorch-yer-tongue sauce. This was one heck of a good meal, but not at all what I was looking for. I wonder where my ongoing search to replace Moksha will take me next?

Tandoor Restaurant, Marietta GA

I’m still reeling from the closure of Moksha. I must be; there’s no other explanation for this grim lack of satisfaction in the unavailability of really good, reasonably-priced Indian food in the area. Now this obviously is the sort of thing that I could have rectified already, had I put my mind to it, and I did find Desi Spice, which is pretty good, but the honest fact is that my great enjoyment of a few Indian dishes has been consistently tempered with the persistent awfulness of the restaurants that serve them. I don’t wish to list a walk of shame, but I think you’ve all eaten at the kinds of places that turn my eyebrows. I’m talking about the ones that feature the cloth napkins and nice tablecloths under the clear plastic, with the ill-fitting tuxedos totally failing to turn a server’s disagreeable and bored demeanor into anything classy. If Atlanta’s got one too many of anything, it’s the Indian equivalents of those damn fool China-This and China-That places. I’ve really, really got to be in some more kind of mood for rogan josh to put up with that burning mediocrity of presentation.

Moksha was really nice, but it was genuinely upscale and not plastic, with gorgeous interiors brightly lit by huge windows letting in the light and a super staff of smiling and helpful servers. Heck, even the gents’ was classy. I wanted to know where the heck they bought that sink so I could install it in my own home.

There is nothing in Tandoor’s decor that I want in my home, but the experience is so many leagues preferable to the surly artificiality of the typical Indian restaurant in the region that it scores highly on my scale. The food’s all right. It’s just okay, really, but it’s priced very well and they don’t make any pretension about it. Why can’t more places be like this?

At any rate, the decor in this place is pretty darn downmarket, which is a very nice breath of fresh relief or something like that. It’s in a strip mall on Powers Ferry Road which looks like it should have been a good location once upon a time, but it’s struggling. Despite the high-end car dealer on one end, most of the spaces are vacant. In fact, the storefronts that sandwich Tandoor are both closed up.

Tandoor’s prices are very nice, but you have to navigate the menu in odd ways to make things work. They have some “combo meals” to save money and give guests a broader choice of flavors, but these come with some restrictions. The $8.99 combo comes with a vegetable dish, one curried meat, rice and naan. I found this a little restrictive, sorry to say. Based on Chloe Morris’s excellent review of this place (link dead, but where it was described, with some hyperbole, as “the best Indian/Pakistani food in the city”), I was looking forward to trying the chicken boti. Unfortunately, this dish does not qualify as one of the meats that you can get in this combo.

Hoping to maximize my dollar’s worth, I asked for the girl at the register to recommend another chicken entree. She suggested that I might enjoy the chicken karahi instead. Unfortunately (again), difficulty understanding each other meant that my request for “boneless” was not made clear. I’ve since learned that karahi is typically prepared bone-in, as this meal was. It was, indeed, quite tasty and in a very good, thick, spicy, brown sauce. It wasn’t quite what I had in mind is all.

I did get to try Chow Down’s suggestion of palak paneer, a dish that I may have only had once before. This was indeed very nice and creamy and a rich, natural green color, without any artificial additives. I won’t swear that I’d order it every time, but it was a good change from my usual routine.

It was not completely satisfying. There was far more rice than I could ever eat, at the expense of the other dishes. Yet everything was flavored so nicely that I didn’t mind much. The small, downmarket decor was not a problem, but I found myself focusing on patchy, broken paint on walls that needed a new coat. I suspect this is a popular destination for lunch; at two in the afternoon, it was still mostly full. I’m afraid I’ve still got a lot of work ahead of me trying to replace Moksha, but this wasn’t bad.