In early 2014, one of the five or six best barbecue restaurants in Alabama closed after a run of 63 years. It was called Goal Post and it was really terrific. It was a place that I had wanted to visit for ages on the strength of its terrific sign. See, anybody can say that some barbecue is good, and sometimes you can trust the source and sometimes you don’t know them, but you see a picture of a sign as amazing as Goal Post’s, and you just have to see it in person. Art’s like that. Continue reading “Betty’s Bar-B-Q, Anniston AL”
Tag: north alabama
Bama Boys BBQ, Henagar AL
Three of the four times that we’ve visited Scottsboro, we have next driven east across the beautiful BB Comer Bridge, and thought that it must surely be the final time because they keep threatening to dismantle it. Fortunately, the Alabama DOT is slow, even slower than their counterparts in Tennessee, and they haven’t got around to it yet. You can see a couple of photos from our last trip back in August, when we were hopeful that the locals could preserve the bridge for pedestrians. I keep an eye on their progress, because I love the beautiful old thing, and encourage all our readers who are interested in preservation and history to check out the Friends of the Comer Bridge on Facebook. Continue reading “Bama Boys BBQ, Henagar AL”
Payne’s Sandwich Shop and Soda Fountain, Scottsboro AL
We absolutely love old businesses, and enjoy celebrating restaurants that opened a really long time ago. For a while, we thought that Tony’s in Gastonia NC might be the oldest restaurant that we’d find – it’s a century young this year – but to our huge and pleasant surprise we had a snack at a place that is approaching one hundred and fifty freaking years of continuous operation. It’s called Payne’s and it originally opened in 1869. Continue reading “Payne’s Sandwich Shop and Soda Fountain, Scottsboro AL”
Ol’ Tymer’s BBQ & Blues, Fort Payne AL
I’m not going to suggest that there’s a Fort Payne barbecue rivalry anywhere near as explosive as the one in Georgia between adherents of Fresh Air and fans of Old Clinton can get. However, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that, for the last twenty years or so, you either go to Bar-B-Q Place, which we visited in 2011, or you go to Ol’ Tymer’s. Continue reading “Ol’ Tymer’s BBQ & Blues, Fort Payne AL”
50 Taters, Scottsboro AL
We wanted to sample a couple of barbecue places while we were in northeast Alabama, and so when we finished shopping at the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, we made our way to the downtown area around the courthouse square, and saw a closed-up storefront where the restaurant we were looking to find was supposed to be. We’ll chalk this up to really poor research on my part and some outdated listings on Urbanspoon. 50 Taters closed their downtown location in late 2011 and moved out to the big highway – there’s a Sprawl-Mart access road alongside US-72 that gets all the traffic – and actually has opened an additional store up on Sand Mountain in Rainsville where they now do the smoking for each location. I think that we’ve got everything sorted and corrected now, so anybody else looking for barbecue in this corner of Alabama should have an easier time getting to where they need to be. Continue reading “50 Taters, Scottsboro AL”
Liberty Restaurant, Scottsboro AL
In June, we took a day trip to northeast Alabama. Marie wanted to buy a new tablet from the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro, and saved her pennies for a couple of months so that she could get one for really cheap. It’s always a bit of a dice roll here, because you don’t know what they will have available, but frankly, they had so many extremely good quality electronics and cameras that you’ll be horrified to fly ever again because so much stuff goes missing and gets paid off by the airline insurance, and then it gets found and ends up here. Continue reading “Liberty Restaurant, Scottsboro AL”
Back Forty Beer Company, Gadsden AL
I had planned to put together another beer post last month, but I had a tough time deciding what to try. Around Christmas, I asked my brother for his input. I was looking for another brewery from the southeast where I could easily sample three or four beers. He suggested Back Forty, since the great people at Ale Yeah! in Roswell usually have at least three of their eight beers in stock. Continue reading “Back Forty Beer Company, Gadsden AL”
Marie, Let's Eat! 