In August, the four of us took another trip down to Saint Simons Island for a long weekend with Marie’s family. We scheduled the trip to coincide with her brother Karl’s vacation, all the better to sample the soaps that he’s been brewing at home – I’m really not at all sure how one judges soaps other than whether they get you clean and smell decent, which these do, but I’m really happy that he’s found such a unique hobby and hope that a fine profit can be extracted from it – and for the two siblings and their mother to spend hours playing these bizarre games that nobody else plays. This time out, one of the major attractions was something called Alahambra, which was uncannily like a “game” that my third grade teacher tried playing with us in math class in a failed attempt to con us into thinking that arithmetic is fun. Continue reading “Palm Coast Coffee and Cafe, St. Simons Island GA”
Tag: pimento cheese
The Varsity, Kennesaw GA
Over the last eight chapters in the blog, I have written about the four-day trip that we took to visit Marie’s brother and sister in Mississippi. These were posted here slightly out of sequence, as I was anxious to share some stories about places outside our regular stomping grounds around Atlanta. Not that anybody other than me is keeping track of these, but the next four entries (plus the next Honeymoon Flashback, later this week) are about some places that we visited before this road trip.
First up is a place that we visit with something approaching frequency, the Kennesaw location of The Varsity. I’m sure this is not a place that needs much introduction. It is as iconic as American restaurants get, and the downtown location, which I’m sure I’ll revisit and write about one day, is a major tourist attraction for the city.
The Varsity has done more things right than wrong over the years – moving their beloved Varsity Jr. location from Cheshire Bridge out to Dawsonville, because serving a long-established neighborhood is not as profitable as snagging outlet mall shoppers, must surely count as a “wrong” – and one of their neater ideas has been building satellite locations along each of the northern arteries that feed into the city. Whether you’ve followed the sprawl into the suburbs up Interstate 75 or 85 or GA-400, there’s a Varsity for you, and each of these stores do a darn good job capturing the feel of the original.
Usually, if we are in the mood for a burger, and don’t feel like making a production or a caravan or a road trip out of it, we just hop over to Cheeseburger Bobby’s, which makes one of the best burgers in Cobb County. The Varsity, let’s be fair and honest, is a fairly weak competitor in those stakes, but their fries are better than Bobby’s, and so are their onion rings, and so is their chocolate milk – you just won’t believe how well chocolate milk over ice goes with a burger until you try it – and they also add one thing that I sure do wish that Cheeseburger Bobby’s would consider for their own patties: pimento cheese.
I mentioned a few chapters back that I greatly admire the writing of John T. Edge. About a week before our trip, I read his delightful Hamburgers and Fries, one of a short series of books, very Calvin Trillin in feel and flavor, in which Edge flies around the country trying regional takes on the most classically American of foods. He has slug burgers in Mississippi and steamed burgers in Connecticut and, most drool-worthy of them all, pimento cheeseburgers in South Carolina.
I know virtually nothing about South Carolina. It’s always been a state that I have driven through; I have never stayed overnight in the state. I recognize this as a deficiency that needs correcting, and longer visits and more detailed investigations of South Carolina are on the long-term agenda. From what I understand, though – and, admittedly, a good chunk of what I understand is what I have read in Edge’s books – many of the older hamburger joints throughout the Palmetto State have long offered pimento cheeseburgers. It is apparently one of that region’s specialties.
I’m reminded of the similarity between the Varsity’s hot dogs and chili and the ones that you can get at Macon’s Nu-Way. When the Varsity’s founder, Frank Gordy, was first driving around the south nailing down ideas for what he wanted his restaurant, then called The Yellow Jacket, to serve, it’s suggested that he decided to replicate the Nu-Way experience. That was somewhat lost when the Varsity expanded and grew to its current enormous size, but you can still absolutely see Nu-Way’s influence. I wonder whether in 1928, pimento cheeseburgers were common in Atlanta, or did Gordy find a place or two in South Carolina that inspired him to do them here?
Every so often, I find myself craving pimento cheese on a burger, served all hot, gooey and greasy. Marie doesn’t often remind me that she’s a damn Yankee, but when she quickly corrects my order of pimento cheeseburgers and asks for her own with a slice of cheddar, I remember all right. Ah, but it’s those differences that keep us interesting, right?
Bocado, Atlanta GA
So I finally took the plunge! Bocado is one of Atlanta’s best-known newer restaurants, and if I’m not mistaken, every blogger in the region has already visited the place. It’s been on my to-do list for ages, but other things and other meals kept coming up. They have a really convenient location on Howell Mill right where it meets Marietta Street, and I’ve been known, occasionally, to drive right past it in the early evenings, when Williams Street is really blocked up and I need an alternate way over to the interstate. I’ve just never had the opportunity to stop in before.
Continue reading “Bocado, Atlanta GA”
The Varsity Jr., Atlanta GA (CLOSED)
I knew that at some point, Marie and I would have to use the blog to spread the unfortunate word about a much-loved restaurant closing, and write up an obituary tribute. I certainly never expected that I would be doing this about The Varsity Jr. on Lindbergh Drive and I’m still amazed that we’re saying goodbye to it before we had the chance to take the camera down to the main location on North Avenue for a proper entry on this Atlanta landmark.
According to the restaurant, it’s a stupid problem with city politics that have doomed the landmark after forty-five years. In a letter to their customers (available as well on the restaurant’s website), the owners explain that the time was long past for an overhaul of the old building, but their architects could not come to an agreement with the city planners. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that one sticking point was the number of driveways, of all things.
This has almost coincided with the groundbreaking of a new Varsity up north in Dawsonville. Apart from the two inside the perimeter and one in Athens, there have long been suburban Varsities northward up all three arteries out of the city, in Norcross, Alpharetta and within walking distance of us in Kennerietta. There is also, incidentally, a really small mini-Varsity in Waleska on the campus of Reinhardt College. I thought that was top secret city lore, but somebody blabbed it onto Wikipedia. Anyway, so the Varsity Jr. is effectively moving to Dawsonville, leaving behind a lot of history and memories.
Almost exactly twenty years ago, Atlanta was suffering a heat wave that would make the current one seem like an autumn breeze. I was driving around my circuit of record stores that August in my second car, a giant, two-door Oldsmobile Delta 88 without air conditioning. I felt like I was about to pass out from the heat, and I stopped into the Varsity Jr. to cool off.
I haven’t thought about this in years, and my present-day self is a little sheepishly embarrassed by how silly I was acting at age eighteen, but I remember that I ordered two small Varsity Oranges – not the better known “F.O.” Frosted Orange, but their tasty not-very-carbonated drink – and a large cup of ice water. I sat in the dining room and slowly drank one of the orange sodas and then took the other drinks outside into the hundred-and-seven degree heat. I took a deep breath, lifted the water cup above my head and slowly poured that out over me. I’m sure that it felt very good at the time. I was an ostentatious kid.
I have lots of silly memories about the place. Many of them seem to have a little sadness around the edges. When my son was just a few weeks old, he decided to go live at Scottish Rite for a month with supraventricular tachycardia. His mother and I subsided on hospital food for several days before I ventured out to get something tasty. I brought back two boxes from Varsity Jr. and stood in an elevator with about six other sad-eyed parents and visitors and grease running up both my sleeves. “Boy, that smells good,” one of them said. By the time we reached the intensive care floor, I was lucky to escape with all my food.
I also remember something really unhappy. The Varsity Jr.’s location was absolutely perfect for a quick walk before or after a movie at the Tara Theater across the street. About five years ago, I took a young lady to see Howl’s Moving Castle. We were on our way to the restaurant for a late dinner afterwards and she started spinning a yarn about an ex-boyfriend that she claimed was stalking her. The subsequent conversation, after we got our food, about the constant danger she felt turned out to be both a gigantic warning sign and a great big old lie that still actively aggravates me. There’s not been a meal here since that I didn’t feel the desire to stand in front of that booth, reach backwards in time and punch myself in the jaw.
On Saturday, Marie and the kids and I had an early lunch here to say goodbye. Between us, we had three burgers with pimento cheese and four dogs, two with slaw, one with chili and one naked. We had two orders of fries, one order of rings, two FOs and one small Coke. Only a mild case of indigestion and artery-clogging followed.
We’ll have to get to the main location again before too much longer and write that up. Heaven knows I direct enough tourists that direction every week; I’m rather overdue. But Cheshire Bridge and Lindbergh without a Varsity is just crazy talk. Where are we supposed to eat after seeing a movie at the Tara now?
The Soda Fountain at Woolworth Walk, Asheville NC
Years ago, there was a chain of five-and-dime stores called Woolworth’s. Younger readers may not remember them, but they sold disposable, usless tat for low prices, and, in the days before fast food chains, were also a destination for shoppers who’d take a lunch break at what we now call an “old-fashioned” soda counter. They’d serve up quickie sandwiches and ice cream treats and maybe some of them would offer chili or roast beef or Salisbury steak. Hot meals were generally left to the larger, full-service diners of the 1940s and 1950s, with lunch counters their smaller brothers, but apparently some of them branched out a little. Continue reading “The Soda Fountain at Woolworth Walk, Asheville NC”
Marie, Let's Eat! 