Eating Good Food Badly During Anime Weekend Atlanta

One thing is inescapably true: it’s incredibly difficult to eat well during any kind of convention. I must have hit a new low during Anime Weekend Atlanta at the beginning of the month. Oh, I had some pretty good meals, to be sure, but I didn’t temper them with, you know, vegetables or exercise or anything esoteric like that. It was like Fried Food Fest or something. Anyway, here’s a report on what I did to my arteries during the con, and why I spent the next few days eating a little more sensibly.

Friday’s lunch was a trip to Big Chow Grill, a regular Anime Weekend destination, in the company of my baby and two other very small guests. I met up with my friends Laura, Elizabeth and Jessica, none of whom I ever see enough of, and Jessica’s two small children, one aged two and the other just three weeks. It was observed that, if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes four people to have lunch and take care of three younguns. Things got so chaotic with loud little ones that I phoned my daughter for backup and had her wheel my baby into the mall to calm him down for a little bit. Big Chow was as good as ever – I had one medium-sized bowl of spicy stir-fried chicken over rice and a second medium-sized bowl of spicier stir-fried chicken over egg noodles – and our service was exemplary.

Marie was able to get to the show a little after six, and while my daughter continued being wild and twelve, Marie and I took the baby out for supper. We made it over to Smyrna’s US Cafe, a favorite of some of our family that I’ve been putting off revisiting for far too long.

We’ve never eaten at US Cafe as much as I would like, because, unaccountably, my daughter does not like the place. Neither does my brother, and whenever we would be visiting my mom and dad, he would always veto going there, even though it was so close by. It’s a very family-friendly sports bar, full of screaming kids, pool tables and big games on the TVs. For some, I’m sure it must be hell on earth, but the burgers and wings are very good and, of all things, the salsa they serve with the chips is just heavenly.

I’ve always liked this place a good deal, and my dad was friendly with the owners. He liked coming here a lot, and really liked the milkshakes. I had been putting off a visit, knowing I’d get sad thinking about my father, particularly with him not around to talk about football this season. But I was in the mood for a burger, and I don’t know whether there’s one better in the Smyrna area, so I bit my lip and we had a good meal.

Saturday morning, I probably should have had a small bowl of melons and blueberries for breakfast, but, as recounted in the previous chapter, we went to Mountain Biscuits and I had one with country ham and one with lots of syrup. Then for lunch, I met up with Matt at another sports bar, the Galleria’s Jocks and Jills, to watch the Georgia game.

There used to be several more Jocks and Jills locations in town, but according to their website, there’s just the one left, in the Cobb Galleria, where, presumably, the ground rent is a little manageable. There’s also one in Macon and another in Charlotte. It’s a sprawling sports bar with several rooms, including a space upstairs that is occupied during game time by Atlanta’s Rutgers Club. I tend not to pay much attention to what goes on in conferences other than the SEC (and now I have one and maybe two more teams to follow, so thanks a million, Slive), but while we were there, it looked like Rutgers was having a rough time of it at the hands of Syracuse.

When I watch a game out, I typically have an appetizer over the course of the first half, and then order an entree towards the end of halftime, and then tip quite generously for hogging a table for so long. This time I had some nachos – in a rare concession to health this weekend, I asked them to go very, very light on the cheese – and, later, some hamburger sliders with homemade chips. The food was acceptable and the service fantastic, but I wouldn’t go here unless I wanted to watch a game.

I only got a little bit of con time on Saturday before going to my mother’s house, which is closer than my own to the con, to change. I went to go see Bryan Ferry with David and a couple of his friends from “back in the day,” Tom and Patt, with whom he was haunting clubs thirty years before. Bry was playing the same venue, Chastain Park, where I first saw him in 1988. Heck of a good show, if perhaps not his best, and enlivened by guitarist Chris Spedding ripping the absolute hell out of Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane.”

Afterwards, David said that he was in the mood for greasy burgers. I found myself not really feeling like arguing. So we ended up at a Steak ‘n Shake, where I ate the new Fritos Chili Cheeseburger, which is the absolute last thing anybody on the planet needs to eat at midnight. It’s two patties, a slice of pepperjack, shredded cheese, chili and jalapeno peppers. Evidently, I didn’t really feel like avoiding a heart attack, either, eating such a thing at midnight. There were several other late-evening revelers from the convention, all costumed up, all similarly damaging their arteries. It sure was good, though.

I ate better on Sunday. Promise.

Update, 4/5/12: Some months later, months which, I swear, I ate better, I stopped by US Cafe’s other Cobb County location. This smaller “express” outlet is a lot less noisy, but the burgers and shakes are just as good.

Heirloom Market Bar-B-Que, Smyrna GA

A week ago, I was back in Smyrna while Marie was treated to another baby shower. I was, unfortunately, back in Smyrna a little earlier than I should have been.

Like everybody else in this hobby, I had been reading about Heirloom Market, a teeny place that’s been getting a lot of attention. Last month, for some reason, I found cause to mention that apartment complex right at that terrible intersection of Powers Ferry, Interstate North and Akers Mill right underneath I-285 at the river, which, in the 1970s, was nationally renowned as the center of Hotlanta’s swinger and hedonist community. That complex has cleaned up (literally, one hopes) and now trades as “Walton on the Chattahoochee” and there are probably far fewer gold medallions worn by the current residents. Next door to the complex is a convenience store that has been there forever, and now one-third of that building is home to a really good little barbecue place that everybody’s talking about.

I pulled in right at eleven, which is when I wrongly figured I could get some lunch. Unfortunately for me, this place opens at noon on Saturday, so I left, drove over to say hello to my brother and use the computer for a second before heading back. I returned at 11:40 and a line had already started. There are lots of people curious to try this place!

Longtime readers might have noticed that I’m not one for dwelling on the personalities of celebrity chefs and their trendy creations, and Heirloom Market might or might not fit into that bracket, but I was amused to see biographies of the two owners, Cody Taylor and Jiyeon Lee, on the restaurant’s website. I didn’t read them and I’m not certain where they worked previously – I personally could not care less – but those who do follow chefs from business to business seem to want to know.

Taylor and Lee claim to use locally sourced wood for their pit and locally farmed meats for their kitchen and, like The Oink Joint in Zebulon, they offer some Korean influence on the menu for guests interested in trying something a little more esoteric than the traditional fixings of a barbecue joint. These include one of the three sauces that I tried, a mild orange “KB” sauce that was quite sweet and a little spicy, and some of the rotating daily sides. I enjoyed the kimchi cole slaw enormously, and, were I not allergic to them, I might have ordered the tempura sweet potatoes. The girl sitting next to me had those and they looked good.

The other sauces that I tried were a thin, peppery, Carolina-styled vinegar sauce called “Settler” and a Memphis-styled “Table” sauce that was thick, brown and smoky. Neither was really outstanding; to be honest, the pulled pork actually tasted best when I dipped it in the thin, red residue of the kimchi cole slaw. Honestly, if they’d bottle that stuff for the tables, they’d be on to a winner.

That said, the pork was completely wonderful and didn’t need any sauce at all. They pile a good amount of it on the sandwich, and I will certainly agree with Jon Watson and the rest of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s team in calling this some of the best pulled pork in the region. Served on really good, thick bread and containing a good mix of tender meat and bark, It totally lives up to the hype. April was a great month for trying new barbecue for me. This, Bill’s in Hull and Hambones, down in Hapeville, all really surprised me very pleasantly.

The prices here are very reasonable. You can get a sandwich and a side for $6.50, or upgrade to a plate with a larger portion of pork, beef or chicken for about $3.50 more. Alternately, do what I did and instead of a second side, get yourself some sausage to go along with your sandwich. Seven varieties are available; I had a hot Italian link and it was delicious. The KB sauce went really well with it, too.

If there is a downside to Heirloom Market, it’s in the size. There is no outdoor seating – a shame on a day as lovely as last Saturday – and barely room for twelve guests indoors, crowded around one table and along the windows. The service is prompt and the drink selection is really nice. I probably should have just had a glass of water, but I helped myself to a bottle of Boylan’s birch beer. I hope that Taylor and Lee decide to take their apparent success to a larger space soon, because the next time that I should visit by myself, I would like the opportunity to read whatever I’m in the middle of. Crammed in as all the guests were, there simply was not room!

Zucca, Smyrna GA

Every year, our friend Neal turns his birthday into a week-long celebration called The Festival of Neal. We asked him, a couple of weeks in advance, before he got completely booked, whether we could schedule some time to take him to supper somewhere. He selected a place near him in Smyrna called Zucca. This was one of those places that I’d been figuring that I’d get around to for many, many years.

Zucca opened its first of four Atlanta locations in 2003. There’s the one in Smyrna, which we visited, one near us in Kennesaw, one a little further up the road in Woodstock on Towne Lake Parkway, and one in Decatur. I’m of the opinion that Atlanta is completely packed with amazing pizza restaurants. Does Zucca have a chance at breaking into my personal top five of Vingenzo’s, Varasano’s, Fritti, Everybody’s and Labella’s?

Marie wasn’t able to join us Wednesday night. She needed more sleep than I do back before the pregnancy, and even more today. This past week has been lousy with allergies and pollen and it’s hit me worse than any spring of the past six years and I’ve been an absolute nightmare to sleep with, since I can barely breathe. A couple of nights previously, I banished myself to the couch for fear of waking her with nose-clogged snoring. I proceeded to wake everybody in the house, even the boy who sleeps in the basement. I mention this because the plan was for me to pick up the children and drive down to Smyrna and meet Marie at the restaurant, and instead we nearly collided at the foot of the driveway. She came home, completely exhausted and spent and full of stress and frustration and asked me to deliver apologies, but she needed to sleep. And did she ever. It was fitful and interrupted, but she got to lay down for about twelve hours, and she deserved every second of it.

Like a complete lout, the pizza slices that I brought home were covered in bacon, which she doesn’t like. Well, that’s another one in the failure column for me!

Well, the children and I stopped in to visit my mother for a few minutes, and got to the restaurant just before seven. It’s a family-friendly sports bar, with a big sign in the airlock advertising franchise opportunities. At various points during the week they have trivia and games, and on the weekends, they have loud music and DJs who evidently can’t spell their own names. Or maybe she’s called Sue Spence. Who knows? It was, unusually, a time to discuss spelling and pronounciation. Like many middle schoolers, my daughter is incapable of speaking for more than four minutes without announcing that something has been “pwned.” This is evidently pronounced “powned” in twelve year-old-ese. Our friend Todd was able to join us, and he saw the reunited British band OMD earlier in the week at The Loft. In twelve year-old-ese, that’s pronounced “owmed.”

I started with a bowl of minestrone to sooth my allergy-ravaged throat, and it was excellent. I might have saved a penny or two by ordering just a small pizza and a second bowl of that wonderful soup. The pizza that the kids and I got was my son’s choice. He wanted to try the Buffalo pizza, which skips tomato sauce in favor of blue cheese and ranch, topped with chicken, bacon and tomatoes with wing sauce and blue cheese crumbles. It was very good and there was a heck of a lot of it. A large pie here will easily feed three.

The birthday boy ordered Zucca’s Victory pie, which, they boast, earned them the 2008 prize in an International Expo of some renown. It’s a ramped up Margherita – mozzerella, basil, olive oil and parmesan – adding sausage and mushrooms. Neal substituted onions for the mushrooms. Todd also ordered a large pie – more than enough to take several slices back home to Samantha, who also could not join us – with sausage and peppers. I had a slice of this and thought it was pretty good, but certainly elevated by the quality of the sausage, which was just excellent. Sometimes, better ingredients make an enormous, palpable difference.

David was also able to meet us after bowing out of work a little early. Pizza’s not really part of his diet, but he did enjoy a bowl of the terrific minestrone, and a large Greek salad. Well, to the naked eye it was a Greek salad; according to the menu it was a Tuscany salad. I’m really not certain what the difference would be!

Overall, it was a good meal. They do good work here, and the service was fantastic. The pies are probably not as good as Antico, but the service was leagues better than what you find there, so I’d put the two on about equal footing as far as the overall experience. Just like Antico wasn’t qute able to knock its way into my personal top five, nor was this place. Not at all bad, but not quite transcendent, either.

StaQs BBQ, Smyrna GA (CLOSED)

Every so often, I run into a restaurant that really isn’t that amazing, but there’s something about it which deserves a little bit of praise and attention just because the people behind it have come up with something just a little extra. It’s when I find a place that does something that nobody else does that I get a real sense of pleasure. Even when there is room for improvement elsewhere, a restaurant should be hailed for at least offering something unique. So it is with the ridiculously-named StaQs.

My daughter seems to have been mostly absent from the pages of this blog lately; she missed out on her brother’s trip to Tennessee with me, but that’s not to say she’s been completely idle. She has been going through a difficult period, getting used to the awful social rules of middle school, and, sadly, acting like going well out of the way for something to eat is a monstrous burden upon her texting and iPod time. She is, after all, twelve. Well, last week, she and I had a little time after a doctor’s appointment for a quick snack, and even though I probably should not have spent any additional money that day, I realized that we’d be going by StaQs, which is on South Cobb Drive a couple of doors down from Vittles Restaurant.

This particular stretch of road has been pretty brutal to barbecue restaurants. I mentioned many months ago that the venerable Old South BBQ was just a stone’s throw from some others, intending then to come back and try StaQs, but it slipped down the wishlist. Just north of Windy Hill, you can see the building that once housed Champs, a pretty good place that was notorious for blaring Country Music Television at maximum volume in every room of their big facility. The restaurant has sat untouched, the old signage still there, for more than three years. Across the street was once another barbecue joint, the name of which escapes me, but they too kept their signage long after the business closed. Old South still seems to thrive and has seen off at least two challengers around this intersection, but economically, this isn’t the most upscale region of Cobb County. Rents are probably a little cheap here, suggesting that StaQs might have been right to start small in this building, which I believe was formerly a Waffle House.

Speaking of that, I did mention that something on the menu here was notable, even if, perhaps, the overall quality of the food is something that still needs a touch of work. StaQs offers a remarkable little dish called, appropriately, The Mess.

The Mess is, simply, a small serving of chopped pork and cole slaw atop a waffle with maple syrup. I don’t know who came up with such a thing, but they deserve a medal.

For people already in Smyrna, it’s certainly worth stopping in, but as for whether it’s worth a very long crosstown drive to try, I’d have to say probably not. I really didn’t enjoy the pork as much as I hoped, and neither sauce – a sweet and a hot, each tomato-based – were really that amazing. Nor was there enough pork to really sample much of the sauce, as the maple syrup had already made the meat very sweet. It’s a remarkably good idea, but I suggest the pork could use a lot more smoke flavor for this meal to be a real showstopper.

On the other hand, the stew here really is quite good, and worth a try. It’s made with chicken, corn and potatoes in the traditional tomato base, and you get a really big helping of it for your money. My daughter will often just order a bowl of stew when we go out, and this was considerably more than either of us were expecting, or that she could finish. She had the rest of it for lunch a few days later.

Speaking of lunch, thanks to this place, I’m now wondering what a plate of a drier, smokier meat might taste like with maple syrup. Maybe I should run up to Ellijay and get some of Oscar Poole’s pork and try some of that done this way. Hmmm.

Thompson Brothers Bar-B-Q, Smyrna GA

The Thompson Brothers moved here from Oklahoma quite a few years ago and I kept telling myself that I needed to get over to their little storefront on 41 and promptly forgot. They’re either in the space or next door to the space once occupied by one of a local chain of CD stores whose name I can never remember, Atlanta Disc Exchange or something. In the summer of 1991, I was supposed to be dropping off menus and coupons for a pizza place and I ended up here, buying a Maura O’Connell CD, after the apartment complex on the other side of Herodian, where Dan Barken used to live, caught me “soliciting” and told me to beat it. That, I remember.

Anyway, I was caught in unusually heavy traffic a couple of weeks ago and switched on the only station in town that gives traffic reports worth a damn. This means taking a deep breath and listening to some mule-lipped lying loudmouth talk about all that’s wrong with our country. This he does always, even when his party’s in the White House. So I was sitting still there on I-75, drumming the steering wheel and wondering, not for the first time, whether anybody would actually notice if this loudmouth stopped speaking and just barked like a dog, when one of the Thompson Brothers called in. They’d catered some event for him or something the day or the week before, and the loudmouth said something like “You and I may not see eye to eye politically, but I have got to tell you, those were some amazing ribs you cooked for us.” The next couple of minutes were almost pleasant, listening to the loudmouth shut the hell up about his politics and just tell his gigantic audience how wonderful the food here was and how much he appreciated the good job Thompson Brothers did for him.

So I told myself then that I really needed to quit forgetting about this place and get my butt in there. It was in part that the loudmouth, for the first time in perhaps ever, actually sounded genuine about something, and in part that his organization hired these guys and their little store instead of some much better-known brothers with a great big store about four miles up the road who’ve been supporting the loudmouth’s politics for decades. For anybody to shut this loudmouth up for two minutes to just tell the world about some good food was an act that demanded a visit, at last.

The other week, I was writing about Smyrna’s Old South Bar-B-Q and mentioned that there were some other ‘cue joints within a hop, skip and a jump that I had not tried. I was planning then to stop by as soon as it was convenient. This turned out to be Saturday evening; it was a fine little break between watching the UGA game at home and watching the LSU game with my dad at his place. I’m not sure whether the brothers watched either, as they seem to be Sooners fans.

The house specialty here is what they call “The Whole Nine.” This is a giant plate of beef sausage, bologna, ribs and chopped beef. I confess that I was very tempted, but after the previous night’s pizza, I was still, almost a day later, a little stuffed, so I settled on a sandwich. In deference to the Thompson Brothers’ Oklahoma origins, I ordered beef, which I almost never do in barbecue restaurants, with a side of baked beans. My daughter had a pork sandwich with stew. I sampled them and they were very good.

Interestingly, the beef is just wonderful on its own and doesn’t really go all that well with either of their sauces. They have two, a spicy-sweet one and a this-is-far-too-darn-sweet one, and they mix pretty well with the pork, but the beef is so nicely smoked that neither accompany it at all well. On the other hand, perhaps the sweet baked beans helped with the interference in flavor?

I’ve occasionally read that fans of western-style barbecue believe that their meat doesn’t need any sauce. If the Thompson Brothers’ beef, smoked out back in a cinder block smoker, is a good representation of what they have all over Texas and Oklahoma, then they’re right. I still prefer North Carolina-style, but this was a very nice change of pace.

Other blog posts about Thompson Brothers:

My BBQ Blog (Jan. 31 2008)
Smoked Pig and Sweet Tea (July 10 2011)
Foodie Buddha (July 15 2011)
The Georgia Barbecue Hunt (Oct. 7 2011)

Old South Bar-B-Q, Smyrna GA

The last time I wrote, I was talking about Alpharetta’s oldest surviving restaurant. This time, it’s Old South Bar-B-Q, which, since the closure of Fat Boy a couple of years back, has become the longest-lasting place in Smyrna to get something to eat. It’s managed this through three generations of family ownership by creating some remarkable loyalty in their customer base.

Honestly, Old South is about the living definition of hit and miss. You never know what you’re going to get here. I’ve had some very good meals, and I’ve always enjoyed their really, really thick original sauce, but man, can you ever tell when somebody new is in the kitchen chopping, pulling or slicing the meat. Unfortunately, everybody’s meat was a little disappointing this time out. There was just too much fat and gristle on display.

Normally, I get chopped pork whenever I have barbecue, but I guess I was feeling a little contrary and, this past Friday night, asked for pulled pork instead. Marie and I were visiting my folks with my daughter in tow and Old South was my bright idea. My dad didn’t really feel like going out, so I phoned in an order of quite unreasonable complexity – my brother, God bless him, has really specific requirements about how he wants his grub – and they got it exactly right.

The sides here are pretty inconsistent. While I never cared for their potato salad or slaw, their Brunswick stew is among the best around. It’s an almost black brew with lots of stringy meat and corn. Some years back, I took three of my friends from Nashville, Brooke, Dash and Tory, here. None of them had tried Brunswick stew before, and I was glad to set ’em straight with the good stuff first.

Their rings and beans are certainly just fine, but I knew that my dad, who likes their onion rings better than anybody else’s, would have more than enough to share. Dad loves these, especially dipped in Heinz 57 sauce. He has been doing this for better than twenty years and still asks whether I want some, because I “really need to try this.” Overall, this meal was just “okay,” let down by the inconsistent meat. I’ve certainly had considerably better meals here, but I think the next time the road takes us to Old South, I’ll stick to having my pork chopped. It is, nevertheless, better than many of their competitors in this part of Cobb, although I can name two within a hop, skip and a jump that I have not yet tried. There’s something else I need to get on with.

Vittles Restaurant, Smyrna GA

Over on South Cobb Drive, just below Windy Hill, Vittles Restaurant has made its fourth home. It’s been around for better than thirty years – our server explained that she’d been with the business for twenty-eight of them – and has made a name for itself as a place to go when you want a gigantic pile of food for not much money. Most of their staple meals – a meat, two sides, salad and bread – are only $5.99 on the menu. How on earth they’re able to maintain their quality and the portion sizes for that money is a mystery.

Neal, whom we met for lunch on Saturday, has heard a theory that the restaurant subsidizes their meal prices with sales from their gift shop, which starts in the inner foyer and explodes all over the restaurant’s walls. The nicknacks here are really a sight to see. If you need porcelain plaques with Bible verses or large photos of horses with inspirational quotes, this is where to buy them. The interior is absolutely covered with these things, and should you be unfortunate enough to sit in one of the front booths, you might well be stuck underneath a shelf full of statues of sad-eyed children and puppies.

Last month, I wrote about how The Vortex reacted to Georgia banning smoking in restaurants that served minors by banning minors from their restaurant. Vittles took a different approach. They moved to the building next door and turned it into two completely separate dining rooms, with children restricted to the equally-sized non-smoking room. Now I must say that while the staff at the Vortex keep a very sharp eye out for any teens or kids trying to get in, the staffers at Vittles genuinely do not seem to care.

We tried to get a group together here one Thursday last month, but were stymied somewhat. My kids and I arrived first and were told we couldn’t claim a table with room for seven in the non-smoking section because there was going to be a Bible study in 45 minutes’ time. (I suppose that I should clarify that we knew up front that there’s a Bible study at the restaurant on Thursdays, but I didn’t realize that it effectively takes over the restaurant.) So we took a booth until Neal and Tim arrived, and agreed that we’d try a large table in the smoking section. I completely forgot about the law, and it didn’t even occur to me that the kids legally couldn’t enter that room, but, and here’s the kicker, it didn’t occur to anybody else at the restaurant either. When we eventually concluded that the smoke was too heavy for either David or Marie to find comfortable, we paid for our drinks and left. None of the four or five servers or table staff in that section batted an eye at the kids.

Well, the following week, the kids and I stopped by on a whim to give Vittles a chance while Marie was out of town, and I have to say I was glad I did. There is an unfortunate amount of Sysco in the menu – fries and a faux A-1 steak sauce whose packaging steers so close to trademark infringement as to be comical for starters – but the food – I had the pork chops that evening – is mostly quite good and there is a heck of a lot of it.

We returned this Saturday to photograph the place, and the experience was not quite so pleasant. I really don’t appreciate having any politics broadcast at a restaurant, neither mine nor anyone else’s. I think that it runs counter to what I’m looking for in a meal, which I think is to get away from the world, enjoy good company and good conversation, or, if eating by myself, a good book. I do not want politics interfering with my lunch. There exists a small chain of barbecue restaurants in the northern suburbs which I will not revisit because, on two separate occasions when I stopped by for supper before tutoring students in the town of Cumming back in 2000, I had to listen to some loudmouth in the back screaming his lungs off about that year’s scapegoat destroying America.

The omnipresent Fox News on the TV in both non-smoking and the smoking rooms was mildly amusing a month ago, when Glenn Beck was on selling his gold scam to his audience of aging, paranoid suckers. But you know, I was really enjoying my country fried steak and gravy Saturday, and didn’t appreciate the latest big-screen Fox News distraction, and certainly didn’t appreciate the loudmouthed conversation behind me from one of that 18% of the country’s morons who’s convinced our president’s a Muslim because of Sean Hannity’s latest lie. It’s unfair to hold a restaurant accountable for the boorish conduct of its guests, and I don’t, even if they feed their paranoia by turning the TV to Fox instead of a baseball game or something.

We left and I borrowed Neal’s camera to shoot a picture of the building. There’s an American flag out front of the restaurant. This flag is: (a) horribly tattered and torn and ready to be honorably retired, (b) attached in some fashion to an equally tattered and torn old Georgia state flag, the one with the Confederate colors, and (c) upside down. I might have another order of that steak and gravy once they fly a new flag, and hoist it the right way up.