One day last month, Marie and the three year-old and I needed to run up to Chattanooga to pick up the girlchild, and we decided to make a day of it, with lots and lots of things to do. Now, on the previous week’s drive to Alabama, we made it a mostly barbecue trip, but this time out, we only revisited a single barbecue joint, about ten miles north of the state line up I-75 near the town of Ooltewah. I had gone to Couch’s four years ago and, especially since it’s such a unique style of presentation, I wanted to try it again and let Marie see what it was like. Continue reading “Couch’s Barbecue, Ooltewah TN (take two)”
Tag: tennessee
Gibson’s Donuts, Memphis TN (take two)
Here’s a very short little post for you today, readers. The last time we were in Memphis, we stopped by Gibson’s Donuts on our way out of town, with a light and gentle rain beginning to fall, and I took terrible photos, and we sped out of there as quickly as possible for what would be the beginning of a really, really long and exhausting drive home though a monsoon. With a flat tire. This time, I wanted to try a little harder and capture the fun place, which opened in 1967, a little better. Continue reading “Gibson’s Donuts, Memphis TN (take two)”
Dyer’s Cafe, Collierville TN
In 2012, Mark McMinn celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Dyer’s by moving the restaurant – the version that he owns, anyway – further out east from Memphis, to the town square of a lovely, sleepy little suburb called Collierville. There has been some pushing and pulling as to whose is the one, true Dyer’s, because there’s another restaurant by that name in downtown Memphis, on Beale Street, pulling in the tourist dollars, but after I read Hamburgers & Fries: An American Story by John T. Edge, I figured that the McMinn-owned Dyer’s was the one to visit. He says that his father, Kahn Aaron, worked for “Doc” Dyer in the 1920s and bought the restaurant from him in 1935. Continue reading “Dyer’s Cafe, Collierville TN”
Germantown Commissary, Germantown TN
After our lunch in Mississippi, we returned to Memphis, picked up our daughter, took her shopping, and then went to Marie’s sister’s house to spend the afternoon with her. They played Carcasonne – I’m open to most any game, but this one’s appeal has long eluded me – and, several hours later, the convention finished, their brother Karl joined us for some Munchkin, and then we convoyed out east along Poplar Avenue for ages and ages, to the suburb of Germantown. Continue reading “Germantown Commissary, Germantown TN”
Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q, Memphis TN
As the day wrapped up, and after we enjoyed a trip to the amazing Shangri-La Records, we picked up Marie and her sister from the con, dropped her at work, and drove on to our fourth barbecue destination, and then ran into a disappointment. I’d been looking forward to visiting Payne’s as our final stop on the Saturday expedition, but I did not do the proper research. They’re only open for lunch. We wouldn’t have one of their celebrated pig sandwiches on this visit after all. So we went back to the hotel for me to reconsider plans, and everything turned out all right. I even got to learn about a long-vanished chain of barbecue restaurants that I did not know about previously. Continue reading “Three Little Pigs Bar-B-Q, Memphis TN”
Tops Bar-B-Que, Memphis TN
Well, I done Tops wrong, to be blunt. I had mistakenly assumed that they were a sort of Memphis version of some other regional fast food barbecue chains, like Whitt’s or Rick’s in middle Tennessee / northern Alabama, or Buddy’s around Knoxville, where meat is smoked in one location and moved around to others and kept in warmers. It turns out that Tops, which has fourteen stores in the area – one of which is across the river in Arkansas, and another two in Mississippi – smokes the meat in each location. They use an indoor pit in each store, and the children and I visited the oldest existing restaurant on Rhodes Avenue in East Memphis, thinking, incorrectly, that they do all the smoking here. Continue reading “Tops Bar-B-Que, Memphis TN”
Cozy Corner Restaurant, Memphis TN
My plans for the day o’ barbecue in Memphis took a hit when the venerable, and extremely popular, Cozy Corner Restaurant was damaged by a fire in January and was forced to close. Happily, a few days before our trip, Southern Living writer Robert Moss tweeted out that they would reopen in temporary digs across the street. The owners of Encore Cafe had reached out to them, giving Cozy Corner a stopover home with an abbreviated menu while their restaurant was repaired. Continue reading “Cozy Corner Restaurant, Memphis TN”
Marie, Let's Eat! 