Grub Notes

There and Back Again

originally published April 5, 2006

Afield: Sometimes (now, for example), the restaurant industry in Athens can’t quite keep up with your voracious need for food news. New places don’t open in a regularly spaced way. They tend to bunch together in difficult-to-manage clumps. So on a recent Saturday, I headed out north of Athens. The J&J Flea Market (11661 Commerce Rd.) has various food options, many in trailers. After the location of Peaches that used to be there closed, there wasn’t much in the way of downhome cooking, but The Broken Arrow Café has taken its place nicely. With a long line at lunch (11 a.m. to 3 p.m.) and sweet girls in ponytails asking you what you’d like, it covers the basics. Fried chicken is a bit dry and turnip greens pleasingly not too sweet, but the mac and cheese is the most interesting item available. Erring on the side of the white sauce rather than the cheese-heavy approach endorsed by the New York Times, it turns out more like spaetzle than the traditional American dish, with a soft blandness that somehow keeps you going back for more. It speaks of our deep-seated need for butter, our desire for comfort, and it almost explains why people constantly crave the familiar over the new. After having filled up there, my companion and I pressed on nonetheless, toward Zeb’s Bar-B-Q (5742 Highway 29 N. (past Danielsville), 706-795-2701). Heading out 29, you will see the numbers go down to nothing and then, once you’ve gone through the town square, they’ll gradually start to climb again. Press on until you see the crowd of 20 pickup trucks. They’re as good an indicator as the sign, which pictures the founder of the place, chomping on a ceegar. Zeb’s has been open nearly half a century, and yet they still manage to take credit cards, sometimes a sign that provokes suspicion in a barbecue joint. The 'cue itself, available for takeout by the pound either hot or cold (the staff will advise you on which is more suited to your needs, depending on how soon you plan to eat it), is a little disappointing/ passable, certainly, but nothing like the mouth joy produced by Hometown and Paul’s. The sauce, however, is a wicked thing, a dark concoction of spices that get progressively more peppery as you reach the bottom of the container, no matter how much you try to keep it stirred. Consider it the young Joan Crawford of Georgia 'cue sauces: snarly, beautiful, quite the spitfire. The interior, as you no doubt know, is a shrine to Dale Earnhardt, with other NASCAR drivers peering out of corners. And stacked by the cash register are wrapped slices of cake in a rainbow of choices: red velvet, strawberry, 7-Up, caramel. They couldn’t be purtier, and they shouldn’t be missed.

Intown: A while back, I learned and passed on that Taqueria Mi Tierra (1280 Oconee St., 706-549-0453) was offering pozole, a traditional Mexican stew of pork and corn. Well, it’s still not listed on the menu, but if you order it, it will come. You would tend to assume, upon hearing a major ingredient is hominy, that it would be ground, more like grits, but the kernels are cooked individually in pozole, ending up more like gnocchi than polenta in their size and bite. Chunks of pork sometimes too big for a bite are in there too, lurking in the huge bowl of mildly spicy red broth that’s more than a meal for one person. Lettuce and tostada shells come on the side; I went with the saltines approach for the latter and ignored the former, as my tongue didn’t need cooling. At $6.99 when not on special, it could probably feed two fairly hungry people, especially when combined with the salsa bar you can keep going back to. Chimichangas in pineapple, strawberry and banana are also now advertised on the board, but I was too taken with the soup that ate like a meal to try one.

What Up?: Mellow Mushroom tends to be cagey and weird about its plans whenever I inquire, but the word seems to be that the downtown location will become Cold Nose Dave’s, with a selection of house-brewed beers in addition to the bazillion bottled elsewhere they already offer. Proving we don’t all experience the same restaurant in the same way, one reader affirmed that the steak frites at Rouge was perfectly done, while another concurred with my general take and asked what has changed at Agua Linda recently to make it less good than it used to be. Watkinsville is getting its own Jittery Joe’s at Greensboro Highway and Main Street in May or June. And The Atlanta Bread Company is looking at Epps Bridge Road for an Athens location.

Hillary Brown See? Your feedback can be read by dozens of people. Email food@flagpole.com.

Hillary Brown

See? Your feedback can be read by dozens of people. Email food@flagpole.com.