punkerque

Man!

We always want these places to have great Q. We really, really, truly want these cool, small, ramshackle cabins with polaroids of past Presidents to have good Q. Why is it that so many of them don’t? I really don’t get it. Is it because the owners have been doing it so long they always taste smoke and don’t realize their pork could easily be mistaken for pot roast? Maybe. Maybe it was never good, but the clientele never knew any better. Maybe we always end up there on non pit days and get old meat. I have no idea, it vexes me.

Pink Pig BBQ is in Cherry Log, GA. We have driven by it several times when up north cabinizing, detoxing and retoxing. On this trip we had met with good food from GA Boys BBQ, so we were hopeful that our lingering doubts of returning home would be covered in swine goodness. Alas, the only thing that we liked about the place was the fact that they had 3 picnic tables outside so we could enjoy the Sunday morning air with our dogs.

We ordered the usual:

Husband: Pork Plate with stew, potato salad.
Punkerdoo: Pork Plate with stew, potato salad.

The meat was pre-sauced with a ketchup based sauce. The sauce was bland and not good. The pork had little to do with Cherry Logs or any other form of wood and it was cold. The Brunswick stew had ground beef in it. A first for us. Pretty sure I disliked it strongly. Once again a drag as it is supposedly, magically, arcanely cooked in a giant cast iron pot. We really want things like this to work….damn. The potato salad made Kroger’s potato salad look like a good option.

Understand, we did not want to come back home that day. We ate and left Pink Pig in a hurry. Bummer.

This is the worst review I have ever given to a Q joint. I feel bad and I hope that our visit was just a working of stars that colluded to make our food so un-memorable. Then again, it was across the board bad.

You can decide on your own.

Pink Pig
824 Cherry Log Street
Cherry Log, GA 30522

Our campsite at Road Atlanta is literally 30 feet from the back straight. People can become very hungry watching Ferraris, Porsches, Audis and other fantastic sports cars roaring by at three times the legal limit. You need food that you can ignore for hours while it cooks. You need Q.

The problem is when you are far away (in this case 43 miles) from your pit, you need to use what you have handy. In this case, we used our old water smoker and a few pieces of firewood we were not allowed to burn to keep warm. (thanks Hall county) The ingredients are simple, you need a 7-10lb pork butt and some sort of dry rub. In this case we used Bad Byron’s Butt Rub which works great if you don’t have the time or resources to make you own.

You wash the butt, pat it dry, oil it down with some olive oil (not extra virgin, no need here) and coat the outside with your rub. Some let it sit, some put it in the fridge. Me, I put it in a zip-loc or wrap it in plastic wrap and throw it on the counter (much to punkerdoo’s distress) while I make fire. Fire! Fire!

I alway make sure to fill the water bowl before I start the fire, so that it warms up as the flame gathers. The water bowl is really nothing more than a way of keeping the temp level, it doesn’t provide much (if any) moisture to the meat. At home, I always throw a bunch of aromatics in the water bowl just to make the air smell just that much better. Once you have your wood burning well; flames, but past the blaze point, throw the butt on the rack fat side up.

Come back in 4 or 5 hours to throw another log (in this case red oak and maybe some white) in the fire.

Come back in 3 or 4 hours to check the fire and the butt. It should look like you burned it to a crisp, but if you poke it with your finger, it will give way easily and ooze at you. 8-10 hours is about right for that weight and a low fire.

If you have decided the butt is done, pull it from the smoker and wrap it in aluminum foil. Let it sit (rest) for 1 hour minimum. Some people put it in a small cooler, I just make sure its not sitting on ice. Wait. You must wait.

After a minimum of 1 hour, you can pull the pork. Grab it and rip it in half. It will burn you. This is fun. If it won’t twist in half, you either bought a really crappy boston butt or you did not cook it long enough. If this is the case you will need to chop it (ever wonder why the difference in BBQ places between pulled pork and chopped pork?).

If you cooked it right it will easily shred into small pieces. You will not have to wonder if you have done it right. It it falls apart, you are golden. If not, better luck next time. When you get it right, you will know. You will start to pull the meat and you will realize the difference since the last time when it was not quite right. You will be pleased with yourself.

eat

In this example, we put the butt on around 10:30 or so in the morning, fed it a log around 3, fed it again around 6 and wrapped it about 7 or 8. Our neighbor came over about 5 and yelled at us for torturing him all day. He said “you did the same thing to me last year, starved me all day long with your smoked pork.” Sorry Barry, nothing personal.

[[Slideshow]]

If you head north out of Athens on GA29, you will come to the intersection of 29 and 106. A quick left onto 106 (Forston Road) will show your the parking lot for Bill’s BBQ. We had seen it several times coming back into town from SC, but had never stopped. One Monday we tried to have lunch there, but apparently Bill’s is dark then. Months later we made it back.

Smells like fry grease inside. The walls are covered in Dawg posters and memorabilia so that’s cool. They had a great picture of Richt talking to Meyer with augmented with (paraphrase) right over there we will do a team dance. We also are going to sack you Heisman winner 5 times…….(/paraphrase)

This doesn’t really seem like a Q place. They have too many things in the menu which are not Q; Bill’s Burgers and Fries might be a better name. Anyway, the counter help was hugely lacking in Southern Hospitality and seemed bothered by our presence. When we ordered our pork plates, we were asked, “Hot or Mild?”. This ended up meaning that they were going to dump some cayenne based sauce on our pork. By the time we got home, the pork had absorbed all of the sauce liquid and we were left with some dried on cayenne. The plate apparently had no options and included a huge amount of stew and very little pork. Picture your standard three hole styro to-go conatiner; the little one on the top left was pork, the big one on the bottom was full of stew…..Bill’s Deep-Fried Brunswick Stew Palace? The stew was good, the pork was ok.

Its a hassle for us to get to, the counter was indifferent and the Q was mediocre. We’d say skip it and go somewhere else.

Ambiance rating: 1 Squealers

(Only the Bulldog posters kept the grease at bay)

Food rating: 1 Squealers

(meh, it wasn’t bad)

Beer rating: 0 Squealers

(Nada)

Must get away…..Must be somewhere else…….Go to Mountains, Stay in cabin, Bring the barky-barks.

Bailed work early on Friday, loaded food, wine, dogs & Punkerdoo into VehicleOfPunkerdooAndHusband and headed for Cherry Log via R53N. Our plan was to hope to hit East Ellijay in time to try what was reputed to be some of North Georgia’s best Q.

Luck was on our side and we arrived ~7pm (Poole’s closes @ 8PM on Friday). The place is easy to find as it is just off of 515. The outside is fine example of kitsch overload with a towering “pig hall of fame” hill and hand painted signs and cars. We pulled into the parking lot and were immediately greeted with the fine smell of hickory. Poole’s has outside seating, so we were going to have our dogs eat with us. We opened the back to let them out and immediately discovered Rainah had chewed her leash into bitesized chunks. Load them back up and travel to Ingles for a replacement leash. Back to Poole’s ~7:30. We ordered our standard:

Punkerdoo: Pork Plate with slaw & potato salad
Husband: Pork Plate with slaw & stew

They had 2 sauce choices on the “to go” counter, so I obtained portions of each. When we opened our containers, we found that our pork had been pre-sauced. If you have read any of my previous posts, you know that I think that pre-sauceing is evil. So then, strike one. The pork was not too moist, nor too dry, not really anywhere so I guess it was OK. There was more smoke in the air from the pit than was in the meat, but there was some evidence of smokey flavor. The slaw was not my favorite, though I cannot remember why. The stew was 1st rate, but no one remembers the potato salad. I guess that pretty much sums of the food, edible, but not memorable. Oh yeah, why do people serve toasted buns as bread? Buns are buns, things to contain sandwhich items, NOT to be eaten as bread. We did hit them near closing, so I suppose they need some compensation for that, but not much. We would eat at Poole’s BBQ again, but will try some of the others in the area before returning.

Ambiance rating: 3 Squealers

(Smells great outside, 1000′s of pigs with customer’s names)

Food rating: 2 Squealers

(ok smoke, 2 sauce choices, meat ok-moist but pre-sauced, stew was remembered)

Beer rating: 0 Squealers

(Nada)

HEY! Guess what? I am going to review a Q joint that is not on Hwy 441.

Punkerdoo and I were on our way to Chapel Hill, NC to help Photo Specialties with their Bid Day. We hit Charlotte around lunch time, so we asked Guy (remember him?) where we might locate some sustenance.

Guy came up with several suggestions, one of which involved a “seafood barn & BBQ” in the title. As LongHairedBrotherOfPhotographerInGermanyWhoWorkedForHusband would say, NOT! We were torn between Bubba’s and Smokehouse. We decided Smokehouse might well be a chain and that anyone who would call their place Bubba’s was either crazy or closed or both. Bubba’s turned out to be a very good choice.

They are proponents of Eastern North Carolina BBQ. This means Hickory smoke and vinegar based sauce. In addition, it might also mean hushpuppies instead of white bread; not sure, but that is what they gave us.

At any rate, we knew we were in the right place when we parked next to a local Sherrif’s Deputy. Cops always know where to eat. Then again, I suppose he could have been serving someone or busting up a ketchup based sauce ring.

Back to the food. It was a busy place, but we were seated immediately. Sweet tea? No, non sweet and lemonade please.

We ordered the $7.99 lunch special.

Punkerdoo: Pork Plate, Baked Beans, Potato Salad
Husband: Pork Plate, Slaw, Potato Salad.

The baked beans ruled! Just a hint of molasses. The slaw was pretty good too, it was mustard based which was a new one for me. The Q was excellent; it had just enough smoke and was very moist without having that I just got microwaved look and feel. Please go eat Bubba’s Q. You will be happy you did.

Ambiance rating: 2 Squealers

(Nice, clean, T-shirts, paneling, paneling….They did have a pig out front though.)

Food rating: 4 Squealers

(good smoke, one very good sauce for pork, meat moist)

Beer rating: 0 Squealers

(Nada)

If find it really strange that while most resturants have names that do everything to hide the fact that you will actually be consuming food (and probably food that is not good for you), BBQ joints go out of their way to remind you that you are going to eat PIG. As someone once said, “pork fat rules!”

Punkerdoo and I had to head to Ohio to attend cousinofpunkerdoo’s Big Fat Greek Wedding (no relation to the aforementioned fat pig.) We had just purchased a Mio C220 so we thought it might be fun to drive by a completely ridiculous route just to piss off the GPS. We decided to call our GPS “Guy” (Think French..Ghee).

We were going north on 441 and wanted to do whatever was necessary to keep from driving through the Park and into Gatlinburg. When we hit Franklin, NC we decide to have lunch. We asked Guy about where to eat some Q and he started spouting directions that led us through some residential section of town, down what looked like an alley and suddenly we were in the back lot of a strip mall. About the time Guy said, “you have arrived”, we saw the sign for Fat Buddies. Guy rules!

Anyway, being the suspicious and doubting type, I try to avoid stipmalls in practice and stripmall BBQ on ethics. However, we were here and we were hungry, so we went in. The place is big and was very busy. We noticed when walking up that there was no tell-tale scent of hickory or oak in the air, so my alarm bells were going off.

We were seated immediatley and looked at the menu. This place has many things other than Q, but they also seemed centered around ribs (as if the t-shirts stating “I sucked bones at Fat Buddies” didn’t give that away). They did have several options on “smoke cooked pork” so we went for the standard pork plate (.50 extra for pulled rather than chopped)

Husband had pork plate with slaw and potato salad (no stew on menu)
Punkerdoo has pork plate with fries and potato salad

HEY! The meat tasted like smoke cooked pork. Wood cooked BBQ that actually has some essence of smoke in it! Weird. Then I remembered that we noticed no signs of a pit. Maybe this Q was cooked in an oven that had a sawdust smoker attached….. The purist in me hopes not, but damn the meat was proper.

At any rate, give Fat Buddies a try, they have 3 locations.

Ambiance rating: 3 Squealers

(Nice, clean, many “country” and NASCAR things on the wall. Looks just like a BBQ place in a NC strip mall)

Food rating: 4 Squealers

(good smoke, several sauce choices, meat moist)

Beer rating: 3 Squealers

(Beer & Wine)

If you head south on I-95, you are bombarded by Sonny’s BBQ billboards. While they do tend to make one hungry, the thought of having to eat at one keeps us looking for local BBQ eateries. The problem with looking for M&P food while driving on an Interstate is that they tend not to advertise. As we were just about to cross over in Florida, I spied a small sign near Brunswick, GA “GA Pig BBQ”. We we got off I95 and turned left onto Route 82 into a swath of gas stations and fast food joints. We were encouraged by the sudden appearance of what looked like a large shack that had been ripped from its life in the swamp and deposited amid some weeping willows and pine trees. Perfect! The parking lot was dirt and gravel and there were no sidewalks other than pine straw. It was 3 in the afternoon, so the lot was empty; however the OPEN neon in the window was lit. Several signs on the outside warned against 4-legged animals on the porch and cameras on the inside. Better and better.
It was nearly 100F outside and not much cooler inside even though there was a window unit or two cranking away. Once inside, you realize that this shack had never been moved as the ceiling doubles the roof and the exposed rafters and beams were actual pine trees. Their open pit is inside and next to the counter which makes for a hot and smoky atmosphere. Enough about the building, on to the food.

Husband ordered a pork plate with stew and potato salad.
Punkerdoo had a pork plate with stew and slaw.

The pork plate is served open faced on toasted buns and is pre-sauced. Personally, I prefer to sauce my own food, so this was a strike against the pig. They did have an amazing assortment of hot sauces available, but the only BBQ sauce on the table was the same ketchup based sauce as what was on the plate. We also don’t really like ketchup based sauces, but when in Brunswick…..

We found it really amazing that there was so much smoke and flavor in the air but none in the pork. The meat was fresh and moist (we watched the guy chop it up), but the lack of smoke made us realize why they slather their sauce on the meat.

The stew was really good though, you could actually pick out recognizable vegetables such as lima beans and corn. So many times stew looks like it has been run through a food processor, so this was a treat. I guess if you want good Brunswick stew, you need to order it in Brunswick, GA.

I had ordered a bottle of water, but Punkerdoo ordered lemonade which was served from a communal thermos at a center table. There must be some heavy concentrations of sulfur in their local water supply because the lemonade smelled so much like rotten eggs that it was undrinkable.

We are not sure what the deals was with the meat, they had obviously been doing this for quite some time, maybe we just expect too much flavor? We would still pick it over Sonny’s though.

Ambiance rating: 4 Squealers

(Looks and smells EXACTLY like a proper Southern BBQ shack

Food rating: 1 Squealers

(no smoke, no sauce choices, meat moist but pre-sauced, stew was excellent!)

Beer rating: 0 Squealers

(No beer, and stick to bottled drinks)

Air Quality rating: 3 Squealers

(if you are a piece of meat)

I know, 2 BBQ places in 2 days. Too bad! We will probably try Bill’s BBQ (just outside of Athens on N29) on Monday. Hell, I think we might just smoke our own butt for the 4th.

Jot Em Down BBQ is in our minds (and mouths) the best Q in the Athens area. That is, aside from our own Actually, it is the best commercial BBQ we have had.

It is consistently moist and smoky. The sauces are varied and good and the banana pudding is always tip-top.

We keep wondering why the more established places in the area can’t get as much flavor in their pork. I guess that Jot Em Down just pays more attention.

Jot Em Down is based in the old Williams’ Grocery on Whitehall Road near the Barnett Shoals Road intersection. The building was built around 1924, and operated “as a country store serving everything from fresh cut meat to hardware, toys and gasoline.” Today, they sell Q, ribs, and white bread. They also have their own line of Chow, tomato relish and other pickled BBQ requirements. The interior looks just like a 20′s grocery with rough hewn floors, trap doors and Redneck Greece head shots.

Try them out, you won’t be disappointed. Order the pork plate with slaw and stew (potato salad if you are feeling perky). I prefer the hot sauce (vinegar and cayenne) Punkerdoo goes mild. I have not tried the XX-hot as i prefer my green sauce to be on my enchaladas.

Ambiance rating: 4 Squealers

(We have never eaten in, but the place just oozes cool. Then again, we are quite fond of loud music in old grocery stores)

Food rating: 4 Squealers

(good smoke, several sauce choices, meat most usually moist, stew & slaw are good)

Beer rating: 1 Squealers

(No beer, but you can tell they are really sorry about it)

On the Hartwell side of Danielsville is Zeb’s BBQ. I had read that this was the place to go in the Athens area for proper Q. As we were coming down from SC, we pulled off I85 at R77 and then took R29S back into Athens. We saw many a Q shack on the way, so there are more places to try.

Zeb’s looked like the place to get good Q as it was in a small building along the road not really anywhere near a town. The place was a flurry of activity even though it was 4pm on a Saturday. We stood in line at the counter to place our order, but were surprised to find out that we needed to sit down and order from a menu.

I ordered the pork plate with slaw, stew and SierraMist ( I HATE sweet tea) and Punkerdoo had the same only with Lemonade. The pork was very moist and tasted just like moist pork. That is to say, there was no hint of smoke flavoring whatsoever. We were really disappointed as this was purported to be the authentic North Georgia Q place. The sauce wasn’t bad, but I think the sauce should be an option rather than a requirement. The sign outside says “Hickory Smoked”. I guess that means that Andrew Jackson was addicted to nicotine.

We will try Zeb’s again, but I doubt we will go out of our way to do so.

Ambiance rating: 3 Squealers

(short ceilings, everything you need on the table, posters and faded pix on the wall. No stuffed animals AFAIKR)

Food rating: 2 Squealers

(ZERO smoke, one good sauce, meat very moist, stew & slaw were good)

Beer rating: 0 Squealers

(Nada, unless sweet tea counts )