You Can't Always Get What You Want...

My first experience with Fox Brothers BBQ in candler Park was so positive that it was instantly catapulted into "favored restaurant status", mainly because of a massive beef short rib my "special someone" ordered. It was tender and juicy on the inside, charred to black on the outside, and looked like the brontosaurus ribs that toppled Fred Flintstone's car in the cartoon series. Seriously, the two of us ate off that thing for two or three days! Amazing would be an understatement.

I was excited to hit the joint up for my final meal of 2010 with my pal Rosie, but this time there were a few disappointments.

I was under the impression (from previous visits) that the short rib was only available Thursdays thru Saturdays, but I was wrong. It's only Thursdays and Saturdays, meaning that short rib lovers were SOL for NYE. Sensing my obvious disappointment, our waitress didn't hesitate to offer up an alternative, the beef tenderloin (only available on Friday nights from 7pm-9pm) which she said was the "best entree they serve". How could I say no to that hard sell?

I decided to go with the combo plate. Two meats - the aforementioned tenderloin & sliced beef brisket and two sides - brisket chili & tater tots. Simple enough, right? Not for our waitress. Not. Even. Close. she nailed the tenderloin, but completely missed the mark on the other meat and the two sides. I was going to complain, but the onion rings on my plate looked so good that I just gave Rosie a shrug, rolled up my sleeves, and got down to business.

The meats didn't disappoint. The tenderloin was as advertised, looking more like a really good slab of Ahi Tuna than something that came from a cow. The pulled pork? top-notch. It's what a BBQ joint's reputation is built on, meat. The onion rings were big, with the right ratio of crispness to greasiness. My mac & cheese stood out on the plate for its complete lack of flavor - I had to strain (not to mention add heaps of salt & pepper) just to taste them. If I had to make a comparison, I would liken their mac & cheese to those dehydrated meal kits my Grandparents stocked up on in anticipation to the post-Y2K world. Yuck.

Judging by meat alone, Fox Brothers is probably the best in Atlanta. Their sauce is excellent too, and they get bonus points for having such a wide array of sauces on the table to please any palate (helloTexas Pete and Hotlanta). What makes me want to steer clear are the aloof attitudes from the waitstaff and the fine-dining prices. Dropping an Andrew Jackson at a BBQ joint is ridiculous and embarrasing, shining a light on the hubris of Fox Brothers. They're good, but they're not that much better than the competition to justify the Texas-size check.

Out of the special = Falling out of favor

This is tough for me. My favorite coffeehouse in Little 5 Points has been Aurora coffee ever since I set foot in the ATL. It's got the flyers for all the indie rock shows coming to town, hipster art on the walls, free wifi, a "customer loyalty" program, pretty damn good coffee, and (perhaps most importantly) it's not a Starbucks. It has all the bells and whistles of a tip-top coffee shop, but I still find myself having sort of a beef with the joint.

That's right - I have a beef with Aurora coffee.

I'm like a lot of people out there: I need coffee. I like coffee and oftentimes when I'm enjoying a late morning stroll through the neighborhood with my "special someone" I will duck into a coffee shop and fork over a five-spot for two 16 oz (don't even call it a Venti) cups of this dark, fragrant nectar for us to sugar up and enjoy. It's a simple pleasure that wakes up our senses and brings us together.

Aurora features a house blend, a daily special from some exotic tropical/war-torn region of the globe, and an increasingly annoying habit of being out of the daily special.

My "special someone" and I are so accustomed to the disappointment of having to drink the chopped liver-esque house blend instead of the daily special that we've taken to rolling our eyes at the small chalkboard at the register. Today was more of the same. The special was once again from some tropical/war-torn geographical region, and when I asked for two 16 oz cups of this dark, fragrant nectar we were informed that one of us was going to have to drink the chopped liver-esque house blend because "there's only enough of the special for one cup".

Really? We weren't surprised.

My "special someone" has been onto the antics of Aurora's hipster Baristas for quite some time. I've defended them, always urging her to "give the benefit of the doubt" or some such cliche, but with today's unfortunate java debacle she has finally won me over, hence my current beef with Aurora.

Hipster Barista, will you answer me this: is it really that hard to maintain two kinds of coffee for your paying public? Is the stress of your Urban Outfitters lifestyle too much that you are fraught with ineptitude when it comes to monitoring the levels of preexisting coffee in your urns? Are those tight hipster jeans such a distraction that you cannot operate the grinder machine for sufficiaent lengths of time to maintain a suitable supply of the daily special concurrently with the house blend?

I'm not going to let myself be a victim of your chopped liver-esque house blend again when it is special coffees from tropical/war-torn regions I crave - I'm taking my happy ass (and the happy ass of my "special someone") somewhere else next time.

As soon as I earn enough stamps for my free cup of whatever you have left.

I want to get sauced!

There's just something about BBQ. When I moved to the south in 2007 I was unaware that it was such a big deal. People in the south have loyalties to certain styles of sauce, certain dilapidated shacks are elevated to shrine-like status because (they all seem to make some sort of butt joke) "we have the best butts in town" or some other bad pig pun.

I'm not an expert on BBQ, but I know what I like.

I saw a billboard for a place on the Northwest side of Atlanta called Hottie Hawg's. It advertised "smokin' BBQ" and had a cartoon pin-up girl with a red dress, great legs, a pig nose and a curly tail. How could I resist trying a new place out, especially since I hardly find myself on that side of town? I followed the arrows through a part of town I've only been in a few times and finally found the restaurant.

The building looked like an old brick house converted to a restaurant. I liked the exterior paint job and the vibe, although it's obviously a newer operation and almost too sanitized for my taste. I strut in, ask for a menu, and almost immediately decide on the pulled pork sandwich (if you can't get that right, there's no use trying anything else on the menu). Since I was on the clock, I grabbed it to go and ate it in the edit bay as I ingested footage of angry Target customers returning crappy Christmas gifts.


 

The first thing I noticed was the tiny cup of sauce. Nowhere near enough to get that meat wet. If "the secret is in the sauce" as some BBQ connoisseurs claim, then I say, "let me have some of that sauce!" For real, Hottie Hawg - don't be so stingy! I'd like to tell you about the sauce, but there really wasn't enough to taste after it was applied to the meat.

Speaking of meat, theirs was tender and flavorful. I like that there were some larger chunks in there to mix things up texture-wise. There was some sort of dry seasoning blend shaken on the meat that I thought was pretty good, but all I really wanted was more BBQ sauce. The kaiseresque bun was apparently buttered and fried on a griddle which was a really nice touch, a bun that good could really make the sandwich sing if they'd only give you more sauce. A lot of BBQ places just cop out and give you a crappy piece of dry Wonder bread that just gets thrown away or, in my case gets fed to my fiance's roommate's begging dogs.

I chose the baked beans as a side, and they were ok, maybe a little bland. There were some pretty interesting side-item choices on the menu that I will definitely choose over the baked beans next time. I would love to try the "southern fried bottle cap pickles and peppers with tiger ranch sauce" or even "Uncle Cooter's stew" even if the idea of "Uncle Cooter" kind of grosses me out in ways that should be self-evident.

They were out of paper "to-go" menus, so it's up to word-of-mouth for this restaurant to get their name out there. They have a good thing going with the name and the image, the smoke and the meat seem to be working, but without bigger portions of BBQ sauce, the lifesblood of any good BBQ joint, this place won't last, even if they are across the street from a fire station.

Here's the deal...

This is a forum for ME to tell YOU what I like or dislike about things. Mainly food. I won't hesitate to shovel mighty heaps of "critical praise" on a place that blows my mind with something funky, fresh, and fantastic; nor will I shirk my "critical responsibility" to "rip a restaurant a new one" if I am displeased with an experience.

Think of me as a "poor man's" Cliff Bostock.