The dish

On the first season of Feasting on Asphalt, Alton Brown and his crew stopped at a tiny place in Toccoa, Georgia, called Shirley’s Sole Food Café. Ethan Martin, a likely first-rounder in this year’s Rule 4 draft, goes to school in Toccoa, and when I finally put two and two together the night before I flew down there, I figured I had to eat a meal at Shirley’s as sort of a pilgrimage. Unfortunately, I was there on a Friday, which is all-you-can-eat fish fry night at Shirley’s, meaning I didn’t get the menu that Alton et al got on their visit. The meal was slightly disappointing, although I was impressed that nothing tasted fishy. The fish is fried in large batches and placed in warming trays up front; you walk along the counter and point to what you want. The fried shrimp were the best option, in a crunchy crust (like panko, but can you really get panko bread crumbs out there?), while the fried tilapia ended up a bit chewy. It was $12 for the fish fry, plus another $8 if you wanted fresh steamed crab legs … which I did, receiving more crab legs than I could eat. They were fresh and had a lot of meat, but the meat itself was a little bland, lacking that distinctive undertone of sweetness that, for me, has always separated crab from lobster.

This week, I was driving down 19/41 to Griffin to see Tim Beckham when I passed McGhin’s Southern Pit Barbecue and saw the parking lot was pretty full for lunchtime on a weekday, so I pulled in. It certainly looked the part, and the menu was pretty straightforward without a lot of descriptions – the type of place that assumes you know your Q. However, it turned out to be more evidence that, as JC Bradbury told me last year, there is no good barbecue in Georgia. I went with a pork/beef platter, which came with piles of shredded meat plus two sides and “cracklin’ cornbread.” That cornbread was the only item on the plate to which I’d give an average grade (it was plus, plenty of fat in it and no sugar). Both meats were very dry and more chopped than shredded; I hate to be forced to add sauce to pulled pork or beef because it needs the moisture, and it was worse because the sauce was North Carolina style, heavy on the vinegar, which to my palate means one-dimensional. The baked beans were also too vinegary and more like a soup than actual baked beans. I didn’t even touch the coleslaw because it was sitting in a pool of a mayo-based dressing; God only knows what microbes might be living in there. For dessert – I had room – I got the peach cobbler, when in Rome, etc. It was more of a deconstructed peach pie, with a pie crust mixed in with the filling of a peach pie. (A cobbler dough is more akin to a biscuit dough than a pie crust dough, lighter and a little cakey rather than the flaky and tender and very fatty characteristics of pie dough.) The filling was overcooked and had way more cornstarch than needed to thicken it. I have to give the waitress credit, however; when I said I didn’t know what Brunswick stew was and, after she described it, decided not to order it as a side, she brought a tiny dish of it to me anyway so I could try it. I wish I could have said better things about the food, but I’m not going to lie to you – it just wasn’t good.

It’s also time for another update on Paschal’s. I went to the original location on MLK Jr. Drive in downtown Atlanta for breakfast, and the food was generally quite good and was made to order. I decided to branch out and try the salmon croquettes, a platter that comes with two eggs cooked to order, home fries, and a biscuit. The waitress actually asked me whether I wanted my eggs scrambled hard, medium, or soft, which is the first time I’ve ever been asked that; I went with soft, and they were perfect for me, although if you like ‘em runny they may seem overdone. The biscuit was excellent, very soft, but without much of a crust – the top was golden, but it was like a thin layer of parchment paper rather than the traditional semi-hard crust. The supposed star of the dish, the croquettes, were obviously made from tinned salmon and had a fishy taste that couldn’t really be avoided.

I also revisited the Paschal’s in the Atlanta airport before my flight home, and at the suggestion of one of you, tried the collard greens. They had a strong cured-pork flavor – I’m assuming ham hock – and the sweetness of a little sugar, although nothing can disguise the fact that collard greens, even cooked properly for hours, are bitter. And this time around, I got my quarter-dark fried chicken, which could not have been more perfectly cooked.