Chicken and the Egg, Marietta, GA (November, 2011)

One Sunday, after church, we were looking for some place new to eat.   As we're pulling out of the parking lot, I hit Open Table and searched for places nearby and took a look.  Up popped Chicken and the Egg, near the square in Marietta.  We read the reviews and decided to give it a try.  

Their premise is "Modern Farmstead Fare".  Apparently, every new Southern retauranteur's grandmother (regardless of their place of birth - Atlanta, GA, Jackson, MS or Long Island, NY) served pimiento cheese and deviled eggs at all dinners.  They're on EVERY menu.  So we started with the pimiento cheese to see how it stacked up.

Fairly well.  Not as good as that as Rosebud (in Morningside) or Local 3 (kind of in Buckhead) - my current favorites - but very tasty.   We (technically, I) emptied the jelly jar.

Jo ordered the Farm House Burger - house ground beef, fried egg, Nueske's bacon - with fries and said it was good.  

In case you aren't familiar with Nueske's bacon, it is mighty good stuff.  Apple wood smoked and cured with love.   Mmmmmm.


I believe the true test of the caliber of a southern cook is in their ability to properly fry chicken.  You'd think that a place with such a fowl name would prominently feature their chicken.  So I ordered the fried chicken with mac-n-cheese and green beans.   On a side note, ordering the green beans was a challenge - I was trying to determine how they were cooked (French-style? Slow-cooked?) and couldn't seem to get the waiter to understand my question.

When my meal arrived, the beans were indeed Southern style.  The mac-n-cheese was fresh.  And the fried chicken was good.  Not great, but good.  I'd go back and eat there again, but don't feel the need to have the fried chicken again.

Big Pie in the Sky Pizzeria, Kennesaw, GA (November 2011)

When I first saw Man Versus Food, I thought, "Adam Richman is the kind of guy that I'd like to hang out with" (yes, I know that I shouldn't have ended a sentence with a preposition, but I didn't honestly think "the kind of guy with whom I'd like to hang out" at the time, and I feel that truth is needed).   In the first few episodes, he journeyed to Atlanta.  One of his stops was Big Pie in the Sky Pizzeria.  He was there for the Carnivore Challenge, in which two "contestants" attempt to eat a 30-inch, 11 pound meat-lovers pizza.  The entry fee is $50.  If you clean the pizza pan, without throwing up, in 60 minutes or less you win $250. 

We didn't go for the challenge, we went with the Coolest Journey Group Ever on the Monday after Thanksgiving.   For perspective, before you look at this picture, Tony and I are both good sized men.   So, we ordered the 30 inch, extra-large (they only have medium, large and extra-large) - one half veggie / one half meat lovers, for six of us.

So we ate.

And ate.

And ate.

And ate.

And when we were done, we had enough pizza left to fill a Domino's large pizza box.  I don't know how in the world two people could do this.  From the info on the web site, it looks like three teams have completed the challenge.

How was the pizza?  It was fine.  Slightly better than fine.  I can only imagine how challenging it is to cook 706 square inches of pizza and get it done.  They cooked it perfectly well, but I've had a lot better pizza.

(We did have a really good time, though.)