Eats & Treats, TN and GA (Again)

While on a (mostly) southern states road trip traveling from New Hampshire to Florida, we're sampling foods along the way. It's part of the road trip fun for us. Here's some (more) recent dining experiences in Loganville and Norcross, GA.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. on Interstate 24, near Chattanooga, TN was an evening dinner stop. While we've passed a few on this trip, this was our first (and

only) stop at one. Most U.S. highway travelers will recognize this chain of restaurant/gift stores with a Southern country theme. The company was founded in 1969 by a sales rep for Shell Oil, who developed the concept to attract highway travelers. The first store opened in 1969 in Lebanon, TN, close to Interstate 40. Stores were placed near Interstate exits in the Southeastern and Midwestern U.S., but expanded countrywide in the 1990s. As of September 2018, there are 645 stores in 44 states. Despite our extended road trips, this was only our third or fourth stop at one.

The menu is based on Southern cuisine and biscuits, fried chicken  grits, country ham, and turnip greens, are always seen on the menu. We didn't eat the biscuits. I shared some of the chicken with Grenville. Restaurant entry is always though decor designed to look like a country store and everything shown is for sale. Each restaurant has a front porch lined with wooden rocking chairs, also for sale.

A previous post described a lunch met-up with fellow blogger Ludwig at Mojito's in Norcross. This wasn't our only dining experience in town. 

Paizanos in Norcross, GA is on the corners of Jones and Wingo Streets and lists its address as Historic Norcross. The restaurant's name is a variant spelling of the Italian paisano, translated as "brother" and often used by Italians toward their fellow Italians.

Downtown Norcross has a small town appeal. There's an old train depot (now a restaurant) and several historic buildings which have converted to other uses, but with small plaques describing their previous use.

The interior of Paizanos is geared toward an old-school New York restaurant feel according to it owners, Chuck Conrose and Craig Pittman. As noted earlier, we visited my cousin, who lives in nearby Peachtree Corners. She suggested we dine here and it was a great choice. 

The menu is varied from pizza to pasta and other entrees, and salads. Diners are greeted by a wraparound solid wood bar that evokes the feel of an old New York City pub or saloon with a large mirror behind wine racks on the wall behind the bar. There’s also a nod to New York baseball in the form of a framed Wheaties ad with Yankee legend Joe DiMaggio. Seating is at the bar or a table in one of two dining areas. Counter seating includes views out the front window across downtown Norcross. Paizanos is open for lunch and dinner, Monday thru Sunday and it's a casual dining place with customers in jeans, shorts, and T-shirts. 

The menu features 14 different specialty pizzas with New York themed names like Hell’s Kitchen Sink, Bronx Bomber, Greenwich Village, Penn Station, Bensonhurst and Staten Island Ferry, Park Avenue. 

All of those sounded delicious, but we opted for more sensible (?)dinner items. My choice was a Caesar salad (wins out every time for me) and grilled chicken breast over sautéed spinach. Both were very good. We all choose to forgo an Italian speciality dessert, but easily caved when the waitress suggested we could split a cannoli three ways. After all there's far less calories in doing that...right?

Journey’s End Restaurant in Loganville, GA, certainly isn't the place you would easily find unless, of course, you're a "local." And that's exactly HOW we dined there when we visited a former co-worker of mine, Jean. She had relocated to GA a few years after we were both downsized from our last positions in a NJ tech firm in 2011.

Journey's End Restaurant is a mid-priced restaurant that is definitely a no-frills place. It's a buffet-style eatery, but with a smaller and more limited selection than many larger buffets-style places. By comparison, this restaurant has a limited selection of Southern buffet foods. Jean was very insistent that we try the catfish, and I did. 

There were a lot of local folks here when we dined on a Friday night. It's open 7 days a week for lunch and dinner from 11 am to 9 p.m. Southern comfort food is featured including black eyed peas, cheese grits, hushpuppies, corn on the cob, bbq pork ribs, fried chicken, fried oyster, baked rolls and of course fried catfish - fried whole, bones and all.

We enjoyed suppertime (Southern for "evening meal") with our friend and thanked her for selecting this restaurant which we definitely never have found on our own. Although, admittedly, catfish won't become my favorite seafood.