by There’s never enough time to sample all the regional food that’s on our list while we travel the country, but here is some of the fare we were able to sample in Georgia.
Multiple people praised Fat Matt’s Rib Shack in Atlanta as the best BBQ to be had (I assume they meant just in the state of Georgia), and since it was roughly on the path of our adventures, we made a slight detour for Doug to try it. Here’s their pulled pork sandwich, which was messy and very tasty.
Another “you must try it” that came on our radar was Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in Atlanta. As everyone knows, you don’t need to ask me twice to try ask cream, so sample it we did.
While we both found the flavors we had to be very good, there was nothing about them that made us think “I must have this again.” But then again, if we happened to be in the neighborhood again then we would probably find ourselves in line at the counter once again.
We stopped in at Jaemor Farms in Alto because it came up as a best place to get a few different Georgia food items we were looking for.
One was a hot boiled peanuts, which honestly sounded kinda gross. They were messy to eat and a bit too much salt for me, but overall they were tasty and I ate more than I intended to.
Pecans are a big crop in Georgia (the highest producer of pecans in the U.S.), so of course pecan pie is a must have (is this a stretch to justify eating pie?). Sadly, in a van, the proper treatment with whipped cream and/or vanilla ice cream was a touch out of reach, but the the pie from Jaemor Farms was still pretty delicious on its own.
Georgia is known as the Peach State, even though they actually rank third in states’ production at just 25,000 tons a year. Unfortunately, we tried to eat our peach from Jaemor Farms right away and it was not fully ripe, so it was just “okay” and a little disappointing after expecting juicy deliciousness.
Coca-Cola was founded in Atlanta back in 1892, and is still headquartered there today. There’s even an overpriced World of Coca-Cola experience, but I visited it years ago and Doug’s work schedule just didn’t allow us to squeeze it in on this trip.
Fried chicken is another “must do” Georgia item, and we found a place that came up as the best fried chicken Georgia (at least according to Yelp!). Kimchi Red in Alpharetta offers Korean-style fried chicken, so it was something different from traditional Southern fried chicken, but Doug enjoyed it nonetheless.
Waffle House was founded in Georgia, outside Atlanta — there’s actually a Waffle House Museum there now, though we didn’t have time to get to it (but we’ll be back, Atlanta!). The company is now headquartered in Norcross, northeast of Atlanta.
After he mentioned “there’s a Waffle House” 600 times as we sped past location after location, Doug finally agreed to stop for breakfast. He felt the waffles were somewhat underwhelming for a chain named after them, though I had mine with pecans and thought they were pretty good. However, I found the coffee bitter, and thought it was maybe a tad unforgivable that a chain primarily located in the south didn’t have iced coffee.
