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Detour dining

Restaurants worth a road trip

September 18, 2016

Abe’s Bar B-Q
Clarksdale, Mississippi

If you want to eat like a local at Abe’s Bar B-Q , start with the house appetizer. You’ll have to make it yourself. Tear open a bag of ridged potato chips and set it flat on the table so it forms a “tray.” Douse it with the house barbecue sauce and dig in.

You won’t find this on the menu. But everyone in Clarksdale seems to know about it. Weird as it sounds, it works: the crunchy, salty chip is just the thing for soaking up the vinegary, not-too-sweet tomato-based sauce, whose formula is top secret outside the Abe’s dynasty.

Abe’s has been a Clarksdale institution since 1924. Its hand-painted sign with the bow-tied pig is as familiar a landmark in the dusty little city as the much-photographed crossroads signs of Highways 61 and 49 with the trio of blue guitars on top.

Throughout its existence, Abe’s has been a favorite community gathering spot, as well as a popular stop for bluesmen and many other famous musicians traveling the famed Blues Highway, including ZZ Top and Paul Simon.

Abraham Davis, a Lebanese immigrant, learned to barbecue pork and roll tamales with the leftover meat from local artisans, and passed those skills on to his offspring. Over the years, the family put their own distinctive spin on both. They expanded their menu to include ribs, burgers, hot dogs and chili-cheese fries.

But the draws are their pork barbecue sandwich —- regular or Big Abe double-decker —- and pork-filled tamales (most others are beef), served plain or with chili and other toppings.

Unlike most barbecue in the state, which borrows from the traditions of Tennessee and Missouri, Abe’s has a style of its own. After smoking Boston butts over hickory or pecan wood for 10 hours, they chill them overnight to congeal the fat. Then, just before serving, they slice it paper-thin, heat it on a griddle until sizzling, chop it up, douse it with sauce, and pile the crisp-edged slivers onto a grilled bun with slaw. Even the slaw is unique —- no mayonnaise, sugar or sweet pickle, just shredded cabbage tossed with vinegar, oil and seasonings.

You also can get Abe’s barbecue sauce to go, by the pint or the quart, or shipped by the case. You furnish the chips. — Susan Puckett

616 State St., Clarksdale, Miss. 662-624-9947, abesbbq.com

Biscuit Love
Nashville, Tennessee

Karl Worley and his wife, Sarah founded a food truck four years ago, sourcing from local purveyors for a small menu of Southern food that drew raves. They teamed with an investor last year to convert their mobile Biscuit Love into a brick-and-mortar restaurant in a mixed-use development in Nashville’s Gulch neighborhood.

The counter-service restaurant shines with the polished steel and glass of modern Nashville, but the restaurant is grounded in the kind of honest food Worley grew up with on his farm in East Tennessee and the inspirations he took from the South.

While the restaurant has the generic look of a chain, and I reckon Biscuit Love is primed for duplication and expansion, the dishes have soul. Your courtyard table might be surrounded by cosmopolitan condos, but a rich shrimp and grits with earthy mushrooms, knobs of fatback bacon and a sheen of hot sauce is country to the bone. The dish from the chef who first learned to cook from his grandfather is an homage to Bill Neal, the late North Carolina chef.

A roster of various sweet and savory biscuits serves as the menu’s centerpiece, naturally. Biscuit Love takes a fluffy angel biscuit and sandwiches juicy 48-hour-marinated fried chicken thighs with aged cheddar and sausage gravy into a lovable mess fittingly called the East Nasty (pictured). A laminate biscuit accompanies egg plates, and yet another is the cream-cheese-glazed base for banana jam, pineapple and walnuts. That one comes on the breakfast menu. And good luck with the rest of your day.

The secret to a great biscuit? Worley says it sounds cliché, but the answer is a lot of love. Beyond that: “You’ve gotta use great flour, great butter and greater buttermilk; that’s the super big keys, ” Worley said. “And someone who’s not going to overwork the dough.”

Worley jokes that he’s the only one of his family to leave the confines of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. The rest of the family thinks the city boy is “the weirdest person on earth.”

“If you find enough stupid people to pay $8 for a biscuit, you’ll be alright, ” his dad told him.

Judging by the often long waits at breakfast and lunch, your boy’s doing just fine, Pop.
— Matthew Odam, Austin-American Statesman

316 11th Ave S, Nashville, TN. 615-490-9584, biscuitlove.com

Cure
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, the city that birthed America’s most famous condiment _ Heinz ketchup _ is perhaps best known culinarily for enhancing dishes with french fries. Fries on sandwiches. Fries on salads. And until recently, the city’s food scene had a similarly unsophisticated reputation. Those guilty pleasures are still abundant on Pittsburgh menus, but in recent years, they’ve been surpassed by such refined fare as squid-ink gnudi, duck-confit tacos, and aviation cocktails made with local gin.

Pittsburgh’s restaurant scene has grown up, and food tourists are beginning to notice.

“When I moved to Pittsburgh, half of the things I enjoyed on a regular basis” _ Negronis, Fernet-Branca liqueur, brut rosé _ “no one even knew what they were,” said Justin Severino, a 2015 James Beard Award semifinalist for best chef in the Mid-Atlantic. Even worse, back in 2007 his fine-dining training in California didn’t help him get a job at what he recalls as a fusty lineup of unimaginative American restaurants. “I really felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life,” he said. “My résumé meant nothing to a chef in Pittsburgh.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find a chef who wouldn’t want to work with Severino now. But he works for himself instead, as the chef-owner of Cure, an upscale, whole-animal, Mediterranean-inspired restaurant in a newly trendy neighborhood. Cure is a mecca for carnivores; the shareable salumi plate alone comes with no fewer than 17 types of cold meats, including lamb culatello, coppa di testa and duck rillettes.
— Maura Judkis, Washington Post

5336 Butler St., Pittsburgh, PA. 412.252.2595, curepittsburgh.com

Fearrington House Inn and Restaurant
Pittsboro, North Carolina

Imagine a place so fanciful that it would deliberately choose to match the goats to the cattle that graze upon its halcyon fields as if they were pillows accessorizing a sofa. That is Fearrington House Inn, built on an historic dairy, where black and white Tennessee Fainting Goats and similarly marked Belted Galloway Scottish cattle frolic side by side. Baby donkeys, though not boasting checkerboard fur, equally engage my delight. With a collection of new-built structures designed to resemble a village, the affable hotel and its staff adopt you like long lost family. As in a real hamlet, the 32 capacious residences crop up all around the village’s “town square, ” providing guests with the sense of actually embracing the lifestyle of an imaginary settlement. I find a bevy of things I love and covet: a beer garden, an old-fashioned bookstore (complete with that intoxicating paper smell), a captivating spa, a swanky boutique, a homemade gelato bar, a coffee roaster and a couple of unforgettable restaurants. At the gastronomic Fearrington House Restaurant, helmed by chef Colin Bedford and touted as one of the top 10 restaurants in America, we feast on dandified Southern food such as house-cured bacon with pickled cherries and beets, butter-poached lobster with sweet lemon and verjuice and seared red drum with lima bean hummus. The grand finale, the signature chocolate souffle, ensures I walk right to the front desk to make my reservation to return soon.
— Becca Hensley, Austin American-Statesman

2000 Fearrington Village Center, Pittsboro, N.C. 919-542-2121, www.fearrington.com/fearrington-house-restaurant.

La Dulce
Royal Oak, Michigan

Unsuspecting guests pause, momentarily confused, when they walk into Royal Oak’s La Dulce. Is this a restaurant? It looks like a living room in Madrid, decorated by a mad Spanish designer with a fetish for repetition, symmetry and white china teacups.

It’s strange but beautiful — a fascinating backdrop for an exciting array of Spanish tapas. Diners who love unusual dishes and dining experiences should put La Dulce, the year’s most distinctive new restaurant, at the top of their list. Tapas dining is slow, relaxed and social — thus the living-room-like setting — so bring friends and plan to share several of chef Juan Carlos Negrete’s varied little dishes and nibbles.

Platters of charcuterie, including Spain’s prized Iberico ham, reflect the high quality of La Dulce’s many imported ingredients. Try the montaditos (rustic toasts) with savory toppings such as wild mushrooms and goat cheese, or duck rillettes and pumpkin seeds. Favorite house specialties include mussels with fennel and chorizo, skirt steak with jalapeño and dried chilies, and an outstanding grilled octopus dish with potatoes and shishito peppers.

General manager Ian Redmond, former beverage director of Torino in Ferndale, oversees the bar, offering excellent craft cocktails and many fine Spanish sherries. Importantly, the knowledgeable servers are good guides for your visit to España. Dinner, weekend brunch.
— Sylvia Rector, Detroit Free Press (TNS)

115 S Main St, Royal Oak, Mich. 248-268-1719, ladulce.com.

Moore Farms and Friends Supper Club
Woodland, Alabama

When Laurie and Will Moore sit down to the table, almost everything they enjoy comes from their own farm or from folks they know and work with.

They are the Moores of “Moore Farms and Friends” with both an online market and a presence at the Saturday morning Freedom Farmers Markets at The Carter Center near downtown Atlanta. They work with small-scale food producers to offer locally grown and produced food year-round.

A couple of years ago, they decided to open up their Woodland, Alabama, home for farmhouse dinners. “We’re about 90 miles from Atlanta in the southern foothills of the Appalachians. People come from the city to enjoy our Supper Club, and they’re so surprised at how pretty it is in this little rural corner of the world, ” said Laurie Moore.

Depending on the time of year, the Moores may host from a dozen to almost four dozen people in and around their 1929 farmhouse. Guests wander the farm and meet the goats, ducks, cats and chickens, then sit down to a four-course dinner entirely prepared from ingredients the Moores have grown or sell through their market.

Kids enjoy the experience as much as, if not more than, adults, and the Moores can tailor the menu for any food allergies or preferences.

Photos by Tom Brodnax

Photos by Tom Brodnax

From February through June, then again September through November, the Moores serve dinners with recipes of their own creation. “We’re usually thinking about the menu up until about a week before the dinner since that’s when we know for sure what ingredients we’ll have to work with and what dietary concerns our guests have. Sometimes the menu is Italian inspired, sometimes it’s more traditional Southern. Asian dinners have been really popular. We love that it all shows off how versatile these ingredients can be.”

Helping people understand how rich and flavorful winter vegetables can be is really important to the Moores. They save scraps and peels to make the broths that are the backbone of their almost daily winter soups. “Roast some vegetables, add broth, and you have instant soup. It makes a wonderful, satisfying meal. It’s easy to eat a lot of heavier, higher-calorie dishes in winter, so we like to have soup and a salad for lunch to keep it light. At least four or five days a week our meals are vegetarian, and that makes meat more special when we do eat it.”
— C.W. Cameron
Learn about the Moore Farms Supper Club and shop for their products at moore-farmsandfriends.com

Winter Farmhouse Salad

A “farmhouse” salad is a mixture of whatever’s plentiful and in season. When the Moores serve this salad in January, the lettuce and beets come from Rise ‘n Shine Farm, the pecans from Pecan Point Farm, the radishes from Ups and Downs Farm and the apples from Beech Creek Farms. They like Pink Lady apples in this salad. It’s a late-season variety that stores well and gets sweeter while in storage.

The vinaigrette is made with olive oil from Georgia, local honey and their homemade purple basil vinegar. They steep purple basil in apple cider vinegar to make a flavored and beautifully colored condiment. If you don’t have purple basil vinegar, use your favorite flavored vinegar or plain apple cider vinegar.

2 beets, ends trimmed and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup purple basil vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
Salt and pepper
2 heads lettuce, torn or chopped into bite-size pieces
2 apples, cored and thinly sliced
1 cup pecan halves
5 watermelon radishes, trimmed and very thinly sliced

Put a 1/2-inch of water in the bottom of a small saucepan. Use a steamer insert and arrange beet slices on top. If you don’t have a steamer insert, just add the beet to the water in the pan. Bring water to a simmer and steam beets until tender, about 10 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Cut into 1/4-inch dice. Set aside.

To make vinaigrette: in the jar of a blender, combine olive oil, vinegar and honey. Blend until mixture is emulsified, then season to taste. Set aside.

When ready to serve, divide lettuce between serving plates. Top with diced steamed beets, apples, pecans and radish slices. Drizzle with vinaigrette and serve immediately. Serves: 8

Adapted from a recipe provided by Laurie and Will Moore of Moore Farms and Friends.

Roasted Roots Soup

This soup is one of the Moores’ signature recipes, published on their website and in their online newsletters many times, and often served for their Supper Club. The roasted “roots” are actually both roots and tubers.

2 cups diced peeled white sweet potatoes
1 cup diced peeled Yukon gold potatoes
1 cup diced turnips
1 cup diced rutabaga
1/2 cup chopped onion
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
5 cups vegetable broth

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Arrange sweet potatoes, Yukon gold potatoes, turnips, rutabagas and onion on a rimmed baking sheet. Drizzle with just enough olive oil to coat vegetables. Toss to make sure all chunks are evenly covered. Season with salt and pepper and spread out in a single layer. Roast 10 minutes, then stir and cook 10 to 15 minutes more or until browned and crisp. Remove from oven and set aside 1 cup for garnish.

In a large saucepan, combine remaining roasted vegetables with 4 cups broth. Using an immersion blender, puree mixture. Add more broth until desired texture is reached. Use a blender if you don’t have an immersion blender. Bring soup to a simmer and taste for seasoning. When ready to serve, garnish with reserved roasted vegetables. Makes: 6 cups

Adapted from a recipe provided by Laurie and Will Moore of Moore Farms and Friends.

Veggie Carbonara

When pasta is served at the Moores’ it’s always homemade. When you’re preparing this dish, you can make your own pasta or serve your favorite store-purchased brand. You want a long noodle for this dish. Spaghetti or fettuccine are the most commonly used in pasta carbonara dishes, and the Moores prefer fettuccine.

When they’re serving this dish, the kale, carrots, oregano and eggs come from their farm. The rest of the ingredients are local as well. They use Georgia olive oil, shiitakes from Sparta Mushrooms, cream from Atlanta Fresh and Asiago from Wright Dairy.

If you’re not inclined to make meringues from the leftover egg whites, do what the Moores do. Feed them to your dogs. “It’s really good for their skins and coats, ” says Will Moore.

4 tablespoons olive oil
10 lightly packed cups Tuscan kale, stems removed, cut into bite-size pieces (about 1/2 pound)
2 cups shiitakes, stems removed and roughly chopped
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cups matchstick-cut carrots (about 4 carrots)
4 minced cloves garlic
2 pounds pasta noodles
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup grated or crumbled Asiago
6 egg yolks
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh oregano, for garnish
Salt and pepper

In a large skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add kale and stir until greens cook down enough to make room for shiitakes. Add shiitakes and soy sauce, and cook until liquid is reduced and vegetables take on a crisp texture similar to crisp cooked bacon and liquid cooks off. Remove from skillet and set aside.

In the same skillet, add carrots and garlic and cook until carrots are tender but still crisp. Remove from skillet and set aside.

Prepare pasta according to package directions.

While pasta is cooking, in a medium bowl, combine cream, Asiago, yolks and oregano. Set aside.

When pasta is al dente, drain and return to cooking pot. Immediately add reserved kale-shiitake mixture, carrot-garlic mixture. Toss together then add cream-egg mixture and stir to coat everything. The hot pasta and hot pot will cook the egg yolks. Taste for seasoning and serve immediately. Serves: 8

Adapted from a recipe provided by Laurie and Will Moore of Moore Farms and Friends.

Citrus Yogurt Trifle

Farmhouse trifles are made with Greek yogurt from Atlanta, fresh and organic citrus from Uncle Matt’s in Florida.

6 tangelos, separated
3 pink grapefruits, separated
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons cornstarch
16 Butter Cookies
1 quart vanilla Greek yogurt

Juice 4 tangelos and 2 grapefruit. You should have 2 cups of juice. Save extra juice for another use.

In a medium saucepan, combine 2 cups juice with honey and whisk together. In a small bowl, stir together water and cornstarch. When juice comes to a simmer, stir in cornstarch mixture. Continue heating, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens, about 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and cool until mixture is just warm to the touch.

While juice mixture is cooling, peel remaining 2 tangelos and 1 grapefruit and separate fruit into segments. Roughly chop segments. Set aside 1/2 cup for garnish.

To assemble trifle: crumble cookies. Divide half the crumbled cookies between eight individual serving glasses or bowls. Divide 2 cups yogurt between serving dishes. Divide half the juice mixture between serving dishes. Divide the chopped fruit between serving dishes. Repeat, layering remaining cookies, yogurt and juice mixture. Refrigerate at least two hours or overnight. When ready to serve, top each parfait with a sprinkle of chopped fruit set aside for garnish. Serves: 8

Adapted from a recipe provided by Laurie and Will Moore of Moore Farms and Friends.