Roadfood_ Revised Edition - Jane Stern [101]
Pies are excellent, sold by the slice, whole pie, or mini-pie. You can get chocolate, pecan, and coconut, but the one that must be sampled is the meringue-topped lemon pie: sweet, creamy, and southern to its soul.
Bogue’s
3028 Clairmont Ave.
205–254–9780
Birmingham, AL
BL | $
The house motto is, “It’s vogue to eat at Bogue’s,” but if you are looking for an epicurean breakfast, for gracious service with a smile, or for the trendiest restaurant in town, Bogue’s is not the place for you! In this hash house, you can expect plebeian food served by wiseass waitresses to a clientele who have been coming to eat the same meal for decades.
Generally, that meal ought to include biscuits. Bogue’s breakfast biscuits are richly endowed with enough cooking grease that your fingers will glisten after you split one in half, and the bottom gets as crusty-brown as a deep-fried potato. These biscuits make great companions to breakfasts in which eggs are only minor players on plates of pork chops or country ham or just a huge spill of pepper gravy and, of course, lots of grits.
If for some reason you don’t want biscuits, we highly recommend the sweet rolls. “Are they made here?” we ask our waitress.
“Every morning,” she reassures us, speaking loud enough to be heard over the blast of Bogue’s high-powered air-conditioning and, without being asked, bringing us Tabasco sauce for a plate of eggs.
No, the pea green walls and upholstered booths are not exactly glamorous, but to connoisseurs of stick-to-the-ribs cuisine and of the take-no-prisoners waitresses who serve it, Bogue’s is a gem in the rough.
The Brick Pit
5456 Old Shell Rd.
251–343–0001
Mobile, AL
LD | $$
Legendary Texas pitmaster Sonny Bryan once explained the secrets of his delicious meats: “smoke and time.” There is plenty of both involved in the barbecue of the Brick Pit, where Bill Armbrecht has built a room-size cooker into which he piles hickory and pecan logs and smokes meats at the lowest possible temperature for the longest possible time. Pork shoulder sizzles for some thirty hours; ribs for twelve; chicken for six. During the process, the meats’ natural fat becomes their basting juices; and by the time they are done, each piece of pork and chicken is virtually fatless, yet moister than moist.
We think the best meat is pork shoulder, pulled from the cooked roast by hand. It is presented as a motley pile of chunks and shreds—some as soft as warm butter, others with crunchy crust from the outside of the roast. It is accented by a substantial film of house-made sauce that is thick and tomato-based, with laid-back character that does not distract from the fineness of the smoky meat. Ribs are blackened on the outside but extravagantly tender, with many areas so softened by the smoke pit that the lightest finger pressure causes pieces of meat to slide off the bone.
The low-slung dining room at the Brick Pit is painted white and completely covered in signatures, tributes, and other assorted happy graffiti. Orders are taken at a back window; once you’ve said what you want, you find a seat, and in no time, a waitress brings the meal in a partitioned plate that holds the meat of choice separate from the beans and coleslaw that come with it.
When most smokehouse devotees think of barbecue in Alabama, their thoughts turn to Birmingham and such legendary eateries as Dreamland. Birmingham is indeed a significant barbecue nexus, but we have a hard time disputing the sign above the breezeway that leads to the Brick Pit parking lot: “Welcome to the Best Damn