The Turner Family

I bought two GroupOns last November for the  Charles St. Location of Georgio's Gourmet Pizza , and we finally redeemed them tonight a day before they expired. Wow. We ordered two 16 inch pizzas split between the following gourmet titles: Nacho, Mediterranean, Stuffed Meat, and Stuffed Spinach. We would all rate the crust as good and the flavor distinctive. Cori and I had half pieces of each, and she commented that it may have been the best pizza she's ever had. Sophia thought the stuffed meat was 'delicious' and 'messy.' Nick described it as homey, well-made, and served well, and Seamus said the nacho was good and 'swag.' Highly recommended .

We took our mid-afternoon meal today at Johnson's Boucaniere in Lafayette. (We have a tendancy to eat two meals a day when we are on the road, one early, and one mid-afternoon or later.) Johnson's is a small walk-in place in an older home, situated in a nice old neighborhood. There are no tables inside, but the porch on the north side of the house has tables that could seat at least 30. That's where we feasted. They offer mostly cajun and smoked foods. They had several specials  today, including a pulled pork sandwich (Kay) and smoked pork ribs with corn bread (Bil). Everyday they prepare boudin, a cajun sausage (Bil). Boudin is a sausage made from pork, rice, onions and spices. I have had it twice before, and it's growing on me. The skin has always seemed to be like very thin leather, but steaming hot - it is inedible. The filling is ground very fine, and after cooking is like a very thick paste - actually as I write this, I ...

This past weekend, we took our Sunday evening meal at Black's Barbecue, in Lockhart, Texas. Many people view Lockhart, east of San Antonio, as the epicenter of great smoked meats in Texas. Lockhart, a town of only 12,000, is home to three restaurants that consistently rank in the top 20 in Texas, and there are at least 6 more great places within a 40 mile radius of Lockhart. The three in Lockhart are Smitty's, Kreuz's and Black's. Black's Barbecue opened in 1932 and has been operated by the Black family since that date. It's an old building, inside and out, and is decorated with many photos of local sports teams and visiting dignitaries. There was a signed photo of Lyndon Johnson with some members of the Black family near our booth. Johnson grew up about 60 miles west of Lockhart. In this barbecue house, diners pass down a short cafeteria line, choosing their side dishes, then into the meat room. All meat is cut to the order of the diner. We order...

Snow's BBQ Texas Monthly Magazine has rated Snow's BBQ as the #1 place in Texas to eat barbecue. When deciding on such subjective matters as ranking the taste of food, it's difficult for me to conclude that one establishment is the best of all. It should also be said that we have not eaten as widely as the judges for Texas Monthly Magazine. However, I don't think the magazine was wrong in placing Snow's BBQ in a very small group, say the top 2%, of all that they have sampled. I believe their scouts visited more than 300 barbecue houses. It's not easy to arrange a visit, with Snow's schedule as restrictive as it is, but the memory of the brisket will make me want to find a way to return. We learned of Snow's BBQ thanks to an alert last year by Harry Turner. Harry sent us an article that Calvin Trillin had written in The New Yorker about a virtually unknown small barbecue house being named the best place in Texas. Each year Texas Monthly Magazine ...

It goes without saying that there are many famous barbeque restaurants in Memphis. Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Q  falls in that group. We have eaten at Interstate once before, in January of 2002, on our first trip to Texas. At that time we had almost no barbeque experience, and so we just looked in the Memphis Yellow Pages and went to a place that sounded promising. Since then we have seen this establishment featured on several television shows and in many reviews of great barbeque houses in the US. As an aside, Jim Neely is the uncle of the Neelys who have a weekly show on the Food Network. Interstate was our second choice today. We attempted to eat at the equally renowned Rendezvous in downtown Memphis, only to find it closed for the entire New Years weekend. Memphis barbeque is quite varied with some dry rubbed only, some rubbed and sauced and some with sauce only. We're also told that the Memphis sauces are quite varied, as compared to Texas or the Carolinas where th...