[From Craig] Barbecue fans from all over the country (at least those east of the Mississippi) should make a beeline for Jim's Smokin' Que south of Blairsville, GA. It's about 2 or 3 miles south of Blairsville (94 miles NE of Atlanta) on US 19/129, locally a.k.a. Gainesville Hwy.
We've been looking at the place as we go past, for the last week or two. Since they're only open Thursday through Saturday, it took us a while to get synchronized. Now that we're retired full-timers, we have a tendency to forget what day it is.
I thought I'd never have as good a barbecue as we had at Oklahoma Joe's in Kansas City. Being retired full-timers :-) my memory makes it hard to make comparisons four months apart, but the food here at Jim's sure is great. We got the big Ribs and More platter that you can see on the site, with pork back ribs, beef brisket, cole slaw and fries. The idea was to have enough leftovers for breakfast tomorrow, but the stuff was so good that we may have supplement the leftovers!
The ribs, french fries, and cole slaw were all world-class. No one makes brisket as good as did my late friend John Nocher of Virginia Beach, Cape Canaveral, Milwaukee, and Fort Worth. But if you put a good amount of Jim's excellent barbecue sauce on their brisket, it gets pretty good too!
We didn't bring our camera; the pictures wouldn't have been as good as the food anyway. But I did catch a phone shot of their shirt. A fold makes it hard to read their slogan "you can smell our butts for miles".
We even have 3 or 4 ribs left over. I may dream about breakfast all night...
From Merikay: I was thinking of making the leftovers for dinner, if I can hide them from Craig long enough.