Listing Through Life

On Friday evening, we drove to the nearby town of Norcross, Georgia to eat at Zapata.

We opted to eat outside, on a back deck sandwiched between the dumpsters and the parking lot. When I go to a unique restaurant, I generally like to try the specialty, which in this case was molcajete (a meal cooked in a volcanic stone pot). Mine had steak, cheese, onions, tomatoes and cactus (and who knows what else).

This photo doesn’t really give you the full effect. When the server brought it out, he was trying to keep the heavy pot from slipping off the plate while at the same time holding it out at arm’s length to keep the boiling liquid from splattering in his face. I was a little afraid of it when he first set it down in front of me.

It’s eaten by spooning the contents onto soft tortilla shells. I enjoyed it and I managed to eat most of it.

I wandered around Norcross for a little while. The downtown section has several interesting restaurants and picturesque parks. The townsfolk were very proud of their town — there were historical markers about every 50 feet memorializing important spots — like where the mayor ate watermelon and belched. OK, I’m just kidding about that one, but the real ones weren’t much better.

Somebody had gone about town committing random acts of knitting.

Once the conference began, we didn’t have much time to see sights, but we did have time to eat. On Thursday evening, we drove to Matthew’s Cafeteria in Tucker, Georgia, a place I discovered on roadfood.com.

The place was packed with locals, which is always a good sign. No effort had been made to decorate the place — it was just two spartan dining areas with simple tables and chairs.

They have a limited menu, which changes every night, but it specializes in Southern-style food.

I went with mushroom steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, a cornbread muffin, peach cobbler and lemonade. All of it was amazing, particularly the cornbread.

On Friday morning, I was in the mood for something other than a fast food breakfast. I didn’t see anything interesting on the Internet, so I just plotted a new route from my hotel to the conference center and kept my eyes open. I hadn’t gone far before I spotted a tiny place in a strip mall, called Georgia French Bakery.

I was the only customer. There wasn’t a huge selection of pastries, but I bought a cherry turnover and a blueberry scone. Both were good. Neither were great. I noticed they had a lunch menu, so I suggested to my coworker that we try it again at lunch because …

• it wasn’t the bland, over-priced food available at the conference center.
• it wasn’t from a local fast food restaurant.
• it was far enough away from the conference center that it wouldn’t be packed with attendees who didn’t want either of the above options.

There were a lot of customers this time. The very few tables were occupied, so we sat on stools by a narrow counter along the front windows.

I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich (of course). The owner, who spoke with a decided French accent and spoke to several customers in French, asked me what kind of bread I wanted. He pointed to the French bread, naturally, so that’s what I went with. The sandwich was very good (one of the best I’ve ever had), and the bread was awesome.

I went back to the counter and ordered a slice of bread pudding. The guy asked me if I wanted chocolate or blueberry. I asked him which was best, and he said chocolate, so that’s what I got. He was getting to know me by this point, so when he asked me if I wanted it cold or heated up, he immediately smiled and said “I like it both ways.” I went with cold.

I looked the place up on the Internet later and discovered that it had tons of five-star reviews from locals. I’m not surprised.

A coworker and I found a couple hours one day during our conference and made a quick trip to Kennesaw Mountain, northeast of the city.

This is the most-visited Civil War battlefield by a large margin, but it’s not because of rampant interest in history. It’s where everybody from the Atlanta metropolitan area goes to exercise. The parking lots by the visitor center were packed, except for one of the three (out of about 100) spaces reserved for people there to actually go inside the center. We had the museum to ourselves.

The battle named for the mountain took place on June 27, 1864. Union forces under General Sherman attacked entrenched Confederates under General Johnson.  The fight on the mountain itself was mostly a diversion — the hard fighting took place to the south on Pigeon Hill and Cheatham Hill. The attack was a failure, but the Union army soon outflanked the Confederates and forced them to draw back toward Atlanta.

We drove up the mountain, dodging dozens of hikers and birders on the way. (The mountain is the best place in northern Georgia to see migrating birds. We spotted a Scarlet Tanager standing in the middle of the road.) Here’s Atlanta from the top of the mountain, off to the southeast.

While we were on the mountain, we saw two military jets fly by. They appeared to be shadowing a passenger plane, but soon peeled off and headed in the direction of the city.

There’s a short trail to the Confederate position on top of the hill.

The view to the northwest, toward where the Union lines were.

We walked the trail to the top of Pigeon Hill, the one part of the park I missed the last time I was here (because the joggers and walkers had taken up every space in the parking lot). You can still see the remains of the Confederate trenches.

The rocks in the trench are visible in a photo taken shortly after the battle. I took a photo of what it looks like now from as close to the same angle as I could get.

There was more to the park, but we had a conference to attend.