Restaurant Review - Vote for Hodge’s

Southside veteran delivers meat and soul

Do you imagine that the Republican and Democratic kingmakers are worried much about selling their dreary, beta-male presidential candidates? Hey, the public seems to be buying this summer’s shadow play — vague promises, well-practiced evasions, soft money and all. Unfortunately, most of us eat like we vote. And every cent we spend at Chick-fil-A, Copeland’s, Popeye’s, Sonny’s, Roadhouse Grill and Krispy Kreme is a vote for the homogenization of regional cuisine. Got that? Every plastic-coated counter and drive-through window is a voting booth for factory food — chain-link fodder that is consistent, convenient, corporate and about as honest as a party platform.

What will the feedlot honchos imitate when all the independents are gone? Depending upon your stock portfolio and point of view that may sound either dire or ridiculous. Still, every time I exit an urban expressway I dead-end at Name Brand Row — Church’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Waffle House, Folks, Longhorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden, Taco Bell, yada yada.

I usually keep driving until I find a place that looks inviting and unfamiliar. That’s how I happened onto the Southside soul cafeteria named Hodge’s Bar-B-Que

Henry Wyatt, a military veteran known as “Sgt. Wyatt,” opened the restaurant in 1975. Delores Hodge, his niece and the current proprietor, remembers, “Our family always cooked because it was a large family. Friends started coming over to eat and complimented it.” Thus was the business born. It became so successful, she said, that a large, wood-paneled dining room was added about 1983.

Hodge’s Bar-B-Que was neither created on Madison Avenue nor focus-group tested. The cooking is home-style, working-class vernacular. Inconsistencies happen. My first order of barbecue pork ribs was distinctively good — flavorsome, somewhat dry, neither overcooked nor fatty. The second order, bought two or three weeks later, was tough and over-salted.

On the plus side, the restaurant’s huge smoker oven is positioned right by the serving line. Serious barbecue outlets do this so that barbecue specialists can serve plates one minute and turn half a dozen slabs the next. Depending upon what’s available, Hodge’s pork dinners include ribs from the small end, the large end or the center of the slab, and come with two vegetables and two small but tasty corn muffins ($6-$6.30). Chopped pork barbecue seemed acceptable enough going down. I could remember nothing about it the next morning ($3.25).

Barbecue chicken, lean and moist inside a tight, caramelized skin, comes by the half or quarter ($3.85-$5.85). Barbecue sauce, which also works well on the dense, traditional meatloaf, is thin, red and somewhat sweet. Sandwich versions of most of these are available for a dollar or two less, minus the vegetables and muffins.

Oxtails, the restaurant’s other specialty (“Atlanta’s best,” brags the menu), weren’t available when I asked for them. “Try the stewmeat,” the counter woman suggested, explaining that it’s the same kind of thing. What it is is beef on the bones, braised in a thick, tasty gravy. It reminded me of short ribs, though not as fatty ($6). We gnawed the bones, then sopped up the gravy with the muffins.

Citrusy candied yams are seasoned the same as the sweet potato pie, so get one or the other, not both, at a meal. Mac-and-cheese is dense and filling. String beans with potatoes, turnip greens, limas and black-eyed peas are standard Southern stuff, albeit mercifully light on pork fat.

Wrapped slices of cake are about what you’d find at a church picnic and fit Hodge’s serving line perfectly. So do hot apple and peach cobbler, which are both so sweet and rich that I kept eating and eating right down to the bottom of the bowl. I missed the banana pudding — so I’ll be back.

Hodge’s Barbecque, 2141 Candler Road. 404-289-1804. Mon.-Thurs. 10:30 a.m.- 11 p.m. Fri.-Sat. 10:30 a.m.-1 a.m. Sun. noon-9 p.m. Prices range from $3-$15.