cracker barrel and hot and hot fish house.

so after philadelphia and boston, we headed down to alabama to see james's family and friends. i'm only going to mention two places that we ate (most of the time we ate at someone's house anyway). the first, obviously, is the cracker barrel. i think we went at least twice, if not three times. i still can't get over their blueberry pancakes. they're so good. at all of them. and they've ruined blueberry pancakes (and pancakes in general really) anywhere else for me.

and yes, james ordered and ate all that you see in front of him, and was damn happy doing so. (=

so the other place i want to mention is hot and hot fish house in birmingham, which we went to with our good friends jenn and dustin. the chef won the james beard award for best chef of the south this year, so i had already wanted to try it. i am already having trouble remembering exactly what we had, but it was quite good, and jenn brought an amazing bottle of wine (above). below are the amuse bouche and starters: blue crab bisque, gnocchi with oxtail and arugula, foie gras terrine, charcuterie plate (duck proscuitto! lamb bacon! lardo!) and tomato salad.

for the entrees: pan roasted scallops, roasted bone marrow, strip loin with roasted bone marrow, oven-roasted triggerfish "ham", and lamb chop, leg and crepinette.

and last but not least, dessert! mini donuts and chocolate souffle. needless to say, it was a very, very, very good meal, with very, very good company. we essentially closed the place out too, which you can see from the last few, very empty photos.