Microgump: Eating Cornbread at Martin's Restaurant

The LITE Menu (I'm not kidding)

Being new to the group I wondered why LITG had not yet rated the place consistently rated No. 1 in The Montgomery Advertiser's "Peoples' Choice" award for: (1) Fried Chicken; (2) "Southern Cooking" and (3) Iced tea. After all, the place has benches outside because it usually is pretty crowed with...I must say it...some of the fatest people on earth (especially if you go early to beat the crowd). If you ever recoiled at the damage Waffle House has done to American waistlines, just sit alone at Martins around 11:30 a.m. and watch the parade of obesity squeeze through the front doors for their fried chicken fix. Please do not eat there alone because, if you do, your mind eventually wanders into people watching mode which, at Martins, invariably leads to the sin of smug, condescending judgments about the size of the clientele (at least if you are only mildly overweight after a Thanksgiving of splurging). Many had a former professional wrestler gut like Tojo Yamamoto (I've only seen him once from distance and he was still large from a distance).  My mental victims, on the other hand, are probably thinking: "Why is that goofy guy wearing an ankle bracelet?" To which I say to myself: "NONE OF YOUR BEESWAX FATTY! And stop looking at my buttered muffins!"

One muffin missing. Two in mortal danger.

One thing I can say unequivocably about Martin's: They have some of the best cornbread I have eaten and they bring it to you like other restaurants bring your bread and water glass: quick. And it is right out of the pan, hot and ready to be swathered in fake butter from the ample supply of tins on the table. Three, count-em, three muffins per customer, one for each of the jelly rolls lopping over your belt. As a true cornbread lover, I must say the meal goes downhill after you gobble up your Martin's cornbread and drink the excellent iced tea (unsweetened of course because you are watching your girlish figure as you down the third muffin before the meal arrives).

As sort of a poor joke on the obese, there is a LITE menu which features only one huge fried chicken breast along with two sides and three cornbread muffins with unlimited margerine. Obviously, I chose the LITE meal because it sounded better for me. Here, I have to say, the Davis Cafe & Lounge kicks Martin's butt all over the plate. Unlike the succulence of the Davis Cafe bird, the Martin's fowl was a little dry and had almost no seasoning. I also noted more bones than normal chickens are supposed to have. Perhaps my skills at dismembering the breast with a fork are to blame, but I was constantly chomping on bones--which is rarely fun with regard to eating yardbird. If this were a competition, the score would be Martins 1, Davis 1 after the entre.

Since the prices (about $8.50) are comparable, the tiebreaker would have to be dessert. Here, Martin's has a decided edge. Their fried pies are delicious and homemade and guaranteed to blow any diet, real or imagined.

The winner by a muffin top: Martin's Restaurant, 1796 Carter Hill Road. They are open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. M-F and for Sunday Brunch. They serve dinner and things other than chicken (like chicken livers). They have a high local rating because....its an icon!! It has been around since 1940 and the service is quick and friendly. I would give it a 3.5 of 5 hot corn muffins soaked in real butter.

Re-Butt(al) in the Gump: He said we were WHAT?

Here's the deal: I have escaped the Gump via Pinnacle Airlines to the mecca of sophistication a/k/a Little Rock, Arkansas. I have spent two days listening to over-coached witnesses deny the obvious under oath. So I am a little fussier than usual.

I am staying at the very nice Capitol Hotel (across from The Peabody where the substitute ducks are and where Bill Clinton porked his various interns with his own cheap cigars while serving the Razorback State as Governor) and I am smoking a cheap cigar on the terrace with my boosted laptop surfing the net and see where there is a rating system for the top 10 restaurants in each city in this great country. I am trying to find a decent place to eat in the capitol of Arkansas. (There being no great blog like LITG about Little Rock). So, being a LITG regular, I check the listings for The Gump to check the site's veracity. There I find listed the "Top 10" places to eat in MontGumphery and I see some of the usual suspects (except I would not rate "The Pub" No. 1 even in West Shorter). I note No. 4 on the list is "The Farmer's Market Cafe" which was recently a LITG Classic review (I wouldn't rate it No. 4 in the Gump myself). I click on the icon and find the following:


"This place is unbelievably overrated by the hicks down here. Food is subpar at best, and the place is run-down and highly overpriced. I was all jazzed up about getting some good southern cookin' when I moved down here. Haven't found any yet - just overrated places like this, with wait staff as bored and filled with quiet desperation as the town itself."


Now, followers of LITG know that I, your humble Shadow Pup, may not be the most tolerant of the contributors to this blog. But, even though being a pound puppy from Detroit who cannot claim to be a native of the place we affectionately refer to as the Gump, like most members of the secret LITG gang I have more than a degree from a community college, have travelled a good bit in and out of the U.S. and can understand that the world outside the by-pass looks down on the South with derision and the assumption that Southerners are less intelligent than the geniuses who chose to remain in the Rust Belt. But this posting went too far. "Hicks?....HICKS?" Hicks live in Arkansas! We are just dumb rednecks here in the South. So, you can understand that when I saw the above condescending remarks about a classic LITG eatery, the fur on my back stood on end and I felt compelled to defend my adopted home and respond in kind and I apologize in advance:


"Listen you Yankee a**hole: We may not say 'youse guys' when we talk to women and we may talk too much and laugh too loud, but we know where to eat in our own city. We may even be too dumb to make it in any Northern town, but the LITG gang knows authentic 'southern cookin' a lot better than you and we, unlike you, are not quietly desperate about anything. Rather, we are 'loudly proud' of our little fortified Gump. Like 'Lynerd Synerd' (I cannot spell it either and am too lazy to Google it): 'We don't need you (or Neil Young) around here anymore.' So, whatever you pasty white overweight yankee slobs like to eat, have at it. 'Leave us be' as you say in your awful accents as you murder the English language worse than we ever have."

Pardon my french and thanks for allowing an expatriate Yankee and adoptive Southerner to vent. I feel a lot better and I realize now that "Top 10" site is a waste of my valuable wagging time.

Yours truly, The Shadow Pup. Your humble servant no longer riled up and headed for the Pine Bar when I get home....