For some reason it always feels a bit awkward reviewing a favorite restaurant. It’s a little hard to be unbiased when it’s a place you’ve eaten at many times and enjoyed and already know that you will likely enjoy again barring some unforeseen circumstance. But…as we saw with a past review of Fabiano’s, one of our favorite pizza joints here in town, things can go awry and skew the outcome significantly.
That said, we decided tonight would be a good night for some barbeque so we headed down Highway 29 to Sprayberry’s. For the uninitiated, Sprayberry’s has two locations, the original location on Highway 29 just north of downtown Newnan and the newer location on Highway 34 out near the Interstate. Sprayberry’s was a favorite of the late, great columnist, Lewis Grizzard who described the restaurant as “merely the best barbeque joint on earth”. In fact, the Lewis Grizzard Special, a current menu selection consisting of a barbeque sandwich, Brunswick stew and onion rings, was his favorite meal.
We picked out a table by the window, sat down and took a look at the menu. Looking at the menu was really more of an exercise to decide what we wanted instead of looking to see what they had to offer. We all ended up deciding on the chopped pork barbeque plate which consists of a good helping of chopped pork, Brunswick stew and pickles. A plate of white bread came on the side, just as God intended. Sprayberry’s has quite a few other menu items including hamburgers, steaks, catfish and chicken…but we were in the mood for Q and stew so that’s what we had.
Our drinks and food arrived quickly and we dug in. The pork is lightly smoky and chopped fine, and I like it that way. The stew was fine-ground, not chunky, and I like it that way. My only issue with the combination was the pickles. They’re sweet pickles and I hate sweet pickles. Normally I request that they be left off…but tonight I forgot. Fortunately they weren’t dripping with pickle juice as they were put on the plate so the juice didn’t migrate into the neighboring Q and stew and contaminate it.
So how did Sprayberry’s rate on the Thumbs Scale? As expected they got 6 out of 6 possible thumbs…despite the pickles. Needless to say we’ll be back…again and again and again. I think Lewis was onto something…and did I mention that I hate sweet pickles?