so my husband, john mark, and i have officially declared ourselves novice food critics and have set out to taste what birmingham has to offer. armed with a little guide called 'in birmingham' and an empty stomach, we are going to eat, write, and eat some more. feel free to suggest places we should check out and most importantly, your favorite food item.we started our journey, by going through the guide and finding places we had never been before. there were so many to choose from and several we had never even heard of. this was strange, what with john mark being born and raised in birmingham and all. our first choice was to go to cobb lane. there were tons of positive reviews...even from julia child herself! but given a little research we soon found that cobb lane has closed it's doors. sad. so we moved on to another place: john's city diner. my only experience with this place was as a last resort one evening when i first moved to birmingham 4 years ago...
so off we went...we first entered the diner expecting a menu full of different sorts of malts and burgers, judging by the decor and the word "diner". we were completely wrong! the menu really blew us away and actually had many dishes that were dear to us and some that we'd never heard of. besides the mismatched decor (which leaves a lot to be desired), our dinners were yummy. we started with the cornbread, which is served to every table. if you like salty cornbread, you'd love these little concotions!
next, i ordered their famous meatloaf with roasted corn grits and french fries, while john mark ordered the crispy duck with roasted corn grits and john's original slaw. delish! the meatloaf was full of flavor with loads of freshly cracked black pepper (my obession) and mushroom gravy. it's definitely not the ketchup ladden loaf of beef you're accustomed to. the roasted corn grits tasted like a lovechild of buttered grits and corn pudding, which suprisingly made a fantastic marriage. and the duck! oh the duck! it was so juicy, with loads of flavor from the honey-soy glaze. upon first glance, john mark commented he could never finish it, but instead devoured the entire half duck. next however, we wouldn't recommend the slaw. eh, you can be right all the time! also, if you are a light eater i would definitley recommend sharing because the portions are quite large. next time we go, we'd love to save room for desert. the warm double chocolate pound cake perhaps?
all in all, we give john's city diner a 7. great food, pretty good prices, and an ok atmosphere. but hey, when you're going for the food alone, john's city diner is a great option!
for more information, go to:
http://www.johnscitydiner.com/
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