Pallookaville: From cart, to truck, to brick and mortar!

If you live in Atlanta and ever leave your house to take in one of the bazillion festivals around town through out the year you've probably at least heard of Pallookaville.  Famous for it's gourmet corn dogs, (as seen below on The Tonight Show) Pallookaville started as a converted vintage hot dog cart before evolving into an old US Mail truck that was given a new life as a food truck.   The star of the dogs was the Fryinstein Monster: part 100% beef frank, part Polish kielbasa, and part Italian Sausage dipped in Cornbread with your choice of pepper or cheese...seriously, this is a thing and it is amazing!

Whether or not you've actually gotten to eat this amazing food depends on your luck and/or dedication as it often found with a line around the block because the food is that good.  A once special occasion food can now be a part of your regular diet!  The most recent step in Pallookaville's evolution includes an actual brick and mortar restaurant!  No longer do you have to wait for a festival to get these delicious items and they've expanded their menu as well.  The menu of gourmet carnival food includes Reubens, foot long hot dogs, burgers, poutined fries, specialty syrups for amazing drink concoctions and boozy milkshakes known as Shaketails!

I sadly wasn't able to go to the soft opening on Halloween night since I was working at Atlanta Zombie Apocalypse, but you better believe I was there for opening day on November 4th.  I drug a few friends from school with me for lunch around 1pm and it was hopping!  We put our name on the list and after a surprisingly short wait we were seated and on our way to deliciousness!

After scoping out the menu Martha and I got Black Cherry sodas while Justin braved the Tiger's Blood.  (I say braved because we really weren't sure what Tiger's Blood was, but it sounded cool so he ordered it.)  For food: I got the Fryinstein Monster and Poutined Fries (Poutined is gravy and cheese curds), Martha got the 100% beef frank and cheese fries (she's boring and only eats 3 things ever so the fact that there was something she wanted was pretty amazing!), and Justin joined me in Fryinstein goodness!  (Funnily enough, Justin had already eaten lunch when I text him to go to Pallookaville, but he could not resist the siren call!)

Tiger's Blood turned out to be a fruit punch type flavor (who knew) and the Black Cherry sodas were delicious!  The food came out really quickly, which was impressive with how busy they were.  Everything was delicious, but I admit I was defeated by the fries and corn dog and had to take half of it to go.  I went to school right after and gave the left overs to Xander because he is Canadian and nothing makes him happier than Poutined Fries, seriously you would have thought I gave him a brick of gold he was so happy!

The staff was great, it does help me feel comfortable that I knew quite a few people that work there, however I did not know our waitress and she was super awesome.  They asked if we wanted to separate our checks when we went up to pay, that's so rare that somewhere will ask rather than you having to ask them.  Seriously, that little extra touch of awesome customer service already sets this amazing place ahead of many others.  Not to mention the super amazing atmosphere that is a cross between the old soda shops of the 1950s and the best carnival parts of Coney Island which includes lots of autographed photos up on the wall from many of Jim Stacy's amazing life experiences.  From his amazing hidden eatery show Get Delicious, to being a previous partner in the Star Bar and the Starlight Drive-In, Jim has always been ahead of the curve on what's hot just by being true to himself and what he enjoys doing.

So yeah, that was last Monday and I have a lunch date there with my bestie on Wednesday.  At about 2 miles from my apartment, I think that Pallookaville will be a regular stop on my culinary rotation.  Once I've tried everything on the menu maybe I'll do an update.  Did I mention there are seasonal items as well?

UPDATE 11/13/2013: Went to lunch there today and had the Pastrami Reuben, poutined fries (I may have a pouitne problem) and a Butterscotch Soda.  My bestie Andy had the B. Franklin with swiss fries and a butterscotch soda and Martha again had her hot dog and cheddar cheese fries with a coke.  The Reuben was AMAZING, with the fries I could only eat half of my sandwich  since it's a HALF POUND OF MEAT!  I traded a bite of my sandwich for a bite of the B. Franklin, it was also wonderfully delicious.  Everything is so much food, at well over 6 feet tall I can only assume that everything there is Jim sized!  Andy is the only one of us that made it to the clean plate club today.

2012-12-01 Hillbilly Casino Rock'n'Roll Christmas Show

I really wasn't going to go out on Saturday.  Friday I had the Atlanta Xmas Apocalypse meeting to hand out the info to everyone, and go over costume ideas to see what we already had, which led to chatting, which led to a few drinks, which led to silliness and led to me not getting home until 2:30am.  So on Saturday I was planning on just dropping off some costumes at 7 Stages for Dee Dee to use for an upcoming show and ended up hanging out and grabbing lunch.  Then hung out some more and we ended up running some errands and lost about two hours watching L&O:SVU.  I was going to go home because I had been kind of dragging all day and was pretty sleepy but Dee Dee convinced me that we needed to actually go out and do something that didn't not involve us working on a show.  She threw one of her shirts on me, we slapped on some make-up and went out to the Star Bar.

When we got there the show had already started with Cletis & His City Cousins.  They were fun, I wish I had gotten to see a little more of their set, but with showing up late and then running into about 20 people I knew as soon as I walked in, I was just not in a position to pay as close attention as I would have liked. So we grabbed some drinks, chatted and enjoyed the last bit of their set.

Second was Ghost Riders Car Club.  They were fun and the reason that Dee Dee wanted to go out in the first place since she's friends with many of the band members so we wandered up to the front of the stage running into more people I haven't seen in forever.  I've been really bad about going out and seeing people, but I digress...  They were fun, amazing music and awesome to watch on stage.  GRCC made you want to dance around and just enjoy life which was a nice change from the school, work and more work routine that I've been keeping the last few months.  Afterwards Deeds wanted to go back stage to say hi so we wandered back there for a few before coming back out.

Hillbilly Casino were the headliners and there for closed out the show.  They were fun, had high energy and were rocking out.  At that point it was getting pretty late and I was pretty wiped out so we didn't stay for the entire set.  

Over all very fun evening, Rev Andy's next big show will be HollyFest on Feb 2 at The Star Bar.