A Restaurant Review of the Roadkill Café, Bait Shop and Tanning Salon.

The Restaurant or, more precisely, The Place of Business is situated in a building that formerly housed a gas station and garage. The seating area is in the open bay that used to hold cars being repaired. The kitchen is in the machine shop. There is still a hint of burnt motor oil in the air and when you walk over the areas where the oil pits used to be, there is a hollow sound to your footsteps. Above the kitchen area is where the tanning beds are located. It is where they used to store tires, hoses and fan belts. Behind the counter in the front office area is where they have the bait and lobster tanks.

The matre’de is wearing coveralls with a red bandana hanging out of his back pocket and he speaks with a pronounced southern accent. His fingernails are clean but he has a two-day growth of beard and the name "Jose" above the left pocket of the overalls. The application of well worn $5 bill to his palm means we’re seated at an intimate little table near the window of what was once a large garage door, now poorly disguised with planters full of slightly dusty plastic plants. Our waiter "Mike" (I know this because it is stenciled above the pocket of his blue work shirt) quickly approaches with a wine list and a pitcher of ice-water. I suggest "maybe later" on the wine list and he brings out an old chalkboard with the daily specials on it. We have: Fried Rabbit (Taken by blue 67 Ford Pickup on Hy77 near Rt11 at 8:35 this AM), Deep fried Alligator bits (From the Coosa River just below South-Side by the blade of an Evenrude 225hp at noon yesterday), Doe Deer Tenderloin in wine sauce (Somewhere on Sand Mountain by Ms. Story’s Crown Vic sometime this morning)… And the list goes on, but I’m sure you get the picture.

We choose the deer for a main course and for sides we took wild steamed polk salad and fresh corn-on-the-cob. The waiter brought back the wine list and we choose a nice Tennessee Valley Red I know to go well with venison. The garden salad was excellent with a nice light soy and vinegar dressing and the recurring pallet cleanser is a wonderful wild persimmon sorbet with just a hint of ginger, The vegetables are excellent and the dessert we decided on (blackberry mousse with vanilla ice-cream) is very good as well.

The only surprise of the evening was when one of the tanning beds had a short circuit and sprayed sparks all over the dinning room. There was some disruption to the service when the paramedics came to take the tanning customer away to the emergency room, but all in all it was a very pleasant meal.

On a scale of five I would give it a solid 3-½ stars.

Uncle Dave