Tasting Thomasville: Andy’s and Q Cafe

Nibbles

If it seems like I’m dragging these tastings out, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. While we were deciding where to go for dinner last Friday night, I grabbed the phone book and the restaurant listings only take up a single page! Most of the places we’ve yet to try aren’t open for dinner, so I guess we’ll have to concentrate our efforts on weekend lunches in the future.

But that’s for later. Right now we’re winding the gustatory clock back to the end of November.

Andy’s

Small town radio is a wonderful thing. Morning after morning I kept hearing an ad for Andy’s and I was intrigued. Todd had never heard of the place, but they advertised having wings and that was something we hadn’t found a local source for, so I wanted to try them out.

The Friday night before Thanksgiving, after unloading and unpacking the large boxes of my grandmother’s china and silver my aunt had shipped down from New Jersey (early inheritance), we headed down Madison and, just over the overpass, was Andy’s–some place we probably wouldn’t have stumbled on, on our own, since it was outside of our usual routes. We almost didn’t make it in time to order as, even on a Friday night, they were closing at 9pm (as do many places here, we’ve found). It was nearly deserted inside, but looked clean and well-maintained, so we placed our order to-go.

Andy's Wings

Andy’s Wings

Their menu (which you can download from their Facebook page) reminds me of a Dairy Queen–ice cream, novelties, and fast food. This is not a bad thing, mind you, just an observation and a change from what I was expecting based on the one ad I’d heard (I was thinking more like a Wing Zone or Wing Stop).

Their garlic parmesan wings weren’t the best we’ve ever had, but they were certainly tasty and we’d definitely go back. I want to say the other flavor was BBQ, but looking at their current options it might have been teriyaki. The fries and onion rings were basic, reliable sides. Good for a “brown foods” night, as we like to call these sorts of noshes.

Q Cafe

The next day was jam-packed. I was co-hosting a baby shower that afternoon and tried to squeeze in a site visit to a piece of commercial property that was available on the edge of downtown. The building was in rough shape but at the moment we were considering taking it on (spoiler: we didn’t). After meeting with the realtor and taking pictures of the building, I was ready to head back home and finish getting ready for the party but Todd proposed we try out another downtown spot–who was I to turn down brunch?!

Q Cafe--the view from the entryway.

Q Cafe–the view from the entryway.

The Q Cafe is one of the spots we’d often pass on our walks downtown, but always when it was closed. It’s open for breakfast and lunch only, so this Saturday morning seemed like the perfect opportunity to give it a try. It was doing pretty swift business this morning, but we didn’t have to wait too long for a table to open up (there’s a line of tables just to the right in the picture above).

Q Cafe--Little Bit of Chicken Fried loaded potato skillet

Q Cafe–Little Bit of Chicken Fried loaded potato skillet

We both ordered from their Loaded Potato Skillet selections, Todd getting the “Little Bit of Chicken Fried” while I went with the “Big Boy” (sans onions). Mine was perfectly tasty but, oh, y’all, Todd’s was amazing. I had a little bite of the chicken on top of his and it was better than a certain “Christian Chicken” chain we all know and love. Seriously, it was so good. That same chicken is available on biscuits if that’s more your speed.

Q Cafe--Big Boy loaded potato skillet

Q Cafe–Big Boy loaded potato skillet

Since we had things to do with the rest of our day we didn’t linger too long downtown. But I wouldn’t hesitate to bring friends to the Q Cafe for breakfast, brunch, or lunch.

Looks like the next Tasting will be another out-of-town one, judging by the pictures in the queue. We also spent a lot of time going back to favorites (Moonspin, George & Louie’s, and Fallin’s) before trying a few more new-to-us spots.