Today’s lunch is at another spot sent to me from the pages of Garden N Gun – K&K Soul Food.  (It’s like these pages speak to me – “if we fry it, you will come.”)  K & K has been in business for fifty years, and I’ve been seeing it on one version of my drive home for the last couple of years.  On Donald Hollowell Parkway (US78), just west of Northside Drive, they’re always closed when I drive by (they are open 5:00 – 5:00, Tuesday – Saturday).  Today, when I had a meeting at the AU Center, I was talking with one of the security guards about K&K and she didn’t recommend anything – she recommended everything.  I was obligated to go, as my stomach growled through the last half of my meeting.

I walked in, joined the line that stretched toward the door, and stared down the steam table.  That line was ten-fifteen people deep for the entire half hour plus I was.  They seem to do a good business.  It was a tough choice, with at least ten meats (a cornucopia of soul food – oxtails, pig feet, ribs and fried anything),

I decided on a fried pork chop, lima and as many vegetables.  The sad thing, on the vegetable side, was that they were out of mac-n-cheese – and it was going to be twenty minutes before they had more. The back wall of the restaurant is a mural reflecting the family that started what was then called Bankhead Restaurants and regulars.  One thing that is really hard to see in this picture is the bathroom (which is where the guy in the red booth is sitting in the painting), that you have to be “buzzed” into, from the front counter.

I decided on a fried pork chop, lima beans, mashed potatoes with gravy and green beans and cornbread.  And a slice of key lime cake…

The pork chop was excellent, as were the limas and potatoes – although everything needed salt.  The batter on the chop was thin and flaky, but didn’t shatter – it held onto the meat well.  The green beans were, sadly, lacking in flavor and not very hot.  That key lime cake?  This is one of my favorite desserts of the last few years and it’s “natural habitat” appears to be a small plastic container, with a piece sliced.  Most places I find it, it appears to be cooked by someone outside the restaurant and brought in.  It’s one of the simplest cakes – but so moist and it always hits the spot.  This one didn’t disappoint.