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The restaurant serves beer and Or. Brown's
Soda, has some impulse dessert buys at the
register, and does take-out and.catering. It's
open every day for lunch and dinner and late
nights six days a week.
Rivalries Revisited: During the filming of the
heist flick The Score, Marion Brando report
edly levied so much contempt and bile at
director Frank Oz that Oz had to resort to
having costar Robert DeNiro direct Brando's
scenes while Oz fed DeNiro direction through
an earpiece. It's unclear why Brando hated
Oz so much, though I have a theory. Frank Oz
directed the 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,
which was a remake of 1964's Bedtime Story
with Brando and David Niven, and my guess is
that Brando didn't like the remake very much.
Why Brando agreed to be in The Score in the
first place is anybody's guess.
It's a safe bet that Brando probably
wouldn't have liked Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
the musical, opening Friday, June 8 at Town &
Gown, but a few hundred thousand people and
the Tony Awards committee would disagree.
The 2005 play follows the movie's story of two
rival con artists, a suave and urbane fleecer
of wealthy women and a ham-handed petty
scammer, who compete to see who can empty
the bank account of a naive young heiress
first Dirty tricks and hairpin turns abound in
this production, directed by Ashley Laramore
with a first-rate cast.
WinterviUe Adventures: Apart from Wok Star,
positively reviewed some time ago in this
space, there is very little on the culinary
scene in WinterviUe, especiaUy since Cafe
Marigold closed. Many of you have no doubt
had Mickey Wickmire's catering, though, from
Classic City Chef, and a short while back he
opened a location open to the general public,
called WinterviUe Cafe (315 Athens Rd.),
that slightly expands the offerings in Athens'
little neighbor. The caffe used to do lunch on
weekdays, but business just wasn't there, so
now your only option is its Friday night fish
fry, a venerable tradition growing out of the
part. The Momma's Love,.the restaurant's
signature sandwich, is sizable, served on a
sub roll stuffed with roast beef, ham, turkey,
muenster, lettuce and tomato, dosed with
spicy mustard and "Momma's sauce," then
steamed quickly in a big stainless-steel box.
The bread doesn't quite hold up to the blast
of hot, moist air, but the sandwich itself is
fine, a decent delivery system for a bunch of
protein. The Reuben and the Pastrama Momma
(pastrami, pepper Jack, spicy mustard and
pickles), both served on Jewish rye, are solid,
if smallish, and toasted rather than steamed.
If you are a dude with a hearty appetite, you
might have to get two to be satisfied. Or a
side. Don't, however, get the potato bacon
soup, which has a weird, filmy texture and no
real bacon flavor or, indeed, presence.
The salads are actually a highlight made to
order in front of you and tossed in a giant
metal bowl with as much or as little in the
way of dressing as you request. An anthropo
morphized green onion, resembling the veg
gies that used to adonr Mellow Mushroom's
website, appears to be a logo of sorts for the
dressings, which are numerous and a point of
pride. The Momma's Western, which includes
grilled chicken, corn, black beans and shred
ded cheddar, might make for a better and
more satisfying lunch than anything involv
ing bread. I didn't manage to try the house
nachos, which are made with Doritos, but I
remain suspicious and intrigued in equal parts.
Momma Goldberg’s Deli
New Deli: Upon hearing that the final piece
of the puzzle to the new downtown deck was
a franchise out of Auburn, AL called Momma
Goldberg's Dell (245 N. Lumpkin St), you
could be excused for sighing. Did every busi
ness in the deck have to be a chain? And what
kind of deli could come out of southeastern
Alabama? Or be open until 3 a.m., serving
beer? It's all very weird, but it also works.
The space is as corporate as that of Fuzzy's,
next door, although possibly less welcoming.
As is usual in this kind of place, you're tun
neled to the counter to place your order, then
assigned a number, and your food is swiftly
assembled by a crew of college kids overseen
by a detail-oriented manager. Things work
pretty smoothly, although it's still a bit of
a shock to find no option to add a tip when
the servers run your credit card. The food is
probably better than expected, for the most
Roman Catholic strictures on eating meat
on Fridays and visible still in the number of
country cooking restaurants around Athens
that offer fried fish as a special that day.
From 4:30 to 9 p.m., you can go pick up fried
catfish (filets or whole), fried oysters, fried
scallops and fried shrimp, all of which come
with coleslaw, french fries, tartar sauce and
cocktail sauce, plus chicken tenders, BBQ
pork, hamburgers and whatever Wickmire puts
on special (e.g., shrimp scampi, sauteed tila-
pia with lemon caper butter, saffron rice and
green beans).
The space is tiny and you can't eat
inside, but there are some tables outside.
The coleslaw gets a thumbs up, being simple
and tasty. The fried stuff is less good. Most
everything is heavy and dark, battered too
strongly and over-fried, although the catfish
filet doesn't have this problem for the most
part. The BBQ has good smoke flavor, and it
isn't chopped too fine, so it's not a wet mess.
The folks who work the counter are super nice,
though, and I certainly want to encourage
more food in WinterviUe. It takes credit cards
for orders over $20, through its computer.
What Up?: The Branded Butcher is open in
the former Flight space on Lumpkin, serving
dinner, brunch and charcuterie, all by Chef
Matt Palmerlee, formerly of Farm 255.
Hillary Brown
Athens. The Rose of Athens Theatre company
will present The Comedy of Errors, one of
Uncle Will's earliest farces, about two sets of
identical twins, nobles and servants, separated
at birth and reunited with disastrous and
hilarious results. Veteran director Lisa Cesnik
Ferguson has the helm of this one, which is
good news, and the cast looks terrific. Best of
all, the Rose is staging this production on the
lawn at Ashford Manor, always a great venue
for seeing Shakespeare's work. The show runs
Wednesday-Sunday, June 13-17, at 8 p.m.
Seating begins at 5:30 for pre-show picnick
ing. Tickets are $16, $12 for students, and
available through the RoA website at http://
roseofathens.wordpress.com.
I Am Zombie, and So Can You: No Shame
Athens, the open-performance arm of Rose
of Athens, continues its New Play Readings
series with a cast reading of Tifany Lee's
play Zombie U. at Hendershofs Coffee Bar
on Oglethorpe Avenue, just inside the Loop,
on Sunday, June 24 at 7 p.m. This is a great
opportunity to see a new play in development
and provide feedback and (hopefully) con
structive criticism. Admission is free.
The Comedy of Errors
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels runs Friday-Sunday,
June 8-10, and Thursday-Sunday, June 14-17,
at the Athens Community Theatre. Showtimes
are 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 p.m. on
Sunday. Tickets are $18, $10 for students with
ID on Thursday, June 14. Call (706) 208-8696.
As always with Town & Gown shows, the
Monday and Tuesday after opening weekend
are slated for open auditions for the next Main
Stage show. In this case, it's Aristophanes'
immortal Lysistrata, the classical Greek com
edy about what happens when women decide
to stop a war by withholding sex. Auditions
are at 7 p.m., June 11 & 12.
Town & Gown will follow Dirty Rotten
Scoundrels with the Second Stage produc
tion of All in the Timing, a comic-dramatic
anthology of short plays by David Ives, Friday-
Sunday, June 22-24. Showtimes are 8 p.m.
on Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets are $5 at the door, no reservations.
A Get Your Blanket Out: It's June, which
means (hurray!) it's Shakespeare time in
A Friendly Reminder: To all you Athens
troupes, companies, 'erformers and carnival
geeks out there: this column is not just for
traditional theater. It's also for burlesque,
stand-up comedy, sideshow troupes and any
other forms of live performance of the non-
bartd variety that would otherwise fall through
the publicity cracks. We want to give the folks
of Athens a chance, to check out the huge
variety of entertainment options available, and
that includes you. Drop me a line at the email
address below and let me know what's coming
up and I'll do my best to get you in, but be
aware that, as this is a monthly column in a
weekly newspaper, there are time constraints. I
write the column the last week of every month
to come out the first week of the following
month. Get your notices, press releases
and/or invites to upcoming shows in to me
at least two weeks in advance in order to
guarantee that I can do something with them.
Hi-res publicity photos are a plus. Thanks!
John G. Nettles theatre@flagpole.com
JUNE 6,2012 FLAGPOLE.COM 7