CHIP “J.D.” ALLEN
Chip “J.D.” Allen opened his Main Street barbecue restaurant, J.D.’s Bar-B-Q, in 2011. Since then, he’s attracted regulars from as far as Chattanooga who come to the circa-1925 schoolhouse for Chip’s slow, wood-smoked barbecue, made-from-scratch barbecue sauce, fried corn on the cob, and his Grandma’s coleslaw recipe (especially on top of a hotdog). Chip, whose motto is “straight from the pit to plate,” takes pride in slow-smoking his brisket, ribs, and pork butts with hickory and oak wood. It isn’t the fastest or the easiest way to make barbecue, but as Chip says, “anything worth having, you have to work hard for.” We talked with Chip about his favorite meal to eat at J.D.’s, his secret for the best breakfast buffet in Acworth, and why Acworth reminds him of Mayberry.
Tell us about the food at J.D.’s.
We specialize in barbecue, and we cook with 100% wood, hickory, and oak. Most of the time, barbecue places will use natural gas; so basically, like a big oven, but adding a little bit of wood for flavor. It’s a little bit harder to do it our way, and you have to pay more attention to it, but we have the passion to make sure every plate is the best it can be. So that’s what we do.
J.D.’s is a destination place, even for out-of-towners.
Because I-75 is so close to us, we have a lot of people going from Florida and back. We actually have people now who are regular customers twice a year, we feed them on the way down to Florida and feed them on the way back. We have people as far away as Chattanooga coming to eat with us because they really like our product. They’ll bring a big crowd, it’s an all-day affair for them.
How’d you get started in barbecue?
I was just lucky, I guess. I moved to Georgia in 1996 when the Olympics were here. I was working in the construction field, but it wasn’t my thing. I opened up the paper one day, and it jumped right out at me: “small barbecue stand for sale.” So I called the number on a Wednesday, quit my job on Friday, and started working that Sunday. I’d always cooked barbecue in high school for church events, school events — I’m one of those guys who loves spending time cooking it, and of course, eating it.
I know this is a tough question, but what’s your favorite thing to eat at J.D.’s?
Probably my favorite is going to be our baby back ribs with coleslaw. Our coleslaw, my grandmother taught me how to make that when I was 7 or 8 years old. I was always having to shred the cabbage for her, and one day I told her, “if I’m going to be shredding all this cabbage, at least teach me how to make coleslaw,” ’cause I love coleslaw. She always said, “son, you can always tell if coleslaw good if it’s good on a hotdog.” To this day, we still sell chili slaw dogs.
Yum! So, you’ve been doing business here for nearly a decade. What do you like about it?
I think the best thing about Acworth is that they’ve brought the modern era to the laid-back, country style of years past. They’re bridging that gap with the new and the old. Some of my favorite things to do in Acworth is definitely all the fall festivals they have, and also enjoying the lake. Lake Acworth is such a great family area, it’s a non-motorized lake so it’s very clean and safe. And there’s a lot of great options in the city of some really talented chefs, from Henry’s to Fusco’s to myself. There’s just a lot of passionate people that really want to deliver to townspeople and visitors.
What’s your idea of a perfect day here?
Well, I’d probably start out by eating breakfast at Daddy’s Country Kitchen. It’s a great place, it’s probably one of the original restaurants here — they’ve been in business for 30, 40 years. They usually have a breakfast buffet, so they pretty much have anything you can imagine from an old Southern buffet place. After that, I’d probably go to the lake, maybe do some kayaking to work that breakfast off. Then for lunchtime, of course, it’s gotta be coming back to JD’s and having some food. But I can’t really imagine having a day off. And as far as nighttime goes, there’s a lot of exciting things, from Center Street Tavern, where you can have some bar food and drinks, and then Henry’s, he always goes above and beyond, and throws a pretty good party every night.
What would you want to tell people who’ve never visited Acworth before?
If they really wanted to see what a small Southern town is like, in the modern era, then Acworth is the place to be. It’s been voted one of the top places to live in the state year after year, there’s low crime and the city does a great job keeping everything clean and making sure everyone’s taken care of. For people passing through, it really is like Mayberry, where everybody knows everybody’s name. You’d never have to worry about going downtown and being nervous about some crime happening. It really is just a quintessential old-timey town.
