Captain Stan’s Smokehouse, Woodbine, Georgia – John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog
A lack of preparation and perhaps a food coma lead me to miss the mark here.
My next lunch of the day with Keith McLendon was at Captain Stan’s Smokehouse. The attractions were that Keith had never been, that he’d heard he should go, and not least that it would take a while to get there using back roads. That might give us time to digest our Herculean meal at Southern Smoke to the point that we could think of eating again.
Captain Stan’s sits at 700 Bedell Avenue (US17) in Woodbine, Georgia, a small town down near the Florida line. There’s not a lot that attracts the eye in Woodbine, but there is Captain Stan’s.
Architecturally, the place has a certain je ne sais quoi that I find appealing. That photo shows about two thirds of one of the four sides of Captain Stan’s. The place sprawls, with seating in the center and along the fences,
with a bar,
and a bandstand and dance floor with an auxiliary bar off to the left,
Remember the “management by walking around” vogue? Boeing used to feature that approach but stopped, and …. That seems to be Stan’s mode. He’s out front, chatting up the customers and keeping everyone happy, and he’s good at it. Stan was a fashion model and at one time the rollerskating instructor at the Playboy Mansion. There’s a scrapbook from his career, but a lot of photographs seem to be missing. Stan was a lover of life, and remains as he was. Stan sets a vibrant tone.
Keith and I may not have been vibrant at this stage, but we were both game. We ordered two sandwiches to share. Here’s the rib sandwich.
It was a proper bone-in rib sandwich, and the ribs looked good, nice and meaty. But they also tended dry and tough. And here’s the pork sandwich.
Now that’s a lot of pork. Alas, the first flavor that hit me was refrigeration. It seemed to have been cooked a day or more before and kept in the fridge loosely covered before being reheated. I tried their mustard sauce and doctored with some Texas Pete vinegar pepper. It helped, but not enough.
The collards were average, which is a good thing to be for collards, much as average macaroni and cheese is pretty darn good, a solid B+. The potato salad, which is easy to mess up, was a solid A. It was neither overcooked nor overdressed, and welcome touches of onion and parsley nestled in with the potatoes.
As I said, I missed the mark. Since my return from Georgia I’ve had a chance to look at reviews of Captain Stan’s. The positive comments on food lean heavily toward seafood — shrimp, fish sandwiches — and to the Woodbine Crawfish Festival. I missed the festival, as I’d left Georgia by then. Also, I’d never heard of it and I had a pressing engagement at the Annual Beer Snob Pig Picking. And to be perfectly transparent, I carefully order my life iso as to avoid standing in line to use portable toilets, and so avoid festivals. Still, the reviews made me see that I’d approached Captain Stan’s in the wrong way. I was focused on smoked meat. Had I done some research and thought about possible strengths, I’d have gone for a fish sandwich or some shrimp or crawfish and washed it down with what numerous people describe online as “COLD beer.” I wasn’t impressed by the barbecue side, but Captain Stan’s clearly has a lot to offer. If you want some seafood and some fun, head to Woodbine.
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