Outdoor food stands and spots in Atlanta

Joeff Davis

SMOKE OUT: The elusive gas station barbecue

The cookout. The ballpark hot dog. Greasy fair food. We could try to tell you that eating on the patio at some fancy restaurant is the true outdoor food experience, but who are we kidding? How do you really know its summer? When you get that whiff of smoky grilled meat wafting through the air.  

It's summer, and we want to stand and sweat and eat things that are bad for us.

Atlanta isn't well-known for its street food, probably because there's not much of a street life — we're better at roads than walkable streets. But in the summertime, we move our eating outdoors, whether to a vendor, a roadside stand, or family cookout.

FAIR FOOD There are plenty of summer festivals offering enough fried nastiness to cause our collective hearts to stop. There are chocolate-covered bananas, deep-fried Twinkies, greasy versions of various Italian and Greek classics, and of course, the corndog. The eponymous event known as Corndogorama may get all the hype, but the Pallookaville cart is worth trying for a more refined fair food experience. That's right, gourmet carnival food. Pallookaville's corndogs are made to order and come in versions such as the American Frank, Kielbasa and Italian sausage (and one monster of a dog that combines all three). The cornbread is homemade and also comes in jalapeño or cheese varieties. Sometimes tamales make an appearance, and ingredients such as pickled cactus show up. You'll have to keep your ear to the ground to figure out the cart's current location. www.pallookaville.com.

— With additional reporting by Gloria Love