The great barbecue at Pearl Country Store on US-441 in Micanopy, Florida could be easy to miss. It’s located in a low profile convenience store at the Marathon gas station, but if you’re in the area make a point of finding this place. It’s a slice of the Florida that the two of us remember back in the 1960s when we were growing up in Pinellas County and when Karen was in college in Alachua county in the early 1970s. That’s exactly the feeling that David and Peggy Carr wanted to capture when they purchased the store and began transforming it into a glorified country store in 2002. Today we were traveling US-301 south when Apple Maps routed us along US-441. Then just after we passed Gainesville it occurred to us we’d had a great meal in a gas station when we were camping at Payne’s Prairie Preserve State Park. So we did a quick Yelp! search for BBQ in Micanopy and found we were just five miles away. Yes, we stopped for lunch and loved the brisket sandwiches and cold tea but also just the ambience of a real down home in Florida place filled with locals enjoying the food just as much as we were enjoying the trip back in time.
The Carrs are good friends and neighbors of ours in Balsam. Glad you got to experience The Pearl and it’s good food.
Tell them we thank them heartily for preserving a bit of Florida heritage.