It must have been a raucous lunch. The plate were piled high in many of the tables in the restaurant’s dining room.

Dobbs Famous Bar-B-Que may not look like much from the outside, nor the inside, but what it lacks in appearance, it makes up for in charisma. It’s the kind of place with floors that haven’t seen a mop in more than a decade. Its walls show the remnants of 40 years worth of lunches. Yes, this is the kind of place everyone needs to experience — frequent actually.

Dobbs is a roadside diner in Dothan, Ala. It’s the piece of America that was lost when the interstates started bisecting the countryside. Its walls are pages from the past, a window into America that seems long gone and all but forgotten.

For its BBQ sandwiches, the restaurant offers the standard BBQ sauce, but they also feature their homemade hot sauce. This accoutrement is not your run-of-the-mill hot sauce that the local grocery store stocks on its shelves. No, from the minute the top is popped on this bottle, one can smell the heat. It’s the kind of antidote doctors should prescribe as a remedy for the common head cold.

I bought a bottle to take home.

What makes a place like this so special is what it represents — in addition to the good food. It has more character than the fast food restaurant at the next exit could ever offer.