Northgate Soda Shop, Greenville SC

In February of last year, Marie and I took a fantastic day trip to Charlotte and back. We took I-20 and I-77 there and I-85 back, stopping at eight places. We had such a good time that we wanted to repeat the experience a year later. I made some modifications and alterations, and we didn't go quite as far as Charlotte, deciding instead to connect Spartanburg and Columbia via US 176. And we did the trip in reverse, starting in Greenville. So about 520 miles instead of 590.

I wanted to do some proper eating with some South Carolina - eastern Georgia specialties. With one notable exception, we had pimento cheeseburgers, chopped pork with spicy mustard sauce, hash over rice or chicken mull at each of the seven restaurants that we visited. I did not intend to schedule our trip for the same day as the Palmetto State's Republican presidential primary - oddly, Rick Perry, who dropped out earlier in the week, was the clear winner in side-of-the-road signs - but while South Carolina, the state that neglected to recall Mark Sanford, went for Newt Gingrich and gave another big A-OK for adultery, we gave the state a big A-OK for fantastic food and left with as many places added to our wishlist as we took away.

We started things off in Greenville, at the venerable Northgate Soda Shop. I read about this place over at Serious Eats' A Hamburger Today blog, which, in 2008, excerpted a chapter about it from George Motz's fun book Hamburger America. (The indefatigable Todd Brock also paid a visit for that site, in May of last year.) I kind of had a bad feeling that we couldn't get lunch here until eleven on the dot, meaning we got a late start out of Marietta and made it a slow drive, with breaks at a filling station and a rest stop to feed the baby and not get ahead of the clock.

Incidentally, gas in South Carolina's upstate was much cheaper than I've seen it anywhere else in weeks. We're paying $3.40-plus in the suburbs of Atlanta, and it's only $3.08 around Greenville.





The shop is now on its fourth owner; everybody involved seems to have made it their business to not change much of anything beyond the gradual emphasis of food over greeting cards and sundries. It was opened in 1947 by Charlie and Thelma Davis. Eight years later, they sold it to a man named Rex Collins. In 1965, Jim DeYoung purchased it, and made it legendary over his decades in charge. It was under DeYoung that the practice of immortalizing beloved patrons with brass plaques on the tables emerged. We sat at Randy Coe's old space. Today, it is owned by Catherine Christophillis, who, I understand, also practices law and runs the neighboring Other Side bar when she's not, as Motz notes, acting in community theater.

Many other commenters have noted that this place doesn't seem to have changed a bit over the years, and it's evident that the staff has worked hard to keep this place as timeless and as timelost as possible. It's a place where the locals come to have a nice, long meal surrounded by relics of the past. One wall is shelved to capacity with old soda bottles and bric-a-brac, and photographs of old Greenville are framed all around. The older gentlemen at a table near us were discussing native settlements of the 18th Century. It's a place where the modern world doesn't intrude much.

Marie, still a few weeks away from being able to enjoy dairy, had to skip out on the pimento cheeseburgers that I enjoyed all day long, but enjoyed a chili dog and a slaw dog. I spent the next several hours fretting that I might have started our day with the best meal that I'd have, because my cheeseburger was just that good. It was a terrific burger on a toasted bun, topped with freshly made and wonderfully gooey pimento cheese, lettuce and tomato. It was completely delicious!

Of course, a soda shop wouldn't be a soda shop without neat, hand-mixed treats. This was too early in the day for desserts - we had so much on the agenda that we passed on either potato chips or fries with our food - but we did try out some of their hand-mixed drinks. They offer some neat concoctions like a cherry smash, which is cherry syrup and soda water, and a really neat thing with chocolate ice cream and cherry syrup in Pepsi, but Marie decided on a limeade, and I went with a half-lemonade, half-orangeade. They were wonderful, and just the perfect accompaniment to the cheesy burger.

I loved this place completely, and insist that everybody try it out, but there was so much more to do, and so many more miles to cover, so we had no time to linger. Our next stop was just a couple of streets over.

Falafel King, Decatur GA

A couple of Fridays ago, my plans got changed. There's a restaurant - it would be churlish to name them before I give them another try, so let their identity slide - that I had hoped to visit some time ago. Now, I knew that I wanted to go get some lunch on Friday, but not where. On Thursday evening, I opened the brand new issue of Southern Living that had arrived in our mailbox, and wowed at the description of an item that this place makes. It isn't on their menu; you have to know to ask for it. So at eleven sharp, I arrived, ready to eat, and grumbled that they didn't open for another half hour. I sat in Starbuck's with a mediocre doughnut and read for a bit. Eventually, I walked over, placed my order, paid my money, and was then told that, oh, me oh my, they weren't going to have this interesting item today after all. I got my money back and looked for something else to eat.

I took the risk and left this little strip mall, which I later learned is a good way to get your car booted, and walked over to Falafel King. I recall when this oddly-shaped building was a Domino's Pizza. In the 1980s, I would sometimes come to meetings of the local Doctor Who fan club, which met in Emory's White Hall, and we'd sometimes walk past the Domino's on our way over to window shop at a record store called Music, Music, Music. Back then, the building's bizarre roof was baby blue, and today it is a drab yellow, but it's still a lovable curiosity.





This tiny little place is run by a Korean couple who also serve up sushi and udon. Report after report suggests that these are far better than anybody expects, but those weren't what I was in the mood for. They are apparently the second owners. The original Falafel King moved his business to Athens in 2007, and operates on Baxter Street in a former Pizza Hut that has been home to sixty-eleven different restaurants.

The falafels at his original location are fried up to order, so there's a short wait for them. They are very crispy, with a soft inside. They're a little dry, even with a drizzle of a white sauce over them. I was pleased with the little hot sauce they came with. There is a small selection of sides with the plates. The hummus was pretty good. I was torn between grape leaves and olives and settled on the latter. Nothing was really amazing, and the falafels were not in the same league as OU for U Cafe in Dunwoody, but it was a satisfactory meal in a fun place.

I got lucky and avoided a boot, whereas several of the commuters in the lot behind Starbucks and Wonderful World didn't that afternoon. I'm not sure that it's worth risking the parking trolls of Emory Village for a return visit, unless I can nail down one of the few spaces specifically marked for this restaurant. Emory Village has all these signs and websites about improvements to the shopping experience. What they need to do is get their act together and coordinate short-term, low-cost pay-parking at each of the seven or eight different small lots in this neighborhood and let people wander from business to business without worrying about their car, or starting the engine to move it three hundred feet from one dedicated lot to another. There's no falafel in the world, and nothing listed in Southern Living, that's worth this kind of headache.

Keba Spitfire Grill, Athens GA

Here is a restaurant that I remember well from back when it had an even sillier name. See, about three years ago, Achim Reus, who, before he became a restaurateur, was once the principal French horn player in the Stuttgart Philharmonic, decided that it was time to corporatize the restaurants that he'd been running since 1999 or 2000 or so. Back then, he had two in Athens and they were called Achim's K-Bobs. There was one downtown and one by the track and the football practice fields and I really enjoyed them. They were proper, ramshackle restaurants for a college town and I ate at each of the two frequently.

In November of 2003, I took my still-quite-small children to Athens along with Matt on the day that Auburn came to town to get beat, 26-7. We didn't have tickets and didn't expect to find any; we just enjoyed the tailgating and the spectacle and the fun, and, looking for a place downtown with tables and televisions and a big crowd in red and black, we ended up at Achim's and had a complete blast. I yelled myself hoarse after we intercepted on our one inch line with Auburn set to score and ran it all the way back. Oh, that was beautiful. Food was good, too.

I also remember an incident a few months later at the other Achim's where my son, then seven, managed to lock himself in the restroom and his sister, then five, took advantage of my absence, trying to calm him down while somebody went looking for a key, and went rocking in her chair on the patio and fell backwards, conking her head on the cement. I thought for years that she avoided lasting injury; lately, though, I wonder. Anyway, with each kid completely terrified and bawling, I don't know that I remember the food all that well on that visit. I was too busy watching out for a TV crew from America's Worst Dads to drive past.

While I don't know for certain that I stopped by Achim's again after that low moment, I was aware that in early 2009, Achim remade and remodeled his restaurants into the franchise-friendly Keba Spitfire Grill. Now featuring flat and solid colors, big, easy-to-read menu boards and uniformed staff, what was once cluttered and unique now looks like the sort of place that's ready to open in every town in America. There are two locations in Athens and one in nearby Watkinsville, and while I couldn't confirm that any others are immediately in the offing, the company's web site talks at length about their franchising plans. Loco's Deli and Pub, Barberitos and Zaxby's have all successfully expanded beyond the Athens area; perhaps Keba might be the fourth to do it.





The main offering here are doner kebab sandwiches, prepared in the German style. That is, if you will, a similar product to what you see at a Great Wraps, but served on a freshly-baked hamburger bun, with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers and drowned in one of nine sauces. Most people go for the Keba sauce, which is basically tzatziki, but I had mine with the roasted red pepper sauce. You get your choice of meats, or a mix. I went with beef and pork and was incredibly pleased. This was a delicious sandwich. You can get them in wraps, or in a salad, but I definitely recommend the freshly-baked bun.

You're definitely going to want fries with that. A high point since the Achim's K-Bob days, these are big, freshly-cut incredibly tasty Belgian fries and each order comes with one of the nine sauces. I had the chipotle, and then decided I wanted to buy an extra cup of the curry sauce for them. This is one bit where the corporatization of the concept has hit a speed bump. If you go back up to the register for some, every single member of the staff fails to understand what they are supposed to do.

I never objected, back in the good old days, to giving the register a quarter and having the fellow working it get me a cup of sauce. Here, they've got to punch it in and make a production of it, and it costs fifty cents and not a quarter, and they charge tax, and they give you a receipt, and all the other kids behind the counter don't understand why you're standing there because the guy at the register can't actually leave the register to squirt sauce into a cup, and so you stand there for a minute and a half while smiling teens are waiting for the fellows in the kitchen to finish slicing and prepping the previous customer's sandwiches until you say, "Excuse me, my sandwich and fries are cooling; could one of you please just pump me the curry sauce that I just paid for?" Franchising has its consequences. It's like how "zero tolerance" should not necessarily mean "zero common sense," but it always seems to, because when you have a rigid system in place, nobody understands how to take initiative anymore.

In other words, it's really good food, but nostalgia isn't the only thing that made the experience a little better once upon a time.

I did a little shopping after that. I was with David, and he bought several more old records for his mighty collection of old vinyl. Before leaving town, I had planned to try one of the lauded burgers from Farm 255's lunch cart while he was browsing at Low Yo-Yo, but the cart is, sadly, parked for the winter. I shall have to try again in the spring. That meant that my post-shopping visit was simply at the local branch of The Varsity.



We've written about the Varsity's Atlanta locations twice before in this blog. The Athens location is the most agreeable of the chain, of course, on account of all the red and black on display here. I seem to stop by on my way out of town maybe every third or fourth visit to Athens for a frosted orange and a last chance to stretch my legs before getting back to Atlanta. I was actually in the mood for a messy burger with pimento cheese, but I knew that those were on the agenda for Saturday at at least two places, so I passed on the grease and just had a wonderful F.O. It was, perhaps, not quite as satisfying as a burger might have been, or a pint of beer at The Globe, but it traveled a little better for the ninety-minute trip home.

J. Christopher's, Kennesaw GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about breakfast. Recently, my brother came for a visit. He is more of a hearty eater than I am. For one thing, he likes bacon. Although we have a number of excellent breakfast places, my current dietary limitations mean it's not quite as much fun to go to places like the delightful Stilesboro Biscuits. On his first day here, we went to a national chain restaurant. I decided that for his second day here that an alternate had to be found. Which is ironic, because we wound up going to a chain after all - the difference being that it was a local chain that started right here in Marietta. Karl suggested J. Christopher's, and I am glad he pointed it out because otherwise I might not have known it was that local. They currently have 22 stores in Georgia and Tennessee.

J. Christopher's has a somewhat more idiosyncratic decor than the place we'd gone to the day before. They have quite a bit of art up on the walls and rest of the decor looks interesting and non-industrial. I would like to see whether some of the pieces are provided by local artists - some had that look (even if one was the obligatory re-working of "Starry Night" and another was a Warhol type).





The menu has some interesting things on it, and when I can eat waffles again I would like to try the seasonal Gingerbread waffle. Although the selections have cute names that I prefer not to use when ordering, it's still a good variety of tasty food. We each ordered from different bands of the breakfast spectrum, and each of us seemed pleased with the color we chose. The savory crepe that Ivy ordered looked quite interesting; that might be something I'd try after the visit for the waffle, or if it's still out of season when we're by next. My brother's breakfast skillet was better left with him, as I took one look at it and knew that even without bacon, that would only get finished if I shared. My own breakfast was the Irish oatmeal with cinnamon, brown sugar and raisins, along with a side of sausage and raisin toast. Somehow they managed without any milk to make that oatmeal creamy and smooth. The tea was Tazo, which is a good bit better than the Lipton's I've wound up settling for at some places!

Although the food was tasty, the service was really the high point. Although as happens occasionally, several of the wait staff come up to admire the baby, our server was attentive and on task. She brought out extra hot water for my tea, picked up a flung toy, and cleared up after we were ready and not before. Overall, a satisfactory and pleasant experience was had by all.

The menus and signage are definitely professional, but one thing I like about them is the note on the menus that items may differ by location. If they are indeed serious about that, and individual franchises get to have their own specialties, that would make this a really good place indeed. It warrants further exploration.

Lucky's Burgers and Brew, Roswell GA

Marie's brother Karl was in town a couple of Saturdays ago and in the mood for a burger. I don't know that Marie and I were being the best of hosts by not taking him to a reliable favorite instead of taking the chance on something untried, but we wanted to visit someplace new for our blog and so passed on a trip to Farm Burger or something excellent like that, and instead looked on Urbanspoon for the highest-ranked burger joint in Atlanta within a reasonable drive where we had not visited.

Roswell is just about the limit of a reasonable drive for us if we're not popping on the interstate, and I feel strongly that we could do a much better job covering the food in this town anyway. It's a quite nice drive down Post Oak Tritt Road, although it's not the sort of commute that I would want to drive every day. For almost three years, I did. It was a bit much, in the end. Still, every couple of months, it is doable. So, about half an hour through neighborhoods later, we made it to Lucky's Burgers and Brew, a very nice little place that opened in the summer of 2010. The selection of beers is a little disappointing if you prefer a deep collection of local breweries, but the burgers are very good.

It's an even more satisfying trip if you want a meal out with your dog. As gimmicks go, this is a pretty good one. The restaurant is named after the owners' golden retriever, who spends many afternoons hanging out on the pet-friendly patio. It is a dog-friendly, family-friendly sports bar, with photos and drawings of dogs all over the interior. Now, unless they're named Snoopy, or Dougal, or Uga - or Russ, should an Uga be unavailable - I don't have any liking for dogs myself, but I do enjoy restaurants that take a theme and run with it.





We arrived around six and took one of the last available tables and the absolutely last highchair. I've never seen so many babies in one place outside of daycare. The Saints and the 49ers were going back and forth and the sun had gone down. My attempts to photograph the outside in the low light failed completely; should you be curious what the place looks like, Food Near Snellville made it here during the daytime and got a good picture of it.

We shared an appetizer of onion rings and were very pleased with them. The soft and crumbly breading had just enough of a zesty kick to really impress. These were much better than the strangely bland fries that accompanied the burgers, which were really quite good. Marie just had a basic one with lettuce and tomato, and her brother went with one that came with bacon and blue cheese. I was taken with the idea of the Berga Masco, served with marinara sauce, mushrooms and melted cheese, almost a chicken parmesan made with ground beef instead. The resulting sandwich was indeed very good, but it was also almost comically messy. Much as I liked it, I did find myself wishing that Lucky's would look into a firmer bun, or possibly toasting it, for creations this prone to disintegration. All of us were very pleased with our burgers.

Incidentally, the messiest hamburger ever made, anywhere, was the "Sloppy Burger" that I concocted with the short-order cook at the office cafeteria at Ravinia Three some years ago. It had chili and melted cheese and slaw, among other things, and provided a second meal when you ate the resulting flotsam atop the fries in the little cardboard boat. With a fork.

For a place that welcomes families, Lucky's seems to want to stride that line between comfort food and silly edginess. They offer a burger called The Undertaker with fried onions, fried eggs and bacon, but this pales beside their absolutely ridiculous concoction called The Grim Reaper. This was prepared for an eating contest held last summer; photographs of the debauchery are displayed towards the back of the restaurant.

In all, this was not a bad evening out. In Roswell, I do prefer the burgers at Rhea's, but they're not open in the evenings, and neither the timelost style of that place, nor the my-way-or-the-door approach really lend themselves to nights out for families even if it was. I'd like Lucky's more if they got in more beers from Sweetwater or Terrapin instead of all the nationals, but they certainly do a good job with what they've designed. It's a fine place to spend a few hours with friends.

Mediterranean Grill, Marietta GA

I've mentioned before that 2004 was, for me, something of a mistake-filled year. Well, the mistake in question lived in Decatur for a while before moving way out to Morgan County, and one of the few very decent things to come of that experience was her introducing me to her favorite restaurant in our area, a wonderful little place with the simple name of Mediterranean Grill. It opened in the late '90s in the same strip mall as Wuxtry Records and Rainbow Grocery and ChocoLaté Coffee, across the street from Evans Fine Foods and it is completely delicious. I have visted many times, and the only thing on their menu that I don't really like is the baba ghanoush. I'm certain that they won't take offense to hear that they don't do one single thing to my liking, because they do everything else incredibly well.

In fact, I'd never had baba ghanoush anywhere before, not knowing what it was. It probably never registered with me that there was such a dish, if ever I was at a restaurant that offered it, because when the mistake in question occasionally used it as a pet name for her small daughter, I had no idea what she was talking about. So quite some time later, she took me to Mediterranean Grill, ordered some alongside whatever else she was going to have for lunch, and explained that this was her comfort food. I had a little taste with some pita bread and did not like it at all, and stuck instead to hummus.

Some months later, the mistake in question consigned, mostly, to history, I was with David in another restaurant, since closed, that served Mediterranean food. While we were at the register considering what to order, I made the mistake of saying aloud to him that I'd be having hummus with the plate that he suggested, as I didn't care for baba ghanoush. I was unaware that the chef was spectacularly proud of her baba ghanoush and she bristled, turned and stormed back into the kitchen. There was a short moment of shared awkwardness before she returned with a small plate and a spoon and ordered me, "You try this!" It was magnificent. Until the place closed in 2007, I must have eaten my weight in it. And just think: I never would have enjoyed all that spectacular baba ghanoush if Mediterranean Grill's didn't disappoint me.

In the meantime, while I was enjoying baba ghanoush in Marietta, Mediterranean Grill became a regular destination whenever I was near Decatur. I can honestly say that I completely love everything else on their menu that I have tried: gyros, falafels, shish and kofta kabobs, their wonderful home fries-like Greek potatoes and their creamy and magical Jerusalem salad. All that time, I enjoyed meals there with lots of different people, and it never really registered that the restaurant had a location much closer to me, and I need not drive all the way to Emory to try it.





Despite having this favorite food only about fifteen minutes of sprawl and traffic lights away from our house, I had actually only visited once before this past weekend. Not long after Marie and I visited in late 2009 with our friends Samantha and Todd, we started the blog and sidelined reliable favorites in favor of trying new places. I always intended to get back for a meal and feature it here, but Marie unwittingly kept shooting me down. On an evening where we didn't have specific plans, I might, for example, ask Marie "What are you in the mood for? I was thinking maybe Mediterranean, or perhaps Thai?" Actually, phrased like that, it was not so much Marie shooting me down as it was me doing it to myself. Given the choice, Marie would probably pick a Thai place over just about anything.

I finally gave myself an opportunity to have another order of their delicious gyros and Greek potatoes last Saturday. I had an appointment just a couple of miles away and took the camera and enjoyed a really delicious lunch for just under seven dollars. Actually, the best time to go is during the week. They have a "businessman's lunch special" that just piles you down with excellent food for even less than the small amount that I paid. All of their prices here are very reasonable, and the food is sublime. The decor is cluttered and tacky, like a neglected fast food chain, and the small Marietta location seems to quickly fill up at just about any hour. This shouldn't be surprising; places this popular and well-loved are always going to be busy.



I'm more familiar with the original location in Decatur, which is also always busy:

Perla Taqueria, Atlanta GA

I don't know whether they're ever apparent to you good readers, but I do like to occasionally find some kind of an angle to a chapter here, especially when I write a chapter with two different restaurants. Well, beyond just "here are two places where we ate recently," I mean. Last week, I thought that I was onto a good one when David suggested that we follow up our lunch at Decatur's No. 246 with a visit to Perla Taqueria near Cheshire Bridge. He had eaten here a couple of weeks previously, and emailed just about all his local friends as soon as he got back to the office to warn everybody about their incredibly hot sauce. Evidently, he seemed to think that I had not actually read that email when he then told me how I really had to try this place.

No matter, I certainly like good, spicy hot sauces, and was willing to give them a try. As we walked back to the car, trying to block out all the '70s dinosaur rock being piped out of Ruby Tuesday and The Pita Pit, I caught sight of Big Tex Cantina, a little side venture of the good fellows at Fox Brothers, and figured I could make a little two-fer chapter about the tacos at both joints. David and I took our seats, but were surprised to learn that Big Tex is undergoing an interesting menu revision. Perhaps pummeled by the popularity of the tacos at the nearby Taqueria del Sol, Big Tex is slowly abandoning their Tex-Mex menu in favor of traditional southern cooking, turning into a meat-and-three with emphasis on things like chicken and dumplings and pork chops. With three buck tacos no longer on the menu, I decided to snack here some other time.



So, onto Perla, to try this wicked hot sauce. The business opened in mid-2011 in a shuttered Mrs. Winners. The prices here are remarkably low - the $3.99 burrito that I ordered was one of the most expensive things on the menu - and I enjoyed the flavors and the goofy design and attitude. I love the lights hanging from the ceiling in old potato chip cans.

The food did not knock me out. I had a brisket taco and it really was not as tasty as the one that I enjoyed several days before at El Rey del Taco. The burrito and the taco were satisfying and pleasant, but not spectacular. I'm probably a little more satisfied than Foodie Buddha was with his visit, which is hardly surprising, as Buddha, lovable curmudgeon that he is, seems eternally unsatisfied by everything that he eats, but I'll still agree that this is probably best sampled as late night hangover-prevention food. I did enjoy the sauces, if not the tiny little chip-defying cups that you can spoon a feeble little bit into, and the hot sauce certainly met David's description of it being too darn combustible for the unprepared.

The one disappointment that I had with the hot sauce was that I couldn't quite get enough of it. The fellow at the register was apologetic, and told me that the kitchen staff was working on a new batch. Some guest had just left and, in what must be a breach of all restaurant etiquette, filled up on their hot sauce in their own container, leaving only drips and drops behind, barely enough to fill one of Perla's tiny little chip-defying cups. I spooned up just enough to flavor my food just a bit. Next time I come by to sample their other tacos, I hope to get a little more of it!

No. 246, Decatur GA

Last Thursday, nothing went right. I really wanted to go up to Athens with David and visit a couple of places I have not been for years, but Marie and I had an appointment in the evening back home that we couldn't shake, so David and I wouldn't have very long to visit before rushing back to town. Then I had the bright idea to leave my car downtown and have David come meet me, saving a little trip to the suburbs and then around the top end. I came up with this brilliant plan on the Thursday of market day at AmericasMart.

It's my experience that most locals don't even know what this big mess is, much less sensible out-of-towners. It's a year-round trade show of various inessential wholesalers' nonsense, unfolded under high security for retailers across the nation, but twice a year, the four-building convention space goes mad with a great big event with all the season's latest tchotchkes, area rugs, and vases full of broken branches. All the downtown hotels are booked, celebrities are showing off some tomfoolery or designs or other, the price of parking increases at least fourfold, and the traffic on the connector coming in from the northern 'burbs backs up solid to Buckhead one way and North Druid Hills the other.

Our potential time in Athens was already curtailed by David being delayed by, honestly, 45 minutes of backup, and it would be curtailed further by the reality that we'd have to navigate this mess a second time to pick up my car. Therefore, we'd have to leave the Classic City within minutes of actually arriving. So we put it off for a week and went for a nice long walk in Decatur instead.

I'd been wanting to lunch at No. 246, an Italian-"inspired" new restaurant opened by Drew Belline and Ford Fry, for a few months now. It's another case of me hearing about a good idea, and by the time I get around to it, everybody else in town with a blog has had time to rave and tell everybody how neat it is. Marie and I are always very late to the trendiest places. You can tell this place is trendy; just look at the "cones of silence" hanging from the ceiling. For what it's worth, I do like the open kitchen. I can't imagine stepping past on the way to the gents' and not pausing to watch the work going on there.







I really, really don't think much of modern restaurant design, but Fry and Belline have certainly come up with some incredibly tasty food and I think the world of it. They do pastas, and cook quite good pizzas in a wood-fired grill, but it really is not an Italian place and nor do they claim it to be. While there are certainly meats on the menu, the real emphasis is on locally-sourced vegetables. My pizza came with some of the most delicious mushrooms that I've ever had.

One thing that I note upon reading what my peers have had to say is that David and I certainly played it far too safe. We were both pleased and satisfied with our pizza and sandwich, but take a look, for example, at the interesting things that Decatur Food and Wine Dude enjoyed, including a cucumber soup and parpadelle carbonara. I didn't even have one of the celebrated No. 246 meatballs that I should have tried. This is definitely a restaurant that requires a little more investigation.

Hopefully, however, when we make it back, the music will be a little better. I was telling David about my visit to Sheik Burritos n Kabobs and how fantastic their playlist was, including as it did Modest Mouse, Vampire Weekend and Metric, all fine music to enjoy with lunch. Here, it was all Doobie Brothers and Tom Petty and "Stairway to Heaven," like 96 Rock in 1983, and I swear the same station was being piped out of every last restaurant that we passed on the way back to the car. Somebody needed to give the whole city of Decatur a kick in the rear that afternoon.

Two Meals on Buford Highway

A couple of Saturdays ago, Marie and I made a long overdue trip to Doraville to finally start sampling some of the restaurants along Buford Highway. Now, I imagine that locals are probably wondering what the heck took us so long, and for that, I plead not knowing where in the world to start. Out-of-towners may not know that this is a huge and very eclectic neighborhood full of traditional cooking and restaurants that cater to Atlanta's huge international community, from Guatemalan to Vietnamese.

I'd make the bold claim that there is no quarter given to Americanized menus here, but there's a Monterrey smack dab in the middle of this long stretch of road. This small chain, which dates back to the early 1970s, says that it is the very first of what I've come to term the El-This-Los-That joints. Monterrey soon begat the local El Toro and La Fiesta chains and all of their countless imitators, and what all of us who were teens in the 1980s came to think of as "Mexican food." The cheese dip that has made us all so fat? Their doing. Now that there are dozens of restaurants on this stretch where you can get the real thing, authentic Mexican dishes served without consideration for suburban palates, I wonder how this Monterrey continues to thrive.

El Rey Del Taco is a great place for authentic recipes. We stopped by here to get some tacos as appetizers for the next meal. I could have eaten three times as many. The meats were wonderful - I had steak, chicken and tripe - and the table sauces vibrant and full of flavor. They bring out a little thing of limes, a spicy chipotle sauce and a thick green sauce and they were all wonderful.



I absolutely loved the service here. I think that our server mistook us for somebody else, though, as when she saw the baby, she exclaimed, "He's getting so big!" This is, on the one hand, not entirely true - he is so active, far more so than most babies, that he's actually amazingly small for his age - and on the other, quite curious, as we'd never been before, and I'm not sure that she truly has a baseline from which to judge him! I liked how they directed all the families with small kids into one alcove. That way, all of the younguns could bellow and carry on and not disturb anybody else. We didn't mind all the baby-admiration going on between tables, and I'm sure all the fellows in the main room who were there to watch the soccer on the gigantic TVs wouldn't be interrupted by babbling toddlers.

That said, I really do want to go back here again very soon, so our server might have more chances to watch the baby get big, because I really enjoyed my meal. On the other hand, I also want to go back to Chef Liu's, because I didn't enjoy my meal very much at all and I'm anxious to give them another try.





As I've mostly run out of patience and interest in El-This-Los-That places, I've similarly lost any desire to try Golden-This-Happy-That joints. Chef Liu came highly recommended for its traditional Chinese dishes, and its dumpling specialties. The real treat here would be the pork buns.

Many of our fellow hobbyists have written about Chef Liu, most before the restaurant moved to its current location. I think they just kind of hopped from one strip mall to another, and now have a kind of bland, typical-looking interior instead of the old sliding door sun room. Marie read over as many bloggers' reports as she could find, and settled on the recommendations that The Food Abides made. She ordered the Shanghai pork buns and beef noodle soup and really enjoyed them both. I went with the fennel pork sausage dumplings and didn't like them at all. I had half a mind to walk back across the street and get some more tacos.

However, the soup that we shared was so wonderful, and the appetizers so tasty, that I know that the restaurant did not do a blessed thing wrong, the food just wasn't what I wanted. Food Near Snellville photographed some sliced spicy beef that looks amazing. Marie enjoyed her selections a lot and we left knowing this was a good place. We really liked the price, too. All the food that we ordered came to under twenty dollars. With prices that low, we can afford to experiment and sample, and will certainly come back for another visit one day.

The Vineyard Cafe, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about tea. Specifically, about a cute little restaurant which serves tea along with desserts, soups, salads, and an awful lot of little girls. Technically the little girls aren't on the menu; it's just that this appears to be a popular spot to bring kids for tea parties. The restaurant is above a gift shop which is open every day of the week. That was disconcerting, because the first time I stopped by, I had consulted the gift shop hours and was disappointed to find that the restaurant portion of the business is not open on Sundays. As a result, this place lingered in my memory and the next time our paths took us through the Marietta square, I decided it was time to go. My husband is not as fond of tea as I am. He can be impressed by sweet tea with ice in, but hot tea is just not his thing. However, we were going to be having pizza later in the day (which is currently off-limits for me) and therefore he was willing to be extremely patient while I enjoyed myself.

I don't remember a time when I haven't liked tea, though I do vaguely recall adding milk and sugar because it tasted too strong. Now, this was not in the context of a tea party like the little girls at The Vineyard, at least one of whom had a tiara and feather boa. It had to have been at my grandparents' place in the Netherlands based on the context, which means I was probably 8, and the tea was just what was available to drink. Well, there was also the fact that my grandmother would not give me cookies every time I asked, but there was always a cookie with tea. Since caffeine and sugar are my two vices, it's good to have a link to family history. And a reminder that I have apparently been motivated by food for a very, very long time.





The cafe is upstairs in a little room looking over the square, which makes it something of a challenge to get into (not many restaurants are forced to have their customers pass by the kitchen in order to get into the dining room) but once there it's very pleasant. We didn't have a table next to the windows and were still able to have a great view. The server was very helpful. She made sure that all her customers knew how to use a French Press, and gave good advice to the couple across from us who were somewhat daunted by the tea choices and wound up both getting the same thing. She also was kind enough, having answered questions about which soups were non-dairy, to have the kitchen leave the cheese sprinkles off my salad without being asked.

The food options are mainly either light snacks like the tiny but very tasty bowls of soup, a certain prize-winning croissant sandwich, and desserts. I would definitely like to revisit this place when the dessert menu is back on my options list, as I could sit with a friend talking about books over many, many cups of tea and slices of cake or croissants. My soup and salad were excellent – I wonder where they got such good tomatoes in the winter, and the dressing was interesting too – but a slice of cheesecake would definitely have set off my tea more effectively. The Vineyard Café seems to have parties, bridal showers, and such as a significant portion of their business, but I would have to say that if I had time to be in a book club I’d vote for this as one of the main destinations.

Two "Companies" in Cobb County

I had lunch at a couple of pretty nice and fun places in the last couple of weeks. David and I had a bite at the almost-in-Vinings location of Vermont Mustard Company. Interestingly, this is a rare example of a restaurant that has either held its prices for ages or dropped them a little bit. Many, many years ago, I stopped by and, without remembering details, was surprised by the cost of sandwiches here. David also remembers them once seeming quite high, but as everybody else's food costs have gone up, and only the national chains have borne the cost by sapping quality, Vermont Mustard is now pretty much in line with every good high-end sandwich joint.

These are certainly good sandwiches. I had the roast beef, because I was in the mood for the horseradish that comes with it. There was a short wait while the sandwiches were made, allowing us to enjoy the really fantastic design of the place. It's meant to evoke a little country shop from the Green Mountain State, with imported jams, syrups and, of course, mustard. Unlike some places that we've visited lately that offer completely off-kilter and off-brand groceries in the "store" - I'm still baffled by the boxed mac and cheese that we found at an ice cream shop in Marietta - this all makes sense and helps the atmosphere a good deal.





On the other side of the equation, there's the Marietta Pizza Company, on the historic Marietta square and serving up big New York-styled slices. The atmosphere here is one of wild, sports bar abandon and craziness. Marie and I got a big kick out of the silly signs for the restrooms. They use shadowboxes with action figures and comic book collages in them: The Creeper for the gents' and Power Girl for the ladies'.

This place has always been completely crazy and popular; I'd actually made an effort to eat here a couple of weeks before and left because of the long lunchtime line. I was surprised that they didn't expand to a second location successfully. For a while, they did have a movie theater-friendly place over by the AMC on Barrett and Cobb Place, in the space that Sushi Bites has today, and the children and I ate there several times from 2003-05. Speaking of kids, on Saturdays, this is apparently the place where everybody in Cobb County with children come to eat. Plan accordingly; I've never seen so many tantrums in one place in one hour in my life.




Marie asked that I draw your attention to the dogs on the right-hand side of the picture. As I put the camera away, one of 'em drew up and started making his desire for pizza obvious by rearing up on his hind legs and giving his master an affectionate licking while the poor man was trying to eat.

The slices are pretty good, about on the same level as G'Angelo's or Baby Tommy's. Really, these aren't going to bowl anybody over, but they're perfectly good for what they are, and if you enjoy chaotic and wild lunchtime experiences while some awesome servers somehow manage to contain the madness, then this place is worth a stop. Honestly, I came by in the evening once about seven years ago and had a perfectly pleasant and comparatively quiet time. I guess it's just lunch when this joint gets turned upside down. Tip your servers well; they're deserving combat pay!

Rhea's, Roswell GA

I did you good readers a terrible disservice by forgetting about Rhea's! I should have found time to pop back over to Roswell and sample their food and take some pictures ages ago. I was introduced to it by a nutty girl named Kristi, a former co-worker from a job that I once had in Alpharetta. She was emphatic that theirs were the best hamburgers around, and so I had a few suppers at the closest location to the office on the occasional long workdays at the end of the month that had me getting an evening meal before driving home. Doing a little research for some background now, I see that she's still preaching the good word. I found her in the comments of CitySearch, praising Rhea's.

But no, they had slipped my mind entirely until this past fall, when Marie and the children and I were driving back from a less-than-satisfying lunch in Roswell via a different back way than I was used to driving and sped past the original location. I had wondered where "Rhea's I" might have been when I was stopping for a burger about once a month at Rhea's II. There are four locations: the original is called Rhea's Take Out Foods, and it's just a hop from Roswell's downtown at the corner of Canton and Woodstock. Rhea's II is north of town on the way to Alpharetta, and Rhea's III is in that big development on Crossville Road with the Trader Joe's. There is a fourth store that I've never visited; it is a little ways south of town, in the Sandy Springs/Dunwoody area.

I was finally prompted to get off my tail and go back for lunch after Todd Brock wrote about them for A Hamburger Today. The comment thread contains the usual whines and moans from intown paranoids who can't bear the thought of crossing I-285, but the article itself is well-written and will certainly do a better job than I can in making readers hungry. I'll do my best, though.





Most restaurants trace their history right back to the opening of the business, even if the current owner has only been in charge for a short time. That's not the case here. Rhea's Take Out Foods opened in the 1960s, and information about that incarnation is really thin on the ground. The business was purchased by Jimmy Smith in 1983, and that is the year that they consider this place to have opened. My fellow Roadfood fans definitely need to come give the original store a visit. From the peeling signage to the tiny interior and hardly-updated menus, this place has a classic dive look that only authentic holes in the wall can offer. The menus still reprint a quote of praise from Gary McKee of WSB Radio. I could not, for the life of me, remember when Gary McKee was with WSB. It's been at least thirteen years. In the back, on the way to the restroom, the original soda dispenser, with room for four whole beverage choices, is unplugged and being used as a big red storage table.

The burgers are griddled up and served on buttered French bread. The best way to enjoy them is with cheese, because Jimmy smashes them up so much cooking them that they start to crumble up and break apart; the cheese helps hold the meat together. Shredded lettuce, gooey tomatoes, onions and liberal squirts of ketchup, mustard and mayo demonstrate that this isn't anything new or weird, just a basic, classic burger done old-school and done perfectly, reminiscent of the burgers at The Red-Eyed Mule in Marietta. I wish that they hand-cut their fries here, because they're the only sour note. The burger is simple and it is wonderful, and it deserves a little better accompaniment.

One thing that I thought our meal lacked was a milkshake to finish it off. Had we been at Rhea's III, where Marie and I once ate back when we were dating, we could have just walked to the Bruster's next door to get one. Fortunately, Rhea's III is just maybe five minutes' drive from the original store, and I didn't mind the detour.





I don't know how many Bruster's stores there are around town. Too darn many, probably, but they'll do when a fellow is too many miles away from Morelli's. They didn't seem to have any flavor that I really wanted, so I settled for a half-and-half vanilla and strawberry. Marie enjoyed their take on an orange freeze, made with sherbet and Sprite. It was a very nice, windows-down afternoon, the last Saturday - heck, the last day - of 2011, and a perfect day to spend with family, sipping ice cream treats while driving around. Every day should be so nice.

Sheik Burritos n Kabobs, Atlanta GA

I had been planning to stop by Sheik Burritos n Kabobs for weeks and weeks, and it sort of slipped down the to-do list. In time, another burrito joint opened on Howell Mill and started getting some buzz. I thought about heading that way, but remembered that I owed Sheik Burritos a visit first. It's only fair to get them crossed off the list before I try a (relative) upstart.

Sheik Burritos has been open for a little over two years, in that slowly dying strip mall on Piedmont near Cheshire Bridge that was once home to E.D.'s Gourmet Records. The owner, Jahan Ostad, was not in when I visited, but one of his employees explained that in 2009, he had planned to open a food truck. Unfortunately, he was stymied by the then-onerous regulations that required anybody in Atlanta with a truck to also have a nearby kitchen actually cooking the food. These have since relaxed, allowing for 2011's food truck boom, but it allowed Ostad to get settled in a low-rent location amid several vacant storefronts. The strip mall's owner had planned to demolish this center in 2008 and build condos or mixed-use or something, but the collapse of the economy put that on the backburner, allowing Ostad to grow a neat little business that several of my fellow hobbyists have found entertaining and a little weird.

Before he got the call to join the AJC's Food & More blog, Jon Watson updated his own little page, Live to Feast, pretty regularly. He visited the Sheik in the summer of 2010 and learned that Ostad, an Iranian, found himself loving the local burritos when he was a student at Arizona State. The goal of this place, therefore, was to mix up Persian flavors with southwestern American preparation and come up with something unlike any other burrito joint in town. I believe he's been successful; these are a little weird, but they are very tasty.





I had a Persian-styled burrito - the difference between it and a southwestern-styled coming from the use of either flatbread or a flour tortilla, and the type of salsa - called a dirka-dirka. It's lamb sirloin with spinach salad, beets, a creamy yogurt and a sauce called bad-man-jon. This slightly spicy sauce mixes eggplants, lentils and tomatoes. The restaurant also has a spicier, thin sauce on the table, and I ended up drizzling some of this over alternate bites. With two sauces and yogurt competing for attention, suffice it to say that by the end of my burrito, I had a big, wet mess of food.

Now that I know more about them, I would have liked to have started my experience with an order of Sun Devil Beets. These are a mix of maroon and gold beets served with goat cheese. That sounds completely lovely. I lost touch with a cartoonist friend who, like Ostad, attended ASU. I'm certain I'd be sending some nostalgic memories her way as I sampled those.

Honestly, the mix of flavors was very weird and very unexpected. The prices are a little higher than I can justify for regular visits, but I was intrigued enough by the experience to want more. That said, I also found myself craving another Mediterranean-styled place that I have not visited in ages and ages. The flavors here had me wondering when I could get out for something similar again.

---

Hey! We have moved! Come and visit our blog at its new home!