Back to the Sweet Auburn Curb Market

I genuinely was not planning to pop back down to the Sweet Auburn Curb Market on this warm March Friday – here’s the story of my first visit, with all the attendant background – but darned old Atlanta Magazine messed up our plans. See, Marie had the day off and she was going to bring the toddler downtown to play, and then we were going to have a picnic lunch from a favorite place on Marietta Street in Centennial Olympic Park. Then Christiane Lauterbach wrote a story for the magazine, and there she went and mentioned Marie’s greatest weakness: crepes. Turns out, Christiane wrote, that Gwen Denninghoff and her mother Christine Taylor opened a creperie in the market just two months ago. They have savory crepes. The picnic was off.

Personally, I don’t get it. I’m sure that it’s excellent ham, excellent cheese, and an excellent flapjack, but to hear Marie tell it, the experience of ham in a flapjack is the closest thing to heaven on earth. That’s okay; she doesn’t understand why I’m crazy for a good vindaloo. She loved it to pieces, danced in her seat, and smiled ear-to-ear with her eyes closed, she liked this crepe so much. I asked how it compared to other crepes that she tried. She declined to pass judgement until she can return and get a sweet crepe, or, to you and me, a flapjack with powdered sugar and strawberries.

Me, I’d much rather have a stack of veggies in a corn cake, and so Arepa Mia called my name. If there’s a complaint about this place, it’s that they have too many promising selections on their menu, and a fellow could starve to death deciding what to eat. I settled on a “Guayanesa,” which is avocados, lettuce, and tomatoes with Guyere cheese and a gooey mess of corn sauce and cilantro sauce. It was a great big messy, unphotogenic and ugly lunch, but it sure was good. I added a side of Arepa Mia chips, which are sliced and fried plantains and yucca. The toddler enjoyed about half of those and some of Mommy’s crepe, and then we moved on to our third stand, YumDiggity, to get him a junior-sized hot dog.

We finished our afternoon shopping for fruits and vegetables, and made a last stop at the Sweet Auburn Bakery for cookies. We brought home four of these gigantic peanut butter cookies with about two dozen chocolate chips atop each. They were completely delicious and the people who work here were as friendly as can be. All told, this might have been a better afternoon than the one we planned – that was indeed an awesome arepa, and Marie is wondering when she’ll have another opportunity to try a different crepe – but I am cranky, set in my ways, and hope to have that burger ‘n fries picnic soon.

You can see all the restaurants that we have visited for our blog on this map, with links back to the original blog posts. It’s a terrific resource for anybody planning a road trip through the southeast!