Chapter 1400: The Red Snapper, Atlanta GA

Back in April, the venerable Italian restaurant, Alfredo’s, closed after 42 years in business. News of that got me thinking about some of Atlanta’s other 1970s veterans, and the Red Snapper came to mind. The present owners took over in 1986, and date the beginning of the restaurant then, but it certainly has a similar vibe to many of the city’s “timelost” restaurants, and some of our friends remember it being around well before ’86, but we have not been able to nail down a date yet.

Jimmy and Somporn Veeranarong have spent the last thirty years serving up some pretty good seafood with mild Thai influences in an upscale room to mostly older diners. Several weeks ago, Marie and I went down to Cheshire Bridge Road to visit the restaurant for lunch and celebrate our 1400th chapter.

As a thirty-plus year-old restaurant, the Red Snapper falls into that nebulous void where there’s very little written about it available today. This is a place for Ladies Who Lunch. It’s where people come for reliable service and a quiet little getaway with a martini or three and some above-average seafood meals while listening to cheesy 1970s love songs. Really, the only thing that I didn’t enjoy was the awful song selection.

Marie had the curried shrimp and scallops, leading to another open-ended question of why she enjoys any of the many Thai-style curries, but not Indian style. We’ve never been able to figure out what’s up with her preference there. The flavors are very gentle and subtle. It’s not at all a spicy dish, and the flavors don’t linger very long. I ordered the ginger snapper on our server’s recommendation. It’s one of the house favorites. The snapper filet is topped with mushrooms and shrimp and given a drizzle of a ginger sauce. Again, the flavors are mild, but extremely tasty. I enjoyed this quite a lot.

Even though the Red Snapper is mostly overlooked by hobbyists and younger guests, it’s a very nice place for a leisurely, quiet, and casual lunch. We were here for quite some time, enjoying the meal and each other’s company thoroughly, before making our way north. We then lazily strolled around the aisles of Buford Highway Farmers Market, collecting several things from their produce section, before meandering home. I think that the restaurant set the tone for the rest of the day.

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!