Sublime Doughnuts, Atlanta GA

About six months ago, a regular guest where I work brought in a big box of Sublime Doughnuts as a thank-you for the front desk. The treats were duly sliced into bite-sized samples for all the staff to try. Allegedly, a couple more boxes have come this way for Wednesday afternoon birthday celebrations, but, criminally, I don’t work on Wednesdays. I recall thinking that my sample was just wonderful and resolved that I needed to get back to have a lovely little breakfast from them as soon as it was feasible.

Six months went by and I finally thought to stop in for an afternoon snack. I need to try harder, don’t I?

The business was founded by a local fellow, Kamal Grant, a couple of years ago. He picked a career that’s for morning people: he’s there, in a shop on 10th Street once occupied by some other doughnut baker who chose to misspell the word the way that those dunkin’ people do, every morning at 4 am getting his doughnuts and pastries ready for a hungry audience. I really like the way that many of his creations don’t look like hockey pucks. Some, like his red velvet cake, do, but his version of a Boston creme, for example, is called the A-Town Cream and is shaped like a letter A. Elsewhere on the racks, you’ll see little hearts, stars, twists and ribbons, all of them decadently delicious.

Earlier this summer, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution named Sublime as their favorite guilty food pleasure in the city, singling out their A-Town Creams and their Reese’s peanut butter doughnuts. It looks like my peers in the food-talkin’-bloggin’ community are similarly sold on the place.

We – Marie, my daughter and my parents – stopped by on Saturday after our lunch a few miles south at Harold’s. After a quick detour to look at the federal pen and the requisite teasing of my daughter that this is where she’ll end up if she doesn’t straighten up, we drove north up Pryor and Central, up avenues where my dad, navigating and reminiscing, used to work, while we listened to the Dogs beat up on Vandy. Left on Marietta and right on Spring / West Peachtree as Vandy caught a break and had a field ruling of a fumble overturned as an incomplete pass, we started passing $10 and $20 lots for Tech fans coming into midtown to tailgate. Tenth Street, which borders one side of the Tech campus, was full of yellow and navy and black and gold. Apparently there’s now a Petro’s Chili and Chips outpost actually inside Bobby Dodd Stadium. It’s a little aggravating to be within walking distance of a Petro’s and know that the most convenient one is still three hours’ drive north.

My dad was talked out and tired and didn’t want to get out of the car when we arrived, but the fellow behind the counter at Sublime had an awful lot to say. He showed off and described all the treats on display. I got a different pastry for Marie, Ivy and my mother, and while they all came with different flavors, they all shared a wonderfully light and fluffy touch. Grant’s trick in the kitchen, reported by John Kessler in the AJC, is to fry the doughnuts at a very high temperature for a shorter period; that apparently gives them the most puff.

These are absolutely wonderful pastries, and although with prices this low and a profit margin so slim, it will certainly take a long time for Grant to grow this business, he’s got an awful lot of goodwill backing him up. I hope that Sublime thrives and becomes a destination for everybody in the city. Even all those Tech students lining up 10th need something to eat.

Follow Marie Let’s Eat! on Twitter!

Harold’s Barbecue, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

There are so many barbecue restaurants in this state that I’ve never tried. Even the old ones, like Harold’s, which has been around since 1947, I’ve just never got around to before. Well, on Saturday, we had originally intended to take another short road trip, this time out to Augusta. Unfortunately, the bank balance is a little low, so we elected to save the gasoline and find a new meal intown instead. There are four restaurants in Atlanta that are reviewed on roadfood.com that we have not written up for our blog yet. A roll of the dice brought up Harold’s, so I rang my parents and asked if they’d like to join us.

Harold’s is a simply perfect destination for a Saturday lunch. It’s very easy to find, just a quick little hop off the downtown connector at exit 244 and south less than a mile. It is in a pretty rough-looking neighborhood about a stone’s throw up the street from the federal pen. If you’ve never seen this gigantic building, you should, as it’s an architectural masterpiece. Unfortunately, Harold’s itself is in a pretty basic and deeply ugly building, and the bars around the windows and the air conditioning units don’t inspire great confidence in the local residents’ rap sheets.

I apologize for repeating much of the online information about this restaurant, but some things are so blatant that I can’t avoid coming back to it.

I’m very glad we finally stopped into this Atlanta institution. Despite the “keep driving, and fast” exterior, the inside is cozy and relaxing, and also quite chilly, since one of the air conditioners seemed to be working overtime. There’s a glorious smell of thick smoke throughout the building, and interior walls in the kitchen that are blackened from more than sixty years of smoking. It’s a building with a lot of history; we were taken care of by Harold and Hugh’s granddaughter, who’s been here for forty years herself.

As for the food, the chopped pork is pretty good. It’s very soft and dry, almost incandescently white. Unfortunately, I didn’t like either of the sauces at all, and made the considerable mistake – the novice mistake – of just pouring the hot sauce all over my food before testing it. Theirs is a thick, red, tomato-and-pepper concoction that leaves a Tabasco-style aftertaste and overpowers the subtle, smoky taste of the soft pork. While I would certainly recommend Harold’s, I would caution anybody going to try a little on the side before indulging too much.

The main dish is pretty good, but the sides are just outstanding. The Brunswick stew is probably the best anywhere near Atlanta. It’s really thick, with a very heavy corn flavor, and lots of tomatoes and stringy shreds of meat. The corn taste reminded me of the wonderful Zeb’s in Danielsville. The plates are served with a generous helping of cracklin’ cornbread. Crumble just a little of that into your stew and scoop it right back out, and that’s perfect. If I have had cracklin’ cornbread – named for the little pork cracklings that Food Network describes as “little pieces of pork fat, fatty meats, or ham skin which are left crisp and brown after the lard or fat has been rendered from them” – before, I don’t recall it. Honestly, there’s not a great deal of meat in the bread, but it’s so tasty that didn’t feel that I was missing anything.

The slaw is also excellent; a perfect blend of mayo and vinegar that goes extremely well with the stew and pork. It’s simply a perfectly balanced meal, even if the sauce was disappointing.

Harold’s attempted to expand just a little from this neighborhood, but unfortunately it didn’t last. There were two outposts south of the city, in Jonesboro and in McDonough, and a third up near us in Kennesaw, but apparently all three have closed. Only the original remains, which, honestly, is kind of the way it should be. Older joints with this much history, well, visitors should go to them for the experience almost as much as the food. With stew this good, I hope to be back for both before too long.

Folks Southern Kitchen, Marietta GA (CLOSED)

The story of Atlanta’s Folks Southern Kitchen is another one where the small chain’s heyday seems to be behind them. However, unlike a couple of the earlier stories I’ve told here about, say, The Mad Italian and Old Hickory House, where the last remaining outpost of a chain is struggling to remain relevant, Folks still seems to have a pretty good bit of life in it. I say this even though the chain, which once numbered twenty stores in north Georgia, is down to ten around I-285. Two more, in Cumming and McDonough, were recently converted to a new “concept,” Rusty Rooster Cafe, which apparently serve very similar food in a “fast casual” setting. That we’re talking about food in terms like “concepts” and “fast casual” is probably a warning flag to many food lovers that the food’s quality might have been a little lost under the weight of marketing.

Folks was originally called, and you’ll love this, Po Folks. The first store opened in 1978. I’m not sure which that was, but I recall that the one on 41 and Windy Hill must have opened around that time. It had a bright red roof and all of the signage and menus were written in a tacky font meant to represent the scrawlings of an illiterate hillbilly. My own folks got takeaway from them quite frequently – their sweet tea was said to be the best of any restaurant – but I don’t remember ever actually eating there.

In 1994, the chain converted all of its locations from Po Folks to Folks Southern Kitchen. The reds were changed to greens, the hillbilly scrawls were replaced with a more elegant script, and, since Folks weren’t po no mo, the prices went up. It was this incarnation that expanded to its peak in number of stores, but a few years ago, the contraction began. I recall that they shuttered the restaurants in Roswell and Smyrna right at the same time, and probably a few others as well. I rarely see any advertising for this chain anymore.

Without making too much hoopla about it, my daughter loves Folks, and when we gave her a turn to pick an activity for our weekly dinner-or-movie night, she suggested this place. So last week, Marie and I took her to supper, meeting up with Neal, Samantha, Randy and Kimberly. Circumstances forced us to have a pretty long dinner; our server was congenial and attentive, but also incredibly slow. I thought that we’d never get our checks at the end of the evening.

Marie ordered the rainbow trout and declared it very tasty. It came with some mixed vegetables and sweet potato waffle fries. Sweet potato fries seem to be quite trendy lately, but these are the first ones that I can recall that are done waffle-style. My daughter had a chicken pot pie that she enjoyed very much and a side of Brunswick stew. I almost always just have a veggie plate here, since everything they offer as a side is as good or better as their entrees. This time out, I had fried green tomatoes, calico beans and corn nuggets.

Everyone really enjoyed their meal, but special praise was reserved for the bread. Folks serves up these incredibly tasty peach muffins that everybody really enjoys; Randy and Kimberly ordered another half-dozen to take home. Marie bucked the trend by having a biscuit and everyone else asked whether she was feeling all right.

And that’s the story of Folks. They may be smaller than they once were, marketing-synergy-speaking gobbledygook may be vomited all over their web pages, and the place may be as quiet as the grave in the evenings, but the food remains quite good. They talk big about their recipes being made from scratch and prepared fresh daily, and while it may lack the individual attention and focus of something smaller, it’s still a reasonably good dinner out, for rich or po.

Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries, Sandy Springs GA (CLOSED)

Here’s an example of a restaurant that just crept into town. I think that the manager has done everything that anyone in his position is meant to do to get the word out – there’s a whacking great billboard right above his shop – but it hasn’t taken and people aren’t talking about it. This is a huge shame, because Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries really is worth a visit, and worth a lot of talk.

Admittedly, sometimes it takes a little while for word of mouth to build. Boardwalk has been building very slowly, with most of their business over thirty years confined to sports arenas and fry carts around the mid-Atlantic states. The conversion to a “fast casual” burger joint came in 2007, and they now claim nine restaurants in six states.

The french fries are definitely this place’s draw. Don’t get me wrong; they cook up some very good burgers, but Atlanta is, as we’ve established, more than awash in very good burgers and it is tough to stand out. But these fries, well, darned if I can think of any other burger joint in town to offer fries this good. There are better burgers in Atlanta, but I don’t believe that any of Boardwalk’s many competitors in the field have such good fries.

Last week, Marie and I met up with Samantha and with Neal, who had just returned from his California trip. We all drove separately, and Neal and Marie each mentioned something which might be blocking the restaurant’s hopes for success: nobody can find the place. Marie, using Google Maps and Neal, using GPS, each got bad directions to a place which should be incredibly easy to find. I just tried it myself on Google and it says, quite wrongly, “destination will be on the left” when coming from downtown Atlanta. That’s not true. Going north on Roswell Road from the perimeter, it is less than a mile on the right, just past the El Azteca in a strip mall in front of the Lowe’s.

Once you do find the place, you’ll find a menu board that’s not hugely different from the industry standard. Customers can order a basic burger with one or two patties and an assortment of toppings or one of a few different specialty items with the extra-priced toppings added. Honestly, I don’t see the need to pay for mushrooms or bacon when I have come to sample ground beef, unless I want something considerably different. Neal went with the chicken, but the rest of us just had single patties with basic lettuce and tomatoes. I had ketchup and their chipotle sauce on the side. This turned out to be the only disappointment of the meal; as a little bit on the bottom of my burger, the chipotle was unmemorable and brought out nothing, but as a fry dip, the sauce had no tang at all to it, and the flavor did not mix with the potato.

Five Guys is the obvious comparison point here. Despite the flashy design and colorful interior, Boardwalk feels like it is following in Five Guys’ shadow, but they excel in every way. I enjoy Five Guys, although I have not eaten at one in a very long time – they are big enough that they don’t miss me – and they provide a good baseline for acceptable quality in a good burger. Marie, Samantha and I all agreed that this was a better hamburger, and far less greasy than what Five Guys offers. It is certainly on a par with Cheeseburger Bobby’s.

But these fries, well, these are superior to Five Guys in every possible way, and miles better than the awful fries that the otherwise great Bobby’s makes. Unfortunately, I made the calamitously bad mistake of ordering chili cheese fries. These were not bad, but I assure you, these fries need neither chili nor cheese. The restaurant suggests that you eat them “Maryland style” with vinegar and Old Bay seasoning. Fortunately, Neal and Samantha each had more than enough fries to share for us to try those add-ons. I like Old Bay seasoning a lot – it’s basically celery salt with mustard, black and red pepper and pinches of another ten things – and if I’d ordered fries without chili and cheese, I’d have blanketed ’em in Old Bay.

Neal bought a dessert for us all to share, probably because he was still smarting from the funnel cakes that he didn’t get to try out in California. Boardwalk’s “funnel fries” are (and there’s no way to explain this without repeatedly using this word like a bad, novice journalist, hence this lengthy parenthetical comment to break them up) fried to come out in a fry shape and covered in powdered sugar. Because we’re all trying to find some compromise between watching our weight and eating the bejezus out of everything wonderful that comes our direction, one order of funnel anything is plenty for four people.

Besides, with the overeating planned for the weekend, nobody needed more than a quarter-order of funnel fries. More on that next time.

(Update 11/29/11: Sadly, the Sandy Springs store closed this month. Boardwalk is continuing to open stores in the New England states, and a second Atlanta location has opened in midtown’s Ansley Mall.)

(Update 3/25/12: But wait! Another franchisee has reopened this store! Better luck this time, fellows!)

(Update 10/15/12: Aaaaand, it has closed again.)

Top Spice, Vinings GA

Did you miss us? I enjoyed having a few days not having to worry about what I was going to write. This has allowed me the chance to stretch out a little and get ahead of my personal deadlines between here, my book review blog and my LiveJournal. Continue reading “Top Spice, Vinings GA” →

Googie Burger, Atlanta GA

If you’ve been reading since the beginning, you might recall that Marie and I used to enjoy having lunch together once a week. Unfortunately, her job packed up and left downtown to go outside the perimeter, but we used to try and meet up on Mondays in Centennial Olympic Park. Since she had a longer lunch than me, she would get our burgers from Just Around the Corner, and we would dig into those at the park’s dancing fountains.

Now that Marie’s job has taken her into Dunwoody, she is missing out on Googie Burger, which opened in August. It’s in the pavilion right next door to the fountains, which means that motorists can get all grouchy about having to find some parking and walk to get here. It also means that some of our fellow restaurant hobbyists can get all too-cool-for-school about Atlanta having yet another boutique burger place. I say, bring ’em on. I’m of the opinion that Atlanta’s burger “scene” is by far the best in the country, and we should encourage all these newcomer restaurants that are doing such a great job with hamburgers. It’s not like any of the better ones are visibly hurting for business.

I usually brown-bag it for lunch – not that, between leftovers of the amazing suppers that we cook and Boar’s Head deli meats, I am hurting in any way – but I wanted to give this place a try so I walked over to Googie Burger for lunch yesterday and really enjoyed it. Fortunately, I did not have a very long wait so that I could get back promptly. I’m told that the wait can get up to about half an hour between 12 and 1.

Unlike some of the city’s other hawt new burger joints, Googie has a very simple menu of just four sandwiches: classic patty with the usual fixings, a ramped-up version that adds smoked pork and bacon, a chicken sandwich, and a black bean veggie burger. I had the classic with fries and, for dessert, a peach milkshake. Googie has also embraced the “spiked shake” trend and offers some seven-dollar vodka or creme de menthe shakes that sounded tempting. My job, however, is awesomely laid back, but it’s not that laid back. I stuck with the peach shake and was very pleased to see a slice of peach buried in whipped cream. It was so good that I might have to get it again next time, instead of trying that fun-sounding PB & J shake.

The burger itself was very good. It reminded me in the best way possible of a Five Guys burger. It was really juicy and flavorful and didn’t need another topping, though I was slightly disappointed by the gigantic hunk of iceberg lettuce that they used. On the other hand, the red onions were sharp and tangy and absolutely divine. I didn’t have a long wait; just enough time to take some photos of the building. It was just cool enough yesterday for a pleasant patio meal in the shadow of the CNN Center, munching away on some peanut oil fries.

It’s a meal that I’d really love to share with Marie. What the heck can we do about downtown real estate prices to get her company to move back down here?

Lemon Grass, Marietta GA

Oh, here we go again. Another chapter in which I experience menu envy. This time, nobody should be surprised. We gave a Thai restaurant a stab, and frankly, I never know what to order when we’re trying Thai. I was reasonably certain that I’d enjoy whatever I got, and I certainly did, but somebody else at the table really had something amazing.

I’m deeply inexperienced with Thai food, and readers might have noticed that I have yet to feature a single entry from one of the ostensibly amazing restaurants from Atlanta’s culinary wonderland that is Buford Highway. Really, I just don’t know where to start or what to try, but I’ve half a mind to keep my ears open for some other local bloggers having a get-together on that side of town and see whether Marie and I might join them. The overwhelming consensus, however, is that what we have here in darkest Cobb County is Americanized and not very traditional. Lemon Grass, here in Marietta, still manages a few thumbs up from the locals, despite a carry-out menu full of letter/number combinations and little “pepper” icons for the hot dishes like every Americanized Chinese place in town that leaves a menu on your mailbox. I wonder whether these restaurants all get their tri-fold menus from the same printing company?

At any rate, my main experience with Thai food would be from the dearly missed Thai of Athens, which closed about three years ago. I haven’t seen my favorite meal there, salt and pepper suegai, on anybody else’s menu. On one occasion, my son and I successfully convinced his sister that our satay chicken was actually fried spider. Last I heard, QuikTrip was looking into building on the old Thai of Athens location. They should make them track down the former owner, a lovely woman who was friends with a girl I used to date, and get her recipe for iced tea as a concession for whatever zoning must be addressed on that site first.

This past week, it was our friend Samantha’s turn to choose something for us to do, and she suggested this place. She discovered it about six years ago. The restaurant itself opened in 1994 in a very neat little hidden area in the East Lake shopping center on 120, just outside the loop. The shopping center is, unusually, two separate buildings which curve away from each other and create a little outdoor plaza leading back to the small patch of woods behind the property. There’s a Wild Wings Cafe on one side that takes advantage of the architecture to create a “luau”-themed back patio, while Lemon Grass shies away from pedestrian traffic like a quiet, discreet oasis.

There were six of us for supper, and while my daughter was in some sort of mood and tried to bring everybody down with tweenage surliness, we all really enjoyed our meals. Marie and I tried the chicken tom yum soup and it was not at all bad, but I did not enjoy the lemon grass in the bowl at all. This proved to be the only disappointment of the evening. David had the traditional hot and sour soup and it was better than most of the bowls that I have tried at Americanized Chinese places. Neal and Samantha each had the coconut soup, and that was, clearly, the best of the lot. When I return, I am definitely having a bowl of that.

As for the entrees, Marie and my daughter and I split one of the chef’s specials, the pineapple duck curry. This is boneless duck cooked with coconut milk, pineapple, tomato, onions, basil and bamboo shoots in a curry sauce. I thought this was really terrific, and Neal, who had an order himself, agreed. We also shared a bowl of laad na rice noodles, with chicken cooked in a thick gravy with broccoli, carrots and mushrooms. I preferred the duck, but this was certainly quite nice. David had a beef salad, with ribeye served over a bed of lettuce, mint leaves and cilantro that he enjoyed, but Samantha, who knew exactly what to order, brought the best thing to the table. She had the nam sod. This is prepared in a similar way to larb, but it mixes finely ground pork with ginger, peanuts and onions with lime juice and it’s served with raw cabbage, the idea being that you can use that for a wrap or just scoop the pork mixture onto it. They hide this treat away on the appetizers menu when I would happily enjoy that as my entree.

My daughter eventually explained that she was grumpy because she concluded that she was going to starve to death because everything here was going to be too spicy for her. I’m pleased to report that she is still alive, liked the laad na noodles, and most of our meals were only lightly spiced. The menu, incidentally, offers five levels for diners: mild, medium, hot, Thai hot and “crazy hot.” They add that crazy hot is not recommended. I’ve rarely been the sort of person to listen to that sort of recommendation, but when sharing dishes with family and friends, it’s polite to not make them suffer the way you’d sometimes like to burn yourself. Maybe some other time.