It felt like an unusually long shoot while it was here, but most of the location work for the film Anchorman 2 was done here in Atlanta between March and May, with our city apparently filling in for both 1970s San Diego and New York. Back in March, always thinking about what might make an interesting story, I read that a restaurant called Olympic Flame on Marietta Street had been transformed, via that Hollywood magic!, into a fried chicken restaurant owned by David Koechner’s character, Champ Kind. I rushed over with my camera as soon as I could, but was too late. The film crews had used the location for one day and promptly removed the fake signage. Other bloggers got there with more speed than me, and links to them can be found below. Soon after, production was seen at The Silver Skillet on 14th Street. I don’t know whether any restaurant in this town has served as a location as often as the Skillet has. Continue reading “Olympic Flame, Atlanta GA”
Category: georgia
1968 at Cafe 101, Doraville GA (CLOSED)
Here’s a place that we’ve been intending to visit for ages now, and not necessarily because of the food. In fact, the restaurant has changed owners since I first thought about stopping in for a meal, and, slightly, changed names. Many, many different restaurants (and, apparently, a car dealership!) have found a home in the old Oogleblook building on Buford Highway. Sensational Subs – a very nearly defunct Atlanta chain with, apparently, only one location remaining – had a store here in the 1990s. It has been called Café 101 since at least 2005, but there have been at least three tenants in that time, with three different menus. It’s been a Chinese restaurant since late 2007. In August, the restaurant was quietly renamed 1968 at Café 101, after the year that Chef Kao began cooking in Taiwan. His partner, Chef Yang, specializes in northern Chinese dishes. Continue reading “1968 at Cafe 101, Doraville GA (CLOSED)”
Big Shanty Smokehouse, Kennesaw GA (take two)
This is Marie, writing atypically about barbecue. We had invited our friends Adam and Emily from Spatialdrift out to the back of beyond — excuse me, suburban Kennesaw — for a visit to our side of town, to one of our favored local BBQ places, Big Shanty Smokehouse. The owner, Chic Dillard, has only been there since 2008, not long before I moved to this area myself. We have been going there for years and really enjoy it. It was actually the first barbecue restaurant that we ever wrote about at this blog, almost four years ago. Continue reading “Big Shanty Smokehouse, Kennesaw GA (take two)”
Dreamland BBQ, Roswell GA
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that Marie and I had been very impressed with Moe’s Original, a barbecue chain out of Colorado that traces its origins back to Tuscaloosa. There’s another barbecue chain from that city with a foothold in Atlanta. It’s Dreamland, and while Moe’s Original is mostly an unknown quantity, you get talking with barbecue lovers in this or any town and when Dreamland comes up, more often than not, you’ll see a shaking of the head and a furrowed brow. Dreamland, to hear people tell it, is where chain barbecue just went wrong. Continue reading “Dreamland BBQ, Roswell GA”
Pallookaville Fine Foods, Avondale Estates GA
In December of 1989 or possibly 1990, I was told that there was this band that I had to see playing a free show one night on the steps of City Hall in Athens. It was the Labrea Stompers, led by Jim Stacy, and it was unbelievably cold. I saw them a couple of times after that, in more traditional settings, but I’ll always remember that very long, below-freezing walk back to my dorm against a harsh, knock-you-down wind, and also their terrific performance of “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” When Dr. Seuss died in 1991, Stacy wrote an obituary for one of the local papers. Class act. Continue reading “Pallookaville Fine Foods, Avondale Estates GA”
Bloggers Invade That Pie Place
Back in late October, our friend Malika, who writes Atlanta Restaurant Blog, dropped us a line. She met Ron Wolf, the owner of That Pie Place in Sandy Springs, at a food service industry event and got to sample some of his pies. She was really impressed and worked with him on putting together a blogger dinner at his place to try some of his pies. Continue reading “Bloggers Invade That Pie Place”
Bloggers Invade Chai Pani
Here’s another thing that happened while we were in Asheville. While we were enjoying a little picnic lunch on Wall Street, I noticed the big sign for Chai Pani on the back of the Battery Park building where they’re located. I had planned to have lunch at Mediterranean Restaurant, and almost abandoned that plan to go have a big indulgence at my favorite Indian place instead. Then I remembered that I’d be having supper at Chai Pani’s Atlanta-area store in Decatur just a few days later and came to my senses. Continue reading “Bloggers Invade Chai Pani”
Marie, Let's Eat! 