Osteria del Figo Pasta, Atlanta GA

Our Nashville-based friends Brooke and Tory came to town for Dragon*Con, and we had our usual Sunday night get-together with them during all that madness. I have to thank the convention for never scheduling anything unmissable on Sunday evenings, although this year, a special screening of an episode of Torchwood, with commentary by one of the actors, did mean we got together slightly later than I would have hoped.

I picked them up at the hotel while Marie and the children went ahead to Osteria del Figo on Howell Mill. I figured that we’d ask our guests what sort of food they were in the mood for and have a nearby restaurant already selected to breeze them there. I’m pretty sure I had every reasonable possibility other than pasta covered. If it wasn’t just down the street from our own house, twenty miles north of downtown, we’d probably have gone to Frankie’s, but I was momentarily stumped about a good, inexpensive Italian place near the convention hotels. A quick little look over Urbanspoon suggested this would be a good choice, and it really was.

The restaurant is easy to find; it is on the corner of Howell Mill and Huff, and it appears to have ample parking, which is kind of a rarity in this neighborhood. There’s a too-small airlock area, where guests line up to place their orders with a cashier. This part is a little slow, owing to a dense menu utterly full of possibilities. There are a good number of house specials, but also similar “build your own pasta” creations like you see at some of the larger national chains, with 18 sauces over 25 noodle selections. Speaking of which, there are currently seven Figo locations in Atlanta, but they don’t appear to have expanded to other cities. Most of the combinations here start at $8, and you can add meats for various prices. Figo prides itself on its meatballs, offered in a variety of recipes, for $1.50 each. This is a good place to get quite a lot of food for a reasonable price.

It looks like you can make some really fun meals up here. I went with spinach ravioli with amatriciana sauce, which is a red sauce with pancetta, tomatoes, peppers and olive oil. It was terrific. Marie had primavera over linguine and our daughter had pesto sauce over penne noodles. I am keen to visit again for lunch one day and give the artichoke ravioli with four cheese sauce a try. First Bite had that when she visited a couple of years ago and it looks very tasty.

As we waited for our food, we talked about visiting Nashville in a couple of months. This has been pretty much the longest I have gone without a trip to Nashville in a decade, and frankly, I miss the place, but this has been something of a ridiculous and crazy and busy year. So I tossed out a skeleton of a plan of what I’d like to do when we get there, and one or two places that I’d like to visit or revisit. Naming all these wonderful restaurants and wonderful meals had me quite hungry for my ravioli!

Well, after we had talked about Prince’s and Rotier’s and Ellington Place and Mas Tacos and Pied Piper and other such yummy places, and let the baby get lots of love and cuddling and attention, we enjoyed a really good meal. The food here is simply splendid, and we all enjoyed sampling each others’ dishes. Pasta really was a fine idea of Brooke’s, honestly. I’m very glad that we tried this place.

After we ate, the baby let us know that he really was in the mood to go home and be nursed and go to bed, so my daughter and I drove the ladies back to their hotel, but not before stopping at Flip Burger Boutique for a milkshake. I was sorry that Marie missed out, but Flip, incredibly noisy and ridiculous, isn’t baby-friendly at all. Unfortunately, they were out of the requested Cap’n Crunch shakes, but we enjoyed the Peach Melba and Krispy Kreme and Strawberry Shortcake and the remarkably curious Burnt Marshmellow with Nutella. (“It tastes like camping,” Tory exclaimed.) Everybody visiting Atlanta should try one of these.

There was a really odd loop of music videos going on the bar here, including Radiohead and, of all things, “Primary” by the Cure, which still strikes me as very odd to see anywhere other than the old Staring at the Sea VHS. My daughter is currently totally in love with the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. I pointed out the Cure, told her, truly, that MCR pilfered every idea it’s ever had from the Cure and, back before he ate all the pies, 1981-model Robert Smith was an awfully good-looking fellow. She disagreed with emphasis. Then I pointed out the bassist, Simon Gallup, and told my daughter that the girl I took to the prom was more totally in love with him in 1988 than she is with Gerard Way, today. She had to pause on that point. I never got much in the way of follow-up.

(Update, 11/12/11): As I promised myself weeks ago, I tried that artichoke ravioli with four cheese sauce. Marie and I went with our daughter and Neal to the Figo in Vinings and gave it a try.

It was every bit as tasty as I had hoped. My daughter had the paprika penne with arriabiatta sauce and was also very pleased with it.

Smokejack Blues & Barbecue, Alpharetta GA

I have a little goal here to visit and report upon one hundred barbecue restaurants before the end of 2011. I’m not sure whether we will make it – we’re almost three-quarters there – but any opportunity to grab one for the blog is one that we’ll try to take. Two Saturdays ago, I looked over the map and decided that we hadn’t trucked up GA-400 in a while, and I was curious what new restaurant developments could be seen on Windward Parkway. Alpharetta is the home of Smokejack Blues & Barbecue, a business seven years old which has expanded to a second location a little further north in the town of Cumming. Smokejack’s not getting quite all the press and attention among barbecue restaurants in that area right now – there’s a place called ‘Cue that everybody’s talking about – but I remembered having a pretty good, albeit pricy, meal there a few years ago.

When I worked in Alpharetta, there was one perk that certainly beat any that I have at my current job. To celebrate birthdays, our department would take all the staff out to eat once a month. She wasn’t with the company for really long, but I did have the pleasure of working with a girl named Kristi who was a completely fun trip, just overflowing with silliness, light, Southern slang and malapropisms. She chose Smokejack for her birthday and I remembered enjoying it greatly, even if the restaurant’s prices kept it out of my regular rotation of places to visit. Marie and I had lunch here for just under $30. That’s a heck of a lot to pay for barbecue for two, but in their defense, the restaurant tells guests up front that theirs is less a traditional BBQ place and more an upscale eatery that focuses on smoked meat.

Marie and I hoped to have our daughter and our good friend Samantha join us for lunch, but each of them asked for rain checks in the end, not feeling well. So Marie and I made it a quasi-date day, with the baby bundled in the back seat and spent a few hours enjoying each other’s company and eating pretty well.

Smokejack, located in Alpharetta’s small, but very cute, downtown, offers the usual assortment of pulled pork or chicken dishes. Most of them apparently are sauced just before they send them out of the kitchen, but they’ll serve them dry if you ask. I noted that they have a chicken sandwich with white, north Alabama-style sauce, and while normally I might be expected to give that a try, I was really in the mood for another order of burnt edges.

I had these for the first time a couple of weeks previously at Woodstock’s Bub-Ba-Q and was curious to try another restaurant’s take. I had the sauce, a delicious black, sticky-sweet Kansas City-styled goo, on the side. The beef was so good that no sauce was necessary, and I strongly advise anybody curious to order this dry. I had the burnt edges with baked beans, which were pretty ordinary, and a very tasty corn pudding that Marie and I shared. She ordered chicken thighs from the appetizer menu. These came with an orange habanero glaze and were served on a bed of pretty good slaw. She also had a side of wood-roasted vegetables that she mostly enjoyed. Brunswick stew is available, but, sadly, with a small additional charge as it is not technically a “side,” but rather a “soup.”

A little driving around town didn’t convince me that I was missing very much, foodwise, by leaving my job in Alpharetta. We got back on GA-400 and made one more stop in the area, though. Two days previously, I had visited one of the wonderful Taco Stands in Athens. They had opened a store in Alpharetta several months earlier. I had stopped in and was pretty disappointed, but chalked it up to opening week catastrophe. I was curious, now that they’ve hopefully got their act together, how they compare to one of the originals.

The honest answer is that they compare poorly, but are still pretty good. It’s a very different sort of restaurant to the Taco Stands of Athens, or even to the since-closed Buckhead watering hole. It tries to be a lot – upscale and family-friendly, even offering X-Box games for children – but it’s all so unnecessary. The prices are disagreeably higher than the originals. Seriously, a taco, $1.39 at Barnett Shoals, runs you $1.99 here. If I’m wanting Taco Stand, I don’t need an airlock and hostess station, I don’t need my tacos served in a little IKEA basket, and I don’t want to tip a server. I want my name called and I want my tacos on a tray.

That said…

There are certain realities of eating that trump fancy-shmancy considerations. Admittedly, the prime ingredient in the Taco Stand is nostalgia, but you can’t deny the awesomeness of the chicken enchilada and its wonderful dark sauce. On the other hand, while the tacos are good, they are nevertheless different, and in fact, inferior, to the tacos in Athens. They’re served on grilled flour shells rather than hard corn, and the beef is markedly different. The sauce tasted the same to me.

As much as I like the food, I really just don’t feel like the Taco Stand transfers well to this type of environment. I’ll forgive a lot for a good chicken enchilada like this, but in much the same way that a Burger King Whopper doesn’t gain anything from being served on a nice white plate, remaining, at it’s core, fast food, this “upscale” store doesn’t make the scruffy, tasty, wonderful food any better. It just makes it more expensive.

Harry’s Pig Shop (CLOSED) and The Taco Stand, Athens GA

Well, it took me a little while to get over to Harry’s Pig Shop. I had been wanting to visit for quite a while now, but I don’t just go to Athens every day, and when I do, I’d like to occasionally try something other than barbecue. There are quite a few good restaurants around that town, you know. Nevertheless, I moved it up my to-do list a couple of months ago after I read the good writeup at Buster’s BBQ Blog. Continue reading “Harry’s Pig Shop (CLOSED) and The Taco Stand, Athens GA” →

Pure Taqueria, Woodstock GA

So there’s this burrito place in Kennesaw that has been defying my efforts to eat there for years. I went there once and learned they were closed on Sundays. I went again and they were on vacation. I’m guessing that they take off every July 4th, because it was probably a year before Marie suggested burritos and I remembered the place and we drove that way and found them closed again. That’s three times that one place has stymied my plans. They win this round.

So we went back to Woodstock for the second time that day. For lunch, we had gone to Bub-Ba-Q, an area favorite, and enjoyed their appetizer portion of burnt ends for the first time. Since I was hoping for someplace new to our blog for supper, we followed that up with a visit to Pure Taqueria in the small city’s charming downtown. It’s located right across the plaza from Canyons Burger Company, and next door to what had been The Right Wing Tavern, a popular local place that unexpectedly closed quite suddenly a week or so before. This wasn’t a place that I was in any hurry to ever enter, but it was very surprising to learn that the restaurant that really drove that downtown’s resurgence shut down so abruptly.

When I was working in Alpharetta a few years back, the original Pure – named because the small building was once the home of a Pure Oil gas station – was one of the region’s foodie faves of the hour, always drawing huge crowds of all ages. The Woodstock location is one of two additional Atlanta sites. They have also opened in Matthews, NC and a fourth Atlanta store, in Duluth, is scheduled for a September opening.

Pure is one of those very rare places where we can’t fault anything specific, but it’s just far, far too loud and hot for us old-timers and a baby looking for a nice family dinner. The food was really quite good, and our server was incredibly awesome. Committing the giant volume of nightly specials to memory isn’t the work of novices. Marie enjoyed her burrito, and I quite liked my meatballs, called albondigas, which were served in a chipotle tomato sauce. My daughter had the chicken taquitos and said that she really enjoyed those, too.

By the time our entrees were served, however, we were already sweating buckets and tired of yelling at each other to be heard over the music. Honestly, this just isn’t a summertime place for us, certainly not on a Saturday night. Unfortunately, the restaurant’s design, evoking an old garage with the huge doors and high ceilings, does not lend itself to really good air conditioning. My daughter finally gave up and went outside, where a light breeze made the high nineties feel more livable. I’d like to revisit Pure on a weekday evening in the fall, and maybe sit on the upstairs patio when it’s cooler. If the food is consistently this good, I think that we’d all enjoy that experience a good deal more.

Papi’s Cuban and Caribbean Grill, Kennesaw GA

A few Fridays back, Marie and I found ourselves with just the baby. Our daughter had found a jawdropping sale on clothes at Plato’s Closet and I had made her an offer that she couldn’t refuse. If I forwarded her the next month’s clothing allowance so she could fill a bag and save something ridiculous like – no joke – 75%, then she could fend for herself for supper and Marie and I could enjoy some grownup time. The baby just sleeps at restaurants – long may that continue – so we could mostly get a break from kids.

Marie was in the mood for a sandwich, so I suggested that we give Papi’s a try. I had only been to this location once, right when it opened, and figured it was due a second glance. I did not know it at the time, but this is actually a small group of four restaurants, with one in midtown and three in the suburbs. They have daily specials and interesting entrees, but where they are said to excel the most is in their sandwiches.

We got to Papi’s just as the dinner rush was about to get heavy, and this apparently coincides with their closing a few tables to make space for a band in the second dining room. We did not have to wait, but quite a few other people arriving after us did. This is a very popular place on Friday evenings!

My readers who enjoy unusual sodas should certainly swing by one of Papi’s locations and check out the drinks on offer. They had quite a few cans of things that you very rarely see, including my beloved Ironbeer. A Cuban soft drink goes extremely well with a good Cuban sandwich.

In my mind, a Cuban sandwich is defined by its very good, slightly sweet bread, meats, lots of mayo and pickles. Marie had the medianoche sandwich with smoked pork and ham, and I had jerk chicken, and we both really enjoyed them. We were a little let down by the fries, which tasted rather too much like institutional mass-produced fries, and fried in the same grease used for the fish. Next time, we’ll have a different side. There certainly will be a next time. While perhaps not quite as tasty as the relocated-to-Birmingham Kool Korner, the sandwiches are still very good, and the atmosphere is fun and upbeat. I’d like to go again one day and enjoy the live music, and an Ironbeer.

Dreamland BBQ and Taco Casa, Tuscaloosa AL

My dad never went to Tuscaloosa. I always thought that was weird.

When he was younger, he saw his beloved Crimson Tide play many times at Legion Field in Birmingham, and, once he and my mom moved to Atlanta, back when Georgia Tech was in the sort of proto-SEC, he’d see the Tide play in Atlanta at Grant Field. Yet he never saw the Tide at what is today Bryant-Denny Stadium, which is briefly visible, towering over the trees, as you make your way down Tuscaloosa’s main commercial strip, McFarland Boulevard. At least, I think that was the stadium. I’ll feel a bit silly if it wasn’t. Continue reading “Dreamland BBQ and Taco Casa, Tuscaloosa AL” →

La Fonda Latina, Atlanta GA

Heaven only knows why I enjoy a restaurant as spectacularly unreliable as La Fonda Latina. It can’t be because of the service. You know, I figure that I have spent many chapters in this story singling out really good restaurants for their really good service. It is only fair, therefore, to occasionally single out a pretty good restaurant for its downright mediocre service. Only fair.

La Fonda is the sister restaurant to Fellini’s Pizza, a more-than-pretty good restaurant that serves up one of my favorite pizzas in the city. Fellini’s is simple and incredibly tasty and incredibly reliable and the service is also occasionally iffy. However, both the food and the service are better than Antico, which everybody’s been raving about for months. Actually, the pizza’s only a little bit better than Antico, which indeed serves up a very good pie, but the occasionally iffy service is a thousand times better than the surly antagonism that Antico dishes up.

Anyway, the cozy relationship of these two restaurants has resulted in a very interesting trio of locations where the owners have managed to construct or conspire a La Fonda and a Fellini’s right next door to each other: on Ponce near North Highland, on Peachtree in Buckhead, and on Roswell Road in Sandy Springs. The design of these particular buildings is incredibly interesting. They look remarkably 1960s, with that weird, undulating awning that reminds me of the old chain of Treasure Island discount stores.

Our friend Matt picked the Roswell La Fonda to meet up for supper one night last week, the evening that the kids and I returned from Chattanooga. We learned then that this La Fonda is the loudest restaurant in the city, and that the service was really quite remarkably mediocre, even by La Fonda standards. But wasn’t the food good?

As we got back into town with about an hour to spare before we met the group, David drove us over to the Buckhead Borders. This was an interesting sight. It’s one of the stores that’s closing, and right now everything is 20-30% off, which would be eyebrow-raising if Borders didn’t send me an email coupon every week to buy a book for 33% off. Actually, Borders seems to send me an email every stinking day, either to give me a coupon I’m not going to use, or tell me that the store nearest me is closing, or tell me that they’re very concerned that I seem to be the only person in the United States not to have purchased The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo from Borders.com.

We got back to the restaurant and lucked into a parking space. This La Fonda and Fellini’s complex has an agonizingly small parking lot, and, typically, it’s right next door to a gigantic, mostly unused shopping center with parking spaces aplenty and, because the shopping center is owned by jerks, parking here and eating at La Fonda is a guaranteed way to get your car towed. David and the kids and I were the last to arrive; Marie, Neal, Matt and his wife Kelley had already made it in and got a table on the patio, surrounded by noise and an awful lot of screaming children with Chick-fil-A kids meals while the grown-ups had something ostensibly a little nicer.

Actually, what the grown-ups had was almost certainly nicer. La Fonda has a good reputation for being one of the best places in the city to enjoy paella. That’s what Matt and Kelley each had, with different ingredients. Honestly, paella is not my favorite meal – it seems a high price to pay for a hell of a lot of rice and not nearly enough meat – but I have found myself craving it from time to time, and La Fonda does a fine job with it. My son and I split an order of three really terrific and delicious chicken tacos, served, as almost all of the meals are, with yellow rice and black beans, and an order of fried plantains and garlic sauce. Marie had a quesadilla with spinach and onions.

And we all had terrible service. I don’t know who our server ever was, because we seemed to have about nine different ones. I suspect that whomever our server originally was, he or she got pressganged into helping another table where one woman was having paella and her three screaming children were having Chick-fil-A kids meals, and then our next server was told to get an order of something else to some other table and we last saw that guy on the other side of the restaurant. In between nine different people putting things on our table and getting pulled to do other things on everybody else’s table, we got perhaps one refill of chips – most broken into fingernail-sized crumbs – and salsa – quite good, perhaps, yet also indistinguishable from this restaurant’s lazy attempt at gazpacho – and no refills of anything to drink other than water. Neal had a diet soda and, once it was done, he was out of luck.

It sounds like a night out at the restaurant from hell, but it was at least good to enjoy everybody’s company and talk about the fun trip we took to Chattanooga and the neat barbecue that we found there. The food was just super, although I’ve always felt it just a little pricey. As for the service, I just figured, heck, this was a Thursday night. I bet Fridays and Saturdays here, assuming you can find a place to park, are completely ridiculous.

When we left, though, I was thinking, as good as those chicken tacos were, it sure has been a while since I enjoyed a slice or two of Fellini’s.