Category: local chains

How Goldberg’s Derailed My Potato Salad Willpower

Goldberg’s flies under a lot of people’s radars, but they really are a special little place. The business is celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year, with half of that time under the ownership of Wayne Saxe and Howard Aaron, who purchased it from the Goldberg family in 1992 and began growing it to six locations in Atlanta. I think that their Toco Hills store is the most recent. It is not, to my surprise, related to a larger chain called Momma Goldberg’s, which is based in Auburn and has sixteen stores in Alabama and west Georgia. No, this place is a little older and hasn’t left its home city yet. Continue reading “How Goldberg’s Derailed My Potato Salad Willpower” →

Keba Spitfire Grill, Athens GA

Here is a restaurant that I remember well from back when it had an even sillier name. See, about three years ago, Achim Reus, who, before he became a restaurateur, was once the principal French horn player in the Stuttgart Philharmonic, decided that it was time to corporatize the restaurants that he’d been running since 1999 or 2000 or so. Back then, he had two in Athens and they were called Achim’s K-Bobs. There was one downtown and one by the track and the football practice fields and I really enjoyed them. They were proper, ramshackle restaurants for a college town and I ate at each of the two frequently. Continue reading “Keba Spitfire Grill, Athens GA” →

Mediterranean Grill, Marietta GA

I’ve mentioned before that 2004 was, for me, something of a mistake-filled year. Well, the mistake in question lived in Decatur for a while before moving way out to Morgan County, and one of the few very decent things to come of that experience was her introducing me to her favorite restaurant in our area, a wonderful little place with the simple name of Mediterranean Grill. It opened in the late ’90s in the same strip mall as Wuxtry Records and Rainbow Grocery and ChocoLaté Coffee, across the street from Evans Fine Foods and it is completely delicious. I have visted many times, and the only thing on their menu that I don’t really like is the baba ghanoush. I’m certain that they won’t take offense to hear that they don’t do one single thing to my liking, because they do everything else incredibly well. Continue reading “Mediterranean Grill, Marietta GA” →

Rhea’s, Roswell GA

I did you good readers a terrible disservice by forgetting about Rhea’s! I should have found time to pop back over to Roswell and sample their food and take some pictures ages ago. I was introduced to it by a nutty girl named Kristi, a former co-worker from a job that I once had in Alpharetta. She was emphatic that theirs were the best hamburgers around, and so I had a few suppers at the closest location to the office on the occasional long workdays at the end of the month that had me getting an evening meal before driving home. Doing a little research for some background now, I see that she’s still preaching the good word. I found her in the comments of CitySearch, praising Rhea’s. Continue reading “Rhea’s, Roswell GA” →

Fincher’s Barbeque, Macon GA

I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a restaurant that divides opinion quite the way that Fincher’s does. It would be churlish to deny that it has its very vocal detractors, and even among loyalty-splitting food like barbecue, people either love it to their core or hate it like something on fire. Surprisingly, chief among the nay-sayers is the wonderful 3rd Degree Berns, of whom I have frequently spoken. When he wrote up his visit in 2009, 3DB pulled no punches, giving the venerable original location in Macon one of his extremely rare one star out of ten ratings. (The only other restaurant to rank so lowly with him is Atlanta’s long-past-its-prime Old Hickory House, where polite nostalgia for locals is the main thing on the menu.) 3DB is by no means the only one to turn both barrels on Fincher’s, yet the small chain – presently at four restaurants: three in Macon and one in Warner Robins – does command a following, and is one of those legendary spaces that campaigning politicians are required to visit. Continue reading “Fincher’s Barbeque, Macon GA” →

Jack’s New Yorker Deli, Vinings GA

Here is a restaurant that is just plain mixed up in my memory. I had this place completely backwards. I could have sworn that, as long as I could remember, there was a deli called “The New Yorker” in Vinings. Seriously, like, from the late 1970s, I remember a place in one of those white buildings across from the fountain on Paces Ferry. I am so accustomed to the memory that I did not think twice about whether or not it was ever there, or still there, or gone. It was just part of Vinings, like the New York Pizza Exchange and the Vinings Inn and the church where Howard McDowell used to preach, which has been a La Paz upstairs and a Mellow Mushroom downstairs for at least fifteen years, but it’s still the church where, as an elementary schooler, I would regularly be sent to Vacation Bible School in the summer and await visits from the old Atlanta Braves Bleacher Creature.

So a few weeks ago, we were thinking about having some supper with Neal, and were looking around for a place in Vinings that was open Sunday and where we had not been in a while. I thumped the table with excitement about stopping by this place for the first time in ages. So we made a beeline for Vinings and Neal wondered where on earth we were going; the New Yorker is on the other side of Vinings, on Atlanta Road near Log Cabin. Sure enough, the buildings that I swore housed this place were occupied by a Starbucks and by a Jimmy John’s.

I thought for a couple of days that one of the girls at the restaurant cleared up the confusion. She told me that the present space was actually the second store; the original was indeed in “proper” Vinings on Paces Ferry, but it had moved near the square in Marietta. Another couple of locations have since popped up in the area. That seemed to clear everything up until I visited the restaurant’s web site and read that the business opened in 2002, far too late for it to be part of my childhood memories. So what the heck was that sandwich shop in Vinings that I’m thinking of, I wonder?

I feel pretty strongly about where Vinings actually is. Despite what some real estate agents and some clusters of apartment homes in Mableton would have you believe, Vinings is a very small place, and it is entirely inside the perimeter. Its boundaries are a pair of Kroger grocery stores. There is one on 41 and Paces Mill Road, and there is one on the south end of the neighborhood between Log Cabin and Atlanta Road. Its eastern border is the Chattahoochee River, and the western border is actually not I-285, but Cumberland Parkway. That’s not complicated. If you live OTP, then you’re in Smyrna and a wannabe.

They claim here, in actual-Vinings, to not be an imitation New York deli, but to provide a neat southern twist on things. I don’t know how accurate any of this is, but it is certainly really tasty! Neal had a fried bologna sandwich and really liked it, but I’m sure my sandwich was better. It’s called a Ryan’s Wise Guy and comes with with prosciutto, cappicola, pepperoni, lettuce, tomato, black olives, banana peppers, fresh mozzarella and balsamic vinaigrette. Just a terrific, big little sandwich at a reasonable price.

Anyway, Jack’s New Yorker Deli is open until 9 on Sundays, which is probably a little later than it needs to stay open. We wrapped up our meals by 8 and spent time gossiping and catching up and the place was hardly hopping. It is a terrific spot to go and gab. It’s a little hidden from the road, and easy to drive right past, but certainly worth a visit.

(Edit…) In December, I stopped by the Marietta Square store for an Ellis Island sandwich and fries. It was delicious. I like the “Deli Dust,” a little mix of salt, pepper, garlic and onion powder, sprinkled over the fries.