A couple of Fridays ago, I did not have any lunch plans, and my manager, Krista, suggested I try Crawfish Shack, a restaurant that she and her boyfriend visit for special occasions. While not even remotely a “shack” – it’s in a reasonably new strip mall near the shuttered driving range on Buford Highway, fairly invisible to the street – it looked like this place had won the attention and praise of many of my fellow hobbyists since it opened in 2008. It hit a rough patch of no business soon after it opened and was forced to close for a few months, but it’s been going like gangbusters since they reopened, with a very respectable crowd coming in for lunch and sharing the long picnic tables. Continue reading “Crawfish Shack Seafood, Atlanta GA”
Seasons 52, Atlanta GA
A couple of weeks ago, Marie and I were invited to join other local media at the Buckhead location of Seasons 52 to sample their spring menu. We were not familiar with this restaurant before. It’s a reasonably new “concept,” as it is termed in this business, from Darden, the corporation that owns such excessive-consumption chains as Red Lobster and Olive Garden. The first Seasons 52 opened in Orlando in 2003 and this store, one of two in Atlanta, opened in 2006. They have 27 locations in thirteen states. Continue reading “Seasons 52, Atlanta GA”
Rumi’s Kitchen, Sandy Springs GA
A couple of weeks ago, Marie and I had dropped off our daughter with her godmother for an evening of pizza and dressmaking, and then joined the long, slow crawl of cars making their way along Hammond to replenish our stock of Penzeys Spices from their wonderful store in Sandy Springs. Among other things, we had run out of Penzeys Sandwich Sprinkle; bread was not tasting right anymore. We did not have any specific plans for supper; we figured that we would eat wherever the mood struck. Once we finally made it to Roswell Road, we started moving and passed Rumi’s Kitchen. The name was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. We got a fabulous recommendation from the girl who rang us up at Penzeys, who told us that their Persian dinners were completely wonderful. Continue reading “Rumi’s Kitchen, Sandy Springs GA”
Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and ADD Drug, Athens GA
I got stymied for the umpteenth time with this one place that I wanted to eat in Athens. Let’s not go into it now. Maybe the time after next.
Anyway, on one of my previous trips to town, I noticed that a big sports bar was going in the space near the Morton that had previously been home to that tapas place. Actually, I don’t think that it registered then as a sports bar; I just saw that it was a taco place. I’ve always got time for a taco place, but I somehow wonder whether Athens is large enough to have room for a new one. In college towns, you occasionally see a little friction between established restaurants with a lot of history, the fun and trendy new places, and the out-of-town interlopers who come in and suck business away, particularly downtown. Fuzzy’s is definitely in the latter category. It’s a chain from Texas with, at the time of writing, forty-eight locations in ten states, all of which have cropped up since 2005. The Athens store is their first in the southeast; a second, in Charlotte, is due to open in the spring. Continue reading “Fuzzy’s Taco Shop and ADD Drug, Athens GA”
Bay Breeze, Marietta GA
This is Marie, contributing an article about Bay Breeze, a locally-owned restaurant with two branches. We went to the one in Marietta on a lunch date with some of our neighbors. There were quite a few tween and teen girls in the party plus the baby, so as you can imagine the party was a bit on the loud side, but the restaurant has their floor space divided up into a few sections so hopefully there was at least a bit of a sound barrier. Regular readers may remember that I prefer to write about desserts, and have no fear, there was a rather magnificent dessert involved in this trip – but more on that later. Continue reading “Bay Breeze, Marietta GA”
Bowen’s Dairy Bar, Henagar AL
Real life had interfered with our plans in a calamitously disagreeable way back in December and January, and while we kept on trucking and did not let it inconvenience us too much, it did mean the cancellation of two out-of-town trips that we had planned. One of these was going to incorporate a visit to what is possibly the last surviving Kay’s Kastles, a once-thriving ice cream chain that now only seems to exist in the town of Soddy-Daisy, a little north of Chattanooga. Perhaps we’ll make it back sometime. I mentioned this to my mother, who never, ever objected to stopping for a treat at a Kay’s Kastles in Rome on the way back from visits to Fort Payne, and she said that she had half a mind to take a side trip to this Kay’s the next time the road takes her to Chattanooga. She says that she really loved Kay’s grape milkshakes. Continue reading “Bowen’s Dairy Bar, Henagar AL”
Circumnavigating Alabama – Postscript
After finishing our quick visit to Huntsville, I had hoped to visit a couple more barbecue places in northeast Alabama, and so I used Google Maps to chart our way home. Then, unlike our “whatever happens” drive to Nashville the previous afternoon, I looked around Urbanspoon and hammered down two more places to try. This served as a “postscript,” if you like, for my “circumnavigation” of that state two weeks prior, hitting a few more places that I couldn’t have found at that time. Continue reading “Circumnavigating Alabama – Postscript”
Marie, Let's Eat! 