Baby Tommy’s Taste of New York, Marietta GA

At the end of May, Fox News personality Sarah Palin took her family to New York City, where she met with NBC personality Donald Trump before the watchful eyes of sixty-eleven news photographers who wanted to watch the conservative duo chow down at a New York pizza place. Attempting to adhere to the philosophy of there being no such thing as bad publicity, and failing terribly, Trump took the opportunity to show a visiting celebrity one of his town’s legendary pie places. To folk like me, who’ve never visited Manhattan, it looked like he might have done all right. I was quickly informed, by the invaluable Jon Stewart, that Trump did it horribly, godawfully, wrong.

In what must rank as one of the funniest television moments of the year, Stewart, in a vulgarity-spewing tirade, absolutely lost his lemon with just how badly Trump represented his city. If you have not seen these brilliant ten minutes, please look it up and watch Stewart try to be respectful, and fail, as Trump’s list of crimes against pizza grows and grows. Don’t spoil the fun by reading about these crimes before you press play.

I sent that link to Marie a couple of weeks back and she quickly wrote me back, noting that it really had been a while since we enjoyed a proper New York-style pizza. Almost immediately, she had read and asked around and suggested that a little place on Cobb Parkway, south of the Big Chicken and next door to that army-navy store, might be one of the closest things we have to a real, authentic, Manhattan pizzeria experience. I’ve been driving past this place for years and not noticing it, which is not surprising when you consider all the sprawl that buries businesses on this ugly stretch of road. She was right; we were long overdue for a visit.

Doctor Who once taught me a lesson in recursive logic. I was reminded of it when I asked the fellow at the register what made this place the most authentic New York pizza place in the area. He answered, “All our customers tell us we are.”

I think that I got a little bit more information from the owner a little later on. Apparently, what you want to see in a New York pizza place is a big counter with pies being sold by the slice. The smell needs to hit you as you walk in the door. You want an even spread of cheese and sauce, a certain curl to the crust, and a conservative but noticeable char on the underside.

Marie and I shared a Primavera-style pizza (mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers, black olives and onions) and I also had a knish, served with two packets of Gulden’s brand mustard. I thought it was pretty good, although I wasn’t mad about the cheese on the pizza.

I particularly liked the really generous pile of toppings that we were given, but Marie found it a little overpowering. Since by now you have all watched that clip from Jon Stewart’s show, I’m not spoiling anything by saying that my eyebrows raised as Marie got up and fetched a knife and fork to tackle her slice. Having been instructed by Varasano’s some years ago how to correctly hold and eat a slice, I wasn’t surprised when Stewart really blew his top about Trump eating pizza in New York with a fork, and told Marie, with a smile and a tut-tut, that Stewart would surely not approve of how she was eating.

“There are too many toppings on the pizza,” said Marie, “and Jon Stewart can bite me.”

Personally, I thought that a bit harsh. We wouldn’t have even been enjoying this particular pizza without him!

West Cobb Diner, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing a chapter on the West Cobb Diner. This was a place chosen by my mother-in-law, who wanted to have an opportunity to show off her newest grandchild to her friends, so of course that makes this a place that is friendly to large groups straggling in at odd times. Much better than the places that like to keep a big group in waiting area purgatory until Mr./Ms. Always-late arrives!

The West Cobb Diner was actually on our list of places to check out before this invitation, but when we tried to go, the wait time was much too long and we had to go to plan B that day. We learned then that this restaurant is really difficult to find. It is hidden in a very nice strip mall and completely invisible from the road. I was very pleased to get the invitation, not least because I certainly don’t mind showing off the kid even though there was a competing and newer baby at the same lunch! There will always be younger babies than mine, but he is still new enough it’s hard to wrap my mind around the idea that someone might want to look at some other child.

Anyway, we made it there after about half the table had been served, but with a few diners still to come. It was a friendly crowd and the only disadvantage I could tell was that the table and noise level made it a bit difficult to carry on a conversation with anyone not actually next to or across from you. The server did a great job keeping track of all of us and keeping our glasses full. She wasn’t going to let the guaranteed large-table tip limit her.

The food has a Southern-style slant, with fried green tomatoes in the starters, pimento cheese on the burgers, bacon in the beans and white gravy for the biscuits – but you can also get a steak if you want it, or thai noodle salad, or any of a number of other things not strictly Southern but which don’t appear to clash at all. One of the benefits of going with a huge crowd is seeing what everyone else gets and making a note for the future of anything interesting on their plates. My next order is probably going to be the meat loaf or the pork chops.

I got the vegetable plate, sadly passing on the non-vegetarian beans and peas, and wasn’t able to finish it all. The food is very good, well-made and stayed hot while I wandered around the table to bring the baby to various fans calling for his presence. Since I tend to eat too fast because I don’t like food that has gone cold, that’s saying something. The food is simply well-made. For a place with a fairly large menu, that is pretty good. Make sure to check out the menu board to see what is available for vegetables. As a transplanted Yankee, it does always strike me as odd that things like mac-n-cheese are counted as vegetables, but all the sides I got and those ordered by others looked great.

And of course a review by me wouldn’t be complete without a comment on the desserts. The diner has a glass case with a selection of cakes, pudding and pies that is comprehensive without being overwhelming. The servings are generous, especially the chocolate layer cake.

Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand, Atlanta GA

When Marie and our friend Victoria were each in the later stages of their respective pregnancies, we met up near their new apartment in the East Atlanta neighborhood for ice cream at Morelli’s, and resolved to get together again after our babies were born. Victoria and James were raving then about Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand, a collaboration between Delia Champion, who started our city’s much-loved Flying Biscuit Cafe, and Molly Gunn, who I understand co-owns The Porter. Weeks went by, babies were born and I started getting impatient about when the heck we were going to get together so’s I could try one of these dogs. Or slingers, as the restaurant would like to term them.

Make no mistake, though. These may be called slingers or chicken sausages, but they are definitely from the same mold as hot dogs. This is a good thing, as Marie and I certainly love good hot dogs. The new take on them here is incredibly neat and fun and very tasty. Champion and Gunn are using buns baked by the popular Holeman & Finch and locally-sourced, organically-grown chickens for their meat. The results are just a little different from even the best hot dog places in town – America’s Top Dog, Barker’s, Brandi’s – and make for a very interesting and unique taste. Plus, they’re open absurdly late. Like four in the morning late. If I lived in that neighborhood, they’d be seeing me pretty frequently in the middle of the night!

The one thing about Delia’s that does not please me is the lack of seating. There’s only a small indoor area with air conditioning to place orders, and six picnic tables outside to eat. As Atlanta enters its utterly miserable summer, this is going to keep us from paying them another visit for a few months. This is a real shame, because the food is quite wonderful.

Acting like I had not eaten anything in a month, I ordered both a Naked Slinger – far from naked, it was the sausage with their “comeback” sauce and a little of the firey five-pepper mustard – and their signature Hot Mess, a slinger buried under melted cheese, chili and jalapenos. This really is too messy a thing to eat in polite company, but somehow I avoided spilling any of it on Victoria and James’s couch.

Honestly, though, the sausage is so good that it doesn’t need all the crazy toppings. I really preferred the Naked Slinger, and thought that the meat’s flavor was really brought out by the mustard. Meanwhile, my daughter enjoyed eating the chicken as traditional sliders, and Marie had the Italian Stallion, which has the slinger served with onions, peppers, mozzarella and marinara sauce. Everything was really quite excellent.

I just amused myself, wondering whether the slinger could turn into an iconic Atlanta variety of dog, just like half-smokes are in Washington. I wish I had a TARDIS so I could pop forward a few decades and check that out.

The Varsity, Kennesaw GA

Over the last eight chapters in the blog, I have written about the four-day trip that we took to visit Marie’s brother and sister in Mississippi. These were posted here slightly out of sequence, as I was anxious to share some stories about places outside our regular stomping grounds around Atlanta. Not that anybody other than me is keeping track of these, but the next four entries (plus the next Honeymoon Flashback, later this week) are about some places that we visited before this road trip.

First up is a place that we visit with something approaching frequency, the Kennesaw location of The Varsity. I’m sure this is not a place that needs much introduction. It is as iconic as American restaurants get, and the downtown location, which I’m sure I’ll revisit and write about one day, is a major tourist attraction for the city.

The Varsity has done more things right than wrong over the years – moving their beloved Varsity Jr. location from Cheshire Bridge out to Dawsonville, because serving a long-established neighborhood is not as profitable as snagging outlet mall shoppers, must surely count as a “wrong” – and one of their neater ideas has been building satellite locations along each of the northern arteries that feed into the city. Whether you’ve followed the sprawl into the suburbs up Interstate 75 or 85 or GA-400, there’s a Varsity for you, and each of these stores do a darn good job capturing the feel of the original.

Usually, if we are in the mood for a burger, and don’t feel like making a production or a caravan or a road trip out of it, we just hop over to Cheeseburger Bobby’s, which makes one of the best burgers in Cobb County. The Varsity, let’s be fair and honest, is a fairly weak competitor in those stakes, but their fries are better than Bobby’s, and so are their onion rings, and so is their chocolate milk – you just won’t believe how well chocolate milk over ice goes with a burger until you try it – and they also add one thing that I sure do wish that Cheeseburger Bobby’s would consider for their own patties: pimento cheese.

I mentioned a few chapters back that I greatly admire the writing of John T. Edge. About a week before our trip, I read his delightful Hamburgers and Fries, one of a short series of books, very Calvin Trillin in feel and flavor, in which Edge flies around the country trying regional takes on the most classically American of foods. He has slug burgers in Mississippi and steamed burgers in Connecticut and, most drool-worthy of them all, pimento cheeseburgers in South Carolina.

I know virtually nothing about South Carolina. It’s always been a state that I have driven through; I have never stayed overnight in the state. I recognize this as a deficiency that needs correcting, and longer visits and more detailed investigations of South Carolina are on the long-term agenda. From what I understand, though – and, admittedly, a good chunk of what I understand is what I have read in Edge’s books – many of the older hamburger joints throughout the Palmetto State have long offered pimento cheeseburgers. It is apparently one of that region’s specialties.

I’m reminded of the similarity between the Varsity’s hot dogs and chili and the ones that you can get at Macon’s Nu-Way. When the Varsity’s founder, Frank Gordy, was first driving around the south nailing down ideas for what he wanted his restaurant, then called The Yellow Jacket, to serve, it’s suggested that he decided to replicate the Nu-Way experience. That was somewhat lost when the Varsity expanded and grew to its current enormous size, but you can still absolutely see Nu-Way’s influence. I wonder whether in 1928, pimento cheeseburgers were common in Atlanta, or did Gordy find a place or two in South Carolina that inspired him to do them here?

Every so often, I find myself craving pimento cheese on a burger, served all hot, gooey and greasy. Marie doesn’t often remind me that she’s a damn Yankee, but when she quickly corrects my order of pimento cheeseburgers and asks for her own with a slice of cheddar, I remember all right. Ah, but it’s those differences that keep us interesting, right?

Melody Lane Mediterranean, Marietta GA

Here’s a most peculiar story about a restaurant that I had somehow visited twice before, when it was chocolate and when it was peanut butter, but never when it was a Reese’s treat. Melody Lane is the new incarnation of two prior ventures, one of which excited me, but I thought, wrongly, that it had vanished.

When I first moved to Marietta in 2003, I drove north on Canton Road and spotted Melody Lane Deli on my right. I stopped in for a sandwich and found it really unimpressive. It was mainly a breakfast place; making lunch sandwiches seemed like an afterthought. I didn’t give it any more consideration; life’s too short for unimpressive food.

Years passed, and David took the kids and me to this little Mediterranean grocery, located just a hair north of Melody Lane, but on the left, where they were serving up gyros and falafels to guests at a teeny little counter with four bar stools. They told us then that they would soon be moving, probably to the strip mall across the street. I said that I’d look out for them, particularly as they sold cans of Vimto, one of many soft drinks that I like but rarely find. In time, though, the grocery store closed and nothing new opened in that strip mall.

More years passed – I really have lived here too long – and I followed a recommendation from a new food blogger in the area, A Girl and Her Words…, to give Melody Lane a try. She raved about the excellent Mediterranean food available here. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “Is that really that crummy breakfast place?” By this time, I’d forgotten all about that grocery store, and didn’t realize what had happened until I spoke with our server after Marie and I had a childfree supper to celebrate our anniversary a little early. The grocery store had moved across the street by buying the restaurant!

The evening was memorable for one thing even above the food: this was the first time that we left the baby with his two older siblings for a couple of hours. Marie and I were probably just a little distracted, and waiting nervously for one of our cell phones to ring with a crisis.

We started with an order of baba ghanoush, a dish that I like at some places a lot more than others. This was one of the good ones. It was really creamy and lip-smackingly tasty. I followed that with a tabouli salad for myself. This, sadly, wasn’t the best I’d ever had. I liked the tabouli at a place a little south that has since closed a lot more.

Marie had the chicken shawarma and just loved it. The meat is broiled and seasoned with tahini sauce, parsley and garlic. By comparison, my kafta – ground beef and onions with parsley – didn’t come close. It was very good, but the chicken was just so wonderful that I got menu envy again.

This was an inexpensive and simple way to celebrate our anniversary, but we were kind of keeping things as simple as possible over the course of May as we got used to having the baby around. Now that we know about Melody Lane, I hope we’ll revisit it soon. I want an order of that shawarma chicken to myself, to be honest.

We’re taking a longer-than-normal break, but we’ll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Grindhouse Killer Burgers, Atlanta GA

Wow. You can really see the malaise creeping in everywhere. There really is a backlash against burger places in Atlanta. I think the hawt new trend right now is frozen yogurt places – Lord knows why – and so news like the opening of Grindhouse Killer Burgers’ second location is met with rolled eyes and collective yawns. The original is a lunch-only place on Edgewood in the Sweet Auburn Curb Market. I confess that I’ve never been there, nor to any curb market for that matter, but seriously, a good burger is worth celebrating, no matter how many burger joints this city has.

Tell me that Chicago foodies don’t act like this. Tell me that nobody in the Windy City acts like they’re too cool for school when somebody opens a new place to get an Italian beef. Marie and I, we get interested and excited when we hear about someplace good to eat. As should you. If it’s a good burger, it should be talked about.

Grindhouse’s burgers are indeed pretty darn good, but they are also kind of small and pricey. This might end up being a bit tricky.

They’ve opened in a great location, right next door to that ridiculous car wash on Piedmont with the occasionally animatronic gorilla out front. There’s a large outdoor patio that might have tempted us on a cooler day, but with Atlanta suffering a heat wave and temperatures in the mid-90s, we stayed indoors. Marie, the baby and I stopped by on a Thursday just as they opened and just before a giant crowd from a nearby office came in and took forever to place their orders and then occupied about a third of the table space.

I really like the interior. There’s one wall near the restrooms with a huge white “blood” spatter that serves as the screen for a loop of godawful ’70s exploitation films. When we were there, the movie of the moment was one of those Golden Harvest films where ninjas fight monks, and men argue in serious subtitles about the superiority of Shaolin kung fu over modern martial arts. Sadly, two of the other TVs were showing that dumb game show set in a taxi. It sort of dampened the mood.

The burgers were really good, but I was disappointed with the size. They’re about as big as the ones your middle school served, and for the $6.25 that I paid for my apache-style burger, it didn’t seem like I got very much. I was really hungry again a few hours later, anyway. I picked that burger based on a recommendation from our local alt-weekly Creative Loafing, who, last month, named it one of 100 Dishes to Eat in Atlanta Before You Die. With lots of oozy, melted pepperjack, onions and peppers, it’s sort of a patty melt on a hamburger bun. It was excellent, but too darn small. Nevertheless, I’m curious about some of the other concoctions on the menu. I might have to try the one with pimento cheese and fried green tomatoes sometime soon. Marie had a burger with cheddar, lettuce, tomato and avocado and was also pleased, and we shared some mighty good crinkle-fries that were perfectly crispy and salty.

But the thing that tipped it from “good but disappointing” into “we’ll be back again” was the chocolate malt. Marie was raving about that thing all day. She says, wildly, that it was an even better chocolate malt than the one she had the week before at Chapman Drugs in Hapeville. Hmmm. Yes, I wish you got a little more meat for your money here, but you can’t argue with a chocolate malt that good, I suppose. I guess that I’ll be having one of those Dixie burgers sooner rather than later.

Saravanaa Bhavan and Mirch Masala, Decatur GA

It has been several months since I went out for any Indian food. Longtime readers might recall that my favorite Indian restaurant in the region, Roswell’s Moksha, had closed, and I made a couple of fitful attempts to find a replacement. I found some pretty good food, but nothing remarkable, and I got a little discouraged and bored and resumed finding more barbecue and burger places.

In April, writing for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s “Food and More” blog, Gene Lee recommended three Indian restaurants in Decatur. This was part of the blog’s “Spring Dining 2011” guide and got me thinking. Maybe Marie and I could do a tour of all three one Saturday…?

Well, I was sort of stymied here, as Marie really doesn’t care all that much for Indian food. You’ll notice she has been absent from this blog’s few trips to Indian restaurants. She does like a little curry powder with her chicken salad, but otherwise most of that region’s cuisine does not appeal to her. Nevertheless, she agreed that we could give it a try if I would compromise and drop it to two restaurants. We took the baby and my older son and our good buddy David along and figured out the best way to plan these two lunches.

First up, we went to a vegetarian restaurant, where we planned that Marie would have a full meal, I would have an appetizer, and our older son would drum his fingers impatiently and wait for his larger meal at the next destination. I was sweet; I let him have an order of plantain bhaji that was quite delicious and had a nice level of spice to it.

Saravanaa Bhavan is the second restaurant by that name to occupy this space. The earlier version closed in 2008 and was bought by an international chain of hotels and vegetarian restaurants. This particular location doesn’t actually have any guest rooms, but the chain itself is kind of like a Howard Johnson’s that specializes in dosa. This is a huge, thin filled crepe and I think of it as a counterpoint to an uthappam, which is thicker, like a pancake. There’s a big window into the kitchen where you can watch the staff make the dosas and other treats.

Taking Lee’s recommendation, Marie ordered the masala dosa, which is the crepe filled with a curried mashed potato. It’s enormous, and served with four different dipping sauces. She also had an order of buttered naan and this was more food than she felt like tackling. In her defense, unfortunately, the atmosphere here did her in. While the food was all indeed very good, the restaurant ruined the air inside with the most noxious, repugnant incense by the entrance. Frankly, we couldn’t wait to leave. My tomato and pea uthappam was genuinely good and I enjoyed the flavor of everything here, but I sure do wish that I could have enjoyed it in better circumstances.

On that note, “couldn’t wait to leave” has proven, in my experience, to be a common problem at Indian restaurants from here to Toronto. There has not been a one, except the ones where you pay up front, where flagging a server down to get a blasted check has not been a chore. Neither of the places that we visited on this trip were in a hurry to see us go. We wanted to leave Saravanaa Bhavan because the air stank. We wanted to leave Mirch Masala because we were stuffed.

My heart sank as we entered Mirch Masala, which is located about three minutes’ south of Saravanaa Bhavan. It’s one of those Indian restaurants that suggests upscale by way of nice napkins and tuxedo-clad servers, but it’s hopelessly artificial. The menus are in leather cases, but the laminate on the heavy paper pages is peeling, comically, as they fall apart. There’s a 15% service fee on tables of four. Not six; four. Frankly, I hated the place so much that the best Indian food I ever had wouldn’t bring me back. Then I had some of the best Indian food I ever had and I was conflicted.

Gene Lee had recommended the chicken tikka masala here and I wanted to try it. Unfortunately, it was not on the buffet – $9.95 for weekend lunch – but priced at $11.95 for an order. I bit the bullet and was completely thrilled with it. The chicken was tender and flavored and seasoned just perfectly, and served in a deep red sauce that reminded me of molten lava. “It looks,” observed my son and channeling Ralph Wiggum, “like… hot.” He wasn’t kidding. I’ve had more lethally spicy food than this, but not often. It was majestic.

Marie ordered some rice called kashimiri pullao (basmati rice cooked with dried fruit) that she enjoyed, and they gave her enough to last for a subsequent lunch. My son and David each enjoyed some of the food on the buffet, which included both curried goat and chicken, and a spinach paneer that David said was excellent and as good as he’d ever had it. Food-wise, this place really was a winner. It’s a shame they had to spoil it by giving us such pathetic service and presentation.

Adding insult to injury, it took us about fifteen minutes after finishing our food to get a check. I don’t think this is all that complicated, really.

I’ll try again in a few months. There has to be a place in town that will give me excellent Indian food outside of a plastic quasi-upscale environment with attentive service at a fair price. Somewhere.

(Note: Saravanaa Bhavan briefly closed at the end of 2012 before reopening as Madras Bhavan, no longer affiliated with the hotel Saravanaa chain. I understand that it is still a vegetarian restaurant.)