I love it whenever I get to visit a restaurant and have a preconceived notion dropped on its head. A few weeks ago, I was invited to sample a lunch at Kabob Land, which is in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood, on Piedmont just below its intersection with Peachtree. I looked forward to visiting, but I think that the colorful, Saturday-morning-cartoon logo that the restaurant employs actually hides just how good the food is. I always try to visit every restaurant that we try with an open mind and a kind heart, but wacky lettering sort of gets in the way of seriously good food. Continue reading “Kabob Land, Atlanta GA”
Tag: buckhead
Shake Shack, Atlanta GA
The unbelievable mob at our city’s first Shake Shack, part of the new Buckhead Atlanta development and located right on Peachtree Road, underneath Gypsy Kitchen and The Southern Gentleman, gives us some indication what the crowd might be like should In-N-Out Burger ever open in our fair town. About a month ago, Marie treated me to lunch here for my birthday. Our friend David joined us and it was quite a crowd. David commented that he’d never seen a restaurant dedicate one staff member to “queue control” duty. Continue reading “Shake Shack, Atlanta GA”
Gypsy Kitchen, Atlanta GA
Buckhead Atlanta, the not-all-that-imaginatively-named development at the corner of Peachtree and Pharr in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, is home to some luxury apartment homes, high-end boutiques, and some interesting restaurants. At the time of writing, nine of the thirteen restaurants are yet to open, but four are already doing good business, including the first Atlanta location of the celebrated Shake Shack, and a quite neat tapa place called Gypsy Kitchen. It’s the latest opening for Southern Proper Hospitality, the team behind Big Ketch Saltwater Grill and Smokebelly; another of their restaurants, The Southern Gentleman, will be among the next to open in Buckhead Atlanta. Continue reading “Gypsy Kitchen, Atlanta GA”
Boneheads, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)
Earlier this month, Marie and I joined some friends from the Association of Food Bloggers to sample some of the standards on the menu at Boneheads, an Atlanta-based chain that specializes in grilled fish and chicken and a variety of sauces flavored with piri piri peppers. We also got a preview of the new brunch menu that their corporate chef, Laurel Elliot, has developed, and which is rolling out at Boneheads’ eight stores in Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas beginning this month. Their newest Atlanta location, on Pharr Road in Buckhead, serves as the chain’s test kitchen and the brunch items are available there now, with the other stores picking it up very soon if they’ve not already. Continue reading “Boneheads, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)”
Goldberg’s Bagel Company and Deli, Atlanta GA
I’ve eaten at the Goldberg’s on West Paces a few times over the years, even knowing – as I learned in 2012 – that their potato salad could well be my undoing. This is one of six locations around Atlanta, plus at least three inside Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, and until the other night, it had been the only one that I visited. Earlier this month, the Association of Food Bloggers arranged a media dinner at the small chain’s original location on Roswell Road, near Wieuca, which I had never visited before. In a really neat twist, it turns out that this strip mall has been the launching pad for two highly-regarded Atlanta-based chains. Both Goldberg’s, which opened in 1972, and Willy’s Mexicana Grill, which opened in the space next door, got their starts here. Continue reading “Goldberg’s Bagel Company and Deli, Atlanta GA”
One Star Ranch, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)
Through the late 1990s, Atlanta was home to a pair of barbecue restaurants called The Rib Ranch. They each went in for Texas-themed design and big plates of ribs, and, without a lot of foodie fuss, had a small legion of fans. Today, they are owned by different relations within the same family. The Marietta store, which we wrote about in the spring of 2013, is still called The Rib Ranch. The one in Buckhead, on Irby Street, changed its name to One Star Ranch in the early 2000s, and branched out to an additional location in Alpharetta that lasted from 2002-2011. Continue reading “One Star Ranch, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)”
Chow Bing Chinese Grill, Atlanta GA
I always really enjoy talking with Gary Lin. He’s one of Atlanta’s most criminally underrated chefs, a guy who believes very strongly in food sustainability and healthy ideals. With Chow Bing, he’s come up with a very good menu – even if one item on it is a little bizarre – but the success of large crowds and lots of buzz outside the hobbyist gang has so far eluded him. In part that’s because he opened the first Chow Bing in a very tough location. There’s absolutely no pedestrian traffic crossing the downtown connector from Grady to the Pencil Factory Lofts. So he’s rolled the dice on a big real estate gamble and opened a second location in a much more visible shopping center in Buckhead, diagonally across the parking lot from the “Disco Kroger.” Last month, he invited the Association of Food Bloggers to sample the menu. Continue reading “Chow Bing Chinese Grill, Atlanta GA”
Marie, Let's Eat! 