Taco Cabana, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

You can’t miss this restaurant at the intersection of Piedmont and Monroe. It’s the place that looks like the two fellows from Miami Vice are about to beat up on the guy bringing in all the cocaine in his DeLorean. Taco Cabana has always been this garish, and that’s part of why they spent about six years in court defending their look.

In the late eighties and early nineties, this spot was occupied by a nearly-identical restaurant called Two Pesos. This was the only Atlanta location of a chain that had started in Houston in 1985. I ate here several times when I was in high school and when I came home during my first year of college. In fact, my very first car – and here’s an odd memory – died for good one night after a meal here. It was a wonderful, gigantic 1979 Oldsmobile Delta 88 and that great beauty would have driven me to Europe and back, had I asked. I was having car trouble all day, and fretted with two friends at Two Pesos what I would do if it couldn’t be repaired. Well, it couldn’t. It cranked twice more, once when I left the restaurant after a horrible, grinding shriek of metal, and once, for the final time, after it conked out again at a traffic light down the road. So Two Pesos was my last meal with that Oldsmobile.

What I didn’t know then was that Two Pesos was already years into a losing battle defending their business. Two Pesos had been started by some businessmen, allied with a former manager of one of San Antonio’s Taco Cabana stores, in 1985. Within a couple of years, Two Pesos had blanketed Texas with locations, and the much slower-growing Taco Cabana found themselves facing competition from a lookalike copycat which had established themselves in cities like Houston and Dallas, flinging locations as far afield as Colorado and Georgia to establish themselves ahead of where Taco Cabana could go.

So Taco Cabana sued Two Pesos for ripping off their look, feel, design, store layout and menu to such a degree that customers were left confused as to which came first. The Supreme Court eventually weighed in Taco Cabana’s favor. Left with a lower court order to completely reconstruct every one of their existing stores, Two Pesos elected instead to sell out to Taco Cabana. The Atlanta store was remade and remodeled into a Taco Cabana over the course of about an afternoon.

I’m not sure why I never popped back by the business, whatever its name, after that fateful evening when my car cranked for the last time. I remember they always had decent food at great prices, but the road just never took me by again. Well, not when I was ready for a meal there, anyway. Years and years passed and I read about the slugfest that the two restaurants had in court and figured that I should stop by again. It might make a readable story, if nothing else. Or something weird might happen.

Now, one thing that I didn’t like about my trip to Taco Cabana is that they don’t have chips, although they offer them. For ninety-nine cents, you get a pair of flour tortillas that you can rip into small pieces and eat with their tasty salsas. Somebody should tell that guy behind the register that those aren’t chips. So I had two tortillas along with a platter of two chicken tacos, rice and beans. I asked for one hard shell and one soft in order to sample some different flavors, and thought that chicken was very good for this sort of food. There was nothing very unusual or weird in my meal, but it was a step or two up from what you’d get at a similar place, and priced right. I liked the layout and the big patio space, which is probably quite fun and relaxing in warmer weather.

So then I went to my car and it would not start. I turned the key and nothing happened. The whole electrical system was not responding.

I know this must be impossible to believe, but twenty-one years after my Oldsmobile sputtered and died after I had a meal in this building, I came here for the first time and the hotdamned restaurant killed my Camry. You want to tell me the odds of that?

Turned out I had one of those very rare car problems that I can actually solve. One of the battery terminals had a loose connection. I avoided a freakout, shook my head in disbelief, popped the hood, jiggled it, bit my lip, tried again, thanked God and drove, nerves wracked, to my brother, who spent a few minutes replacing bits and tightening things and making sure I was roadworthy again.

I figure Taco Cabana is surely the safest restaurant in the city now. My car’s had problems there twice. It’s like Garp buying that house in John Irving’s novel after an airplane crashes into it. There’s just no way in the universe I could possibly have car problems there three times, right?

The Georgia Pig, Brunswick GA (CLOSED)

With a heavy heart, we woke on Saint Simons for what we plan to be the last time in Marie’s pregnancy. This was the last long, overnight trip on the calendar until the summer. I slept horribly, and she not much better, and we ended up getting a later start out of town than planned, as she was not feeling at all well that Sunday morning. So we kicked back for an extra couple of hours to let her rest before giving our goodbye hugs and getting back on the road. Continue reading “The Georgia Pig, Brunswick GA (CLOSED)” →

StaQs BBQ, Smyrna GA (CLOSED)

Every so often, I run into a restaurant that really isn’t that amazing, but there’s something about it which deserves a little bit of praise and attention just because the people behind it have come up with something just a little extra. It’s when I find a place that does something that nobody else does that I get a real sense of pleasure. Even when there is room for improvement elsewhere, a restaurant should be hailed for at least offering something unique. So it is with the ridiculously-named StaQs.

My daughter seems to have been mostly absent from the pages of this blog lately; she missed out on her brother’s trip to Tennessee with me, but that’s not to say she’s been completely idle. She has been going through a difficult period, getting used to the awful social rules of middle school, and, sadly, acting like going well out of the way for something to eat is a monstrous burden upon her texting and iPod time. She is, after all, twelve. Well, last week, she and I had a little time after a doctor’s appointment for a quick snack, and even though I probably should not have spent any additional money that day, I realized that we’d be going by StaQs, which is on South Cobb Drive a couple of doors down from Vittles Restaurant.

This particular stretch of road has been pretty brutal to barbecue restaurants. I mentioned many months ago that the venerable Old South BBQ was just a stone’s throw from some others, intending then to come back and try StaQs, but it slipped down the wishlist. Just north of Windy Hill, you can see the building that once housed Champs, a pretty good place that was notorious for blaring Country Music Television at maximum volume in every room of their big facility. The restaurant has sat untouched, the old signage still there, for more than three years. Across the street was once another barbecue joint, the name of which escapes me, but they too kept their signage long after the business closed. Old South still seems to thrive and has seen off at least two challengers around this intersection, but economically, this isn’t the most upscale region of Cobb County. Rents are probably a little cheap here, suggesting that StaQs might have been right to start small in this building, which I believe was formerly a Waffle House.

Speaking of that, I did mention that something on the menu here was notable, even if, perhaps, the overall quality of the food is something that still needs a touch of work. StaQs offers a remarkable little dish called, appropriately, The Mess.

The Mess is, simply, a small serving of chopped pork and cole slaw atop a waffle with maple syrup. I don’t know who came up with such a thing, but they deserve a medal.

For people already in Smyrna, it’s certainly worth stopping in, but as for whether it’s worth a very long crosstown drive to try, I’d have to say probably not. I really didn’t enjoy the pork as much as I hoped, and neither sauce – a sweet and a hot, each tomato-based – were really that amazing. Nor was there enough pork to really sample much of the sauce, as the maple syrup had already made the meat very sweet. It’s a remarkably good idea, but I suggest the pork could use a lot more smoke flavor for this meal to be a real showstopper.

On the other hand, the stew here really is quite good, and worth a try. It’s made with chicken, corn and potatoes in the traditional tomato base, and you get a really big helping of it for your money. My daughter will often just order a bowl of stew when we go out, and this was considerably more than either of us were expecting, or that she could finish. She had the rest of it for lunch a few days later.

Speaking of lunch, thanks to this place, I’m now wondering what a plate of a drier, smokier meat might taste like with maple syrup. Maybe I should run up to Ellijay and get some of Oscar Poole’s pork and try some of that done this way. Hmmm.

My Cousin Vinny’s, Kennesaw GA (CLOSED)

This is Marie, contributing an uncharacteristically dessert-free chapter. One of the local places we don’t visit often enough because of our roaming tendencies is a pleasant little pizza joint with a brick oven. I usually forget the actual name of the place, in fact, but luckily Grant knows that when I suggest eating at the Brick Oven pizza place I mean this restaurant. However, given our tendency towards variety combined with the tendency of that area to have an infestation of mall traffic, we don’t eat there very often. That is a shame, because besides good regular food, every so often they have fried green beans as a special and I am rather fond of those. Actually, the last time we’d tried to go we had to pass because there was a line out the door and we were too hungry to wait that long for dinner.

There are a lot of pizza joints in the area, and that’s one of the reasons we tend to change out. There’s another Italian place I’m particularly fond of, in fact, but we go even less often because of budgetary constraints. They happen not to have fried green beans, but that’s irrelevant.

On this particular occasion we had a good excuse to go to a familiar place. My aunt Lori and her husband let us know that they would be coming down through Atlanta on their way to Florida and wanted to visit over dinner, and that was the first thing that came to mind that would be easy for an out-of-town guest driving down I-75 to find. Their visit was scheduled for a Thursday (traditionally my most stressful and longest day at work) so having something to look forward to for the evening was definitely a positive addition to my day. As good hosts, though, it was important to give them a place that would be easy to find and which I could get to independently if (as it almost turned out) I would need to drive there on my own because of the effects of Thursdays on my schedule. Then, as a surprise, after dinner we got to open a late wedding gift. I am always partial to late gifts as it is a good excuse to keep the original celebration going.

One of the peculiar aspects to this particular visit is that for the first time I visited the online reviews of the place. We’d just stopped by the first time and liked it, so we hadn’t ever checked what the internet was saying about the place. Now, when I looked at the web in order to send directions and maybe send a copy of the menu for them to look at, I saw a clutter of negative reviews scattered around several lists (in between quite a few much more positive ones). The puzzling thing about them is that these particular reviews didn’t seem to be about the same place we’d visited. All our experiences have been at the least tasty and at the best very good.

This particular evening went quite well. Most of the other business for the place that night was people stopping by for take-out so we had the dining room nearly to ourselves. I hope it’s not because of the reviews, but the server did say that they do a lot of their business on the weekend. The last time we’d tried to go we had to pass because there was a line out the door and we were too hungry to wait that long for dinner!

The food there is not overly complicated, just tasty. Sadly, the fried green beans were not available that day. Our order started with a huge plate of rolls covered in melted garlic butter, hot and rather addictive themselves. My uncle commented that he could eat just those for dinner and that got us another plateful so he almost did! Generally, if I can have only one topping on a pizza I’ll go for sausage but that’s not an option these days. After the baby I am going to have a salami sandwich followed by a sausage pizza, then when I get home I’ll probably make one of my family’s Dutch recipes that involve more sausage, even though that’s winter food down here in Georgia!

We had ordered two pizzas to share except for our daughter, who had to be different and get ravioli. She got a salad out of the deal, and although not a fan of green stuff ate most of it, only passing on the onions. Grant and I chose a pizza that was new to us for the evening, the chicken pesto with spinach and tomatoes. It’s a really good combination that I would definitely take again. So all in all, I would have to say that if they ever deserved those poor reviews they’ve definitely outgrown that phase.

After dinner we got to open a late wedding gift. I am always partial to late gifts as it is a good excuse to keep the original celebration going.

(Update 7/11/12: Sadly, we have learned that My Cousin Vinny’s shuttered in late June. We were speaking to Malika of Atlanta Restaurant Blog last night, and she remembered that when this place was on US-41 some years ago, it was always packed. We only ever saw it busy just one time after we discovered it in its Busbee Parkway home, and thought of it as just a quiet getaway. That, of course, probably isn’t what restaurants need to keep the lights on. Our best wishes to the owners and staff.)

OU for U Cafe, Dunwoody GA (CLOSED)

I first heard about OU for U Cafe several weeks ago, and was excited about having such a neat-sounding place available just a traffic light away from Marie’s job. Since I have a couple of short days each week, then, assuming she’s not trapped all day in meetings, I could take her to lunch somewhere in Dunwoody and get her back before her employer falls apart without her.

That might just happen when she takes maternity leave.

Despite a glowing review from Food Near Snellville, it was several weeks before Marie and I could get our schedules synched enough to have lunch together. It was certainly worth the wait; if there’s a better lunch place in this neighborhood, it’s news to me. There’s a Rising Roll Gourmet about a stone’s throw from OU for U, and it’s not a tenth as good as the delicious, kosher food in this deli.

(If, unlike me, you actually have a brain, the “OU” pun might have clued you into this being a kosher business. Me, I read that it was kosher, and I saw the name, but was somehow unable to connect the dots. Then again, it took me more than a decade to figure out why comics writer Pat Mills named a squabbling double-act “Ro-Jaws and Hammerstein.” Being married to a punster like Marie has not helped; it’s just made me close my eyes.)

Considering the suggestions made by other writers, I told Marie that both the egg salad and the falafel came recommended. That worked for her; she ordered the egg salad and a small cup of cream of mushroom soup. I thought the egg salad was pretty good but not extraordinary, but the soup was really excellent. My own lunch was sort of the inverse of hers; I had a tomato-and-stuff soup that was okay, and not nearly enough bread along with it. I should have gone with the lentil soup; everybody seems to be raving about it.

Now, that falafel on the other hand… let me tell you about this. For many years, I have told and retold the story of these unbelievable falafels that I used to get in Athens.

In the mid-nineties, there was a gentleman – I used to think he was from Turkey, but a part of me is saying that’s wrong – who came to Athens to clean house for his daughter while she was in a doctoral program at UGA. During the day, he rented a cart and started serving the sort of grub that he used to have back home from a little space on whatchacallit street, beneath Park and Leconte Halls and across from the P-J plaza, a discreet distance from the guy with the hot dog cart. I had a couple of pretty good sandwiches from him and then I tried his falafel and that was that. I had another falafel for lunch from this guy every single day for the rest of the quarter. Then the term ended, my work and class schedule became stupid, his daughter got her doctorate, and that was the end of the falafel cart.

OU for U didn’t serve me a falafel that good, but it was the first time in fifteen years that I’ve had a falafel come close enough to remind me of what I’ve missed. Alternating between a little extra chilled tahini from a squeeze bottle and some punch-packed hot sauce, this was a remarkable little sandwich. I would not mind another trip out that way at all.

In July 2012, OU’s owners, while still keeping kosher, elected to change their name and also changed the menu quite considerably. Now called Cafe Noga, they are no longer vegetarian.

Del Taco, Spartanburg SC (CLOSED)

Del Taco left the Atlanta market eight years ago and – no kidding – I have been missing it ever since. I have explained that I allow myself one locally-available fast food weakness, Krystal. If Del Taco were to move back into Atlanta, I’d enjoy one last styrofoam container of chili cheese fries eaten with a red plastic fork and sadly wave goodbye to Krystal, because I love Del Taco and that would be that. So when I learned that there was one in Spartanburg, my carefully-crafted seven-meal trip swelled to eight. There was just no way I was going to drive past a Del Taco without stopping. Man, was it ever good. Often times, almost all the time, the memory cheats on you, but Del Taco is, somehow, as good as I remember it. Continue reading “Del Taco, Spartanburg SC (CLOSED)” →

K Cafe, Alpharetta GA (CLOSED)

A few years ago, when I was a cubicle dweller in Alpharetta, I went out to lunch almost every day at one of the approximately seventeen thousand restaurants along Windward Parkway. Now, many people who enjoy talking and writing about food don’t really pay attention to this corridor, as you will find very few independently-owned restaurants, or examples of farm-to-table or sustainability or the latest foodie trends, or even anything with a very local flavor. This should not be surprising, because this is a lunchtime corridor for office workers like I was at the time. Area residents simply don’t come back to this strip for dinner time, meaning restaurants that want to try out here have to budget pretty closely and cross fingers for a lunch rush or die. The turnover in this area is absolutely brutal. I worked here for a little less than three years, and I bet the restaurant turnover was close to 20%.

Most of these are chains, of course, but what I have found incredibly interesting are the number of out-of-town chains that experiment with a store here first before trying elsewhere in the city. Some of these may be franchisees hoping to build into the Atlanta market or some might be company-owned and considering a footprint in Atlanta. There have been a couple of successes; I believe that the first Five Guys and Lenny’s Sub Shops in this region were on Windward. Z Pizza is still hanging on, with one of its two Atlanta locations here, and Tacone Flavor Grill, from California, has had its only Atlanta store here for about five years*. There have been several more fascinating failures. Apple Spice Junction, Taxi’s Hamburgers, Tin Star and Logan Farms are all out-of-towners who have tried to set up shop here on this stretch of road and bit the dust. If, like me, you are intrigued by regional chains, then there was usually something of interest on Windward to catch your eye. At least there was in 2006-2009, anyway.

Windward can’t even keep a barbecue place open. I was not surprised that the very popular Pig n’ Chik – not popular with me, mind you, but it has plenty of fans – closed its Windward store recently, as they might have opened in the single worst location in the history of real estate. Big D’s Barbecue, from up in Dawsonville, only had a location here for about eight months. Even One Star Ranch, at one time a baseball’s throw south of Windward on Highway 9, shuttered some weeks ago.

I had been intending for ages to see what was going on up at exit 11, but never got around to it. I did myself a huge disservice in not heading back that way, because the very best restaurant on Windward Parkway, the locally-owned Red Hen, closed in December. Now this place really was special, and they cooked up a really amazing hamburger, easily one of the best in the region. When I heard about that, I followed a link or two to the notice about the closure on a blog called Roots in Alpharetta. I enjoyed this blogger’s writing and continued to see what he had to say about the town where I used to work. There, I found something quite remarkable.

You know Krystal, right? The only local fast food place that I’ll eat, and don’t you judge me, right? Since October, they have been quietly, and without promotion, hype or commentary, testing a new “fast casual concept” on Windward Parkway, in the strip once occupied by a Carvel ice cream store. It is called K Cafe, and I just had to get back to my old stomping grounds and try this place.

I popped in on Thursday just after the lunch rush, and had a surprisingly tasty burger, but the most impressive things here were the service and the ketchup, which I am still loving and tasting. It might not last beyond the prototype stage, but the restaurant opened with an incredibly neat concept: ketchup of the month. Apart from your basic, “classic” ketchup, if you will, K Cafe is testing a rotation of different flavors to go along with it. This time out, it’s a chipotle ketchup which is just amazing, and goes very well with the fries. These, incidentally, proved to be the only minor disappointment of the meal. Basic cookie-cutter shoestring fries, these were not at all like the wonderfully chewy and potato-heavy fries you get at a Krystal. That chipotle ketchup would taste even better with those.

The service was first-rate. The girl at the register asked whether it was my first visit and showed off some of the sample foods prepared and resting in a refrigerated display case along with the desserts. K Cafe is not too different from a Panera or Rising Roll, just with burgers as well. They do a variety of sandwiches and salads, all of which have Moe’s-like silly names. She recommended their chicken salad, but I just wanted their basic burger. While they do serve traditional Krystals here if you want them, the patties on their proper burgers here are somewhat thicker, you’ll be glad to hear, and come fully dressed – with diced tomatoes, oddly – on ciabatta bread.

The other staffers who came by, including a manager who introduced himself, were similarly attentive and good-natured. I think that everybody is aware that this place is under a corporate microscope and under pressure to do well. With that in mind, Windward might prove to be a reasonable location for a place with this kind of menu. It really feels like a “lunch place,” something for quick, simple, tasty and inexpensive meals. Most of the sandwiches and burgers, which come with a side, cost about six bucks, so it’s perfectly reasonable and perfectly tasty. Plus there’s the wonderful novelty factor of trying someplace corporate-but-unique. If the concept fails (see below), I can still tell my grandkids about it, just like some folk can talk about those long extinct Kentucky Roast Beef stores that the Colonel once attempted.

Now, some no-frills restaurants are able to make the transition from junky fast food to something a little better. Whether Krystal has managed it won’t be for me to say; some corporate synergy bipartisan executive board steering committee will figure that out, but I think that it’s a success. On the other side of the equation, there’s the Taco Stand. I heard that this favorite from Athens had opened a store in Alpharetta, returning to this market after their Buckhead store closed a couple of football seasons ago, probably in anticipation of how badly the Bulldogs would end up playing. So I looked it up and swung by after finishing up at K Cafe, intending to grab a couple of two buck tacos and some chips and salsa. Heh.

The Taco Stand’s new place is three exits south, off Mansell Road, where restaurants usually live a little longer. Around North Point Parkway and the Old Alabama Road Connector, there are lots of homes, apartments and malls and movie theaters to keep families interested in the evenings, and so the restaurant turnover between exits 8 and 9 does not appear to be quite as murderous as on exit 11. I smiled broadly as I spotted the Taco Stand’s classic Milledge Avenue location’s lettering and pulled in. There was a car parked out front with the engine running as I snapped a couple of pictures. The driver, a twentysomething girl, was already waiting in the airlock at the host station of the Taco Stand for somebody to notice her.

If you figured that things were going to go spectacularly wrong at the point that I used the words “airlock,” “host station” and “Taco Stand” in the same sentence, you figured right. That evening, I was telling my family about my trip over a wonderful supper of lemon pepper chicken and rice that Marie had prepared. My son had already told me that he wanted to go check out this new Taco Stand. I got to this point in the anecdote, and when the words “host station” passed my lips, Marie visibly winced and my son’s head instantly fell, his chin hitting his chest.

So anyway, this girl and I waited for almost two minutes before somebody popped his head in from the dining room and asked “Uhhh, two?” The girl replied “I just need a to-go menu.” The fellow said that he’d be right back.

The dining room, classy, spotless, and perhaps a quarter full, looked so spectacularly unlike a Taco Stand that I started looking around for that Mr. Spock with the beard. There was a second door, perhaps to an eighteen-and-up smoking section with a bar. “This must be the upscale Taco Stand,” I said to the girl, who said that this place definitely needed to get its customer service together. She gave it one more minute and left. I learned later that the store’s grand opening was actually a couple of days off, and that they were just doing a soft opening to work out the kinks. I wish these guys the best of luck – I love the Stand – but I gave them one more minute and left as well. Losing two guests to an inattentive host – that’s the sort of kink that needs working out. Just as soon as you figure out what in the name of Herschel Walker a Taco Stand is doing with a host station in the first place.

*(2/26/11) Tacone evidently closed about three weeks after I wrote up this entry.

(8/3/11) Sadly, Krystal seems to have ended this experiment, and closed this prototype store at the end of July. They scrubbed the concept’s website and Facebook page almost instantly, suggesting that this experiment was not successful. What a shame!