Community Q BBQ, Decatur GA

So Community Q opened better than two years ago, and it’s taken me this long to check it out. The praise has not quite been unanimous – among others, Foodie Buddha was underwhelmed by it in December of ’09 – but enough of my fellow hobbyists have been clear in their praise that I figured it warranted a try, especially since my most recent barbecue trip had been pretty unsatisfying. Continue reading “Community Q BBQ, Decatur GA” →

Brick Store Pub, Decatur GA

For lunch a few Thursdays back, I treated myself with a little trip over to Decatur to finally check out Brick Store, a really nice pub that quietly boasts one of the most remarkable beer menus in the southeast. Well, the restaurant itself boasts quietly, and beer lovers rave from the rooftops. Between what’s on tap and what’s in bottles, there are something like 200 or more available here at any given time, rotating regularly. Even a lightweight like me who rarely drinks is in heaven here. There’s something at Brick Store for everybody.

When I lived in Athens, I would often drink at the downtown Mellow Mushroom, which was famous in town for its “Hundred Bottle Beer Club.” I was well on the way to making that century mark when one evening, a server decided to play a particularly ill-judged practical joke on our friend Matt that left him fuming. Electing solidarity with a justifiably outraged friend, I didn’t go back, but I had some fine evenings before then. I understand that Brick Store was opened by some former employees of that Mellow Mushroom who loved their place’s beer selection, although, in a pleasant surprise, the Athens pub that it most resembles is the lovely Globe. There are no TVs and no bad mass-produced beers. It opened in the summer of 1997 and has been racking up awards for its beer selection ever since.

The service here is genuinely first-rate. I was lucky to have an excellent server who settled my inability to choose between two beers by bringing me a taste of each. The imperial stout from Denver’s Great Divide Brewing that I sampled was indeed lovely, but I went with a Highlands oatmeal porter, from Asheville, as I had never had an oatmeal porter before. (My all-time favorite beer, incidentally, is Samuel Smith’s oatmeal stout.) The porter was completely delicious, and it went really well with my meal.

I enjoyed a simple burger, named “The Brick Burger” on the menu, and it was incredibly juicy and delicious. It came with some house-cut wedge fries, and I followed the suggestion of Dine With Dani, who advised getting a little cup of red pepper mayo on the side as a fry dip. It was so good.

For real beer aficionados, Brick Store is a definite destination. If you live anywhere in the southeast, you need to come see this place. For lightweights like me who’ve spent most of the last eleven or twelve years sober and start to get a little goofy after just one pint, it might not be quite so imperative to get down here, but with food this good and beer this wonderful, it is definitely worth a visit for a snack and something to drink whenever I’m around Decatur. I’ll definitely be back sometime soon.

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.)

Evans Fine Foods, Decatur GA (CLOSED)

Located on North Decatur Road in front of a Publix strip mall, Evans Fine Foods seems to have been here forever. I don’t know whether this was their original location – they opened in 1946 – but they’ve certainly been here as long as I can remember. They’re so easy to overlook that while I’ve been telling myself for many years that I should try them out, it wasn’t until this past week that I finally made myself stop in.

I knew nothing at all about Evans apart from a lingering sense of them being a little timelost. It’s very much an older-styled pay-at-the-counter diner and meat-and-two. It is visibly more popular with older customers than young folk. When I arrived for lunch, shortly after 11, the dining room was about half-full. Until a lady arrived with her grandchild, I was the youngest there.

Evans has a pretty small menu, but my server suggested I consider the specials instead. These are detailed on boards above the large open window separating the dining room from the kitchen, where you can easily see the frantic activity of the cooks. I chose the smothered chicken with sides of pinto beans and tomatoes and okra. It turned out to be the ugliest and least photogenic meal you ever saw, so I have not included a picture of it here. Flatly, you would never believe me if I told you it tasted good.

Honestly, the food really isn’t anything remarkable, but I was nevertheless taken with the gravy on the smothered chicken. It was a thick, yellow cream sauce that I quite enjoyed. It really called for more bread to sop it up than the restaurant serves. I had the cornbread, but they offer this as simple three-bite muffins. I probably could have used a couple of big biscuits.

It’s more than just the decor and the basic layout that suggests “timelost” as a good descriptor for Evans. A lot of these older-styled meat-and-twos taste similar because they use considerably more canned vegetables than fresh. That’s why there’s nothing remarkable about them. Still, the service was attentive and the staff was polite and it proved itself a fine little place to kick back and read Rex Stout for half an hour before I needed to move on. I can’t swear that I’m in a huge rush to return, but it’s nice to know that this business has been thriving for more than sixty years.

Taqueria del Sol, Decatur GA

Last weekend, Marie and our son took a trip back down to St. Simons Island to visit her family, and had a couple of good meals that she will tell you about presently. In their absence, my daughter and I joined David for a day of record selling – it’s like record shopping, only you come home with fewer things that you didn’t need in the first place and a little more money – and had a pretty good lunch at the Decatur location of Taqueria del Sol. I’ve been meaning to eat at one of these places for ages, and actually tried a couple of times but gave up for lack of parking, so I’m glad we finally got the chance.

We didn’t even have to stand in the line very long! This place is pretty infamous for its long line, but, as the Mendoza Line once sang, it moves quickly. Taqueria del Sol serves simple food very fast, so there’s never a long wait for your meal. I figure that’s how they know who ordered what without giving your table a number or card for the server to find you. In the time it takes you to order your food and get your water and silverware and sit down, your food’s almost finished being prepared, so the server maybe only has two or possibly three different tables which could be the destination.

I genuinely do not care at all about reporting news about which fancy restaurant is employing which big-name chef, and my eyes glaze over whenever I see such business in blogs, but in this case it is worth a mention. Taqueria del Sol’s menu was devised by a guy named Eddie Hernandez. Once upon a time, he was in charge of the food at a wonderful place called Sundown Cafe on Cheshire Bridge Road where I never ate enough. I’m happy to note that the food is very similar at the taqueria, which was devised as sort of a quickie kid sister to Sundown and eventually took it over. The table salsa – available as a separately-priced Salsa Trio on the taqueria’s menu – seems to be the same, for starters.

Mr. Hernandez never really stops experimenting, so there’s apparently always something neat to try here. Sundown Cafe was known for having wonderfully eclectic and fun specials, and this tradition carries on here. Last week, they were offering tacos with the chicken fried in a potato crust, and I found these to be very tasty. I had one of those along with a fish taco and a “Memphis” (pork and slaw, natch). The tacos are very tasty, served quickly and cost only two bucks and change each. If it wasn’t for the line, you could call it fast food, really. Skip the chips and salsa and you’ve got a fine meal for seven dollars.

Taqueria del Sol has expanded to a small chain with four locations: the one we visited in Decatur, which is across the street from Farm Burger and one of our town’s best record stores, Decatur CD, the original on Cheshire Bridge, one on Howell Mill and one on Prince Avenue in Athens. It’s certainly worth another visit soon; I have more tacos to try.

Other blog posts about Taqueria del Sol:

Adventurous Tastes (Aug. 7 2008)
Amy on Food (May 1 2009)
Food Near Snellville (July 10 2009)
Foodie Buddha (Sep. 18 2009)

Farm Burger, Decatur GA

This is Marie, whose usual contribution to the blog is to order something my husband didn’t so he can get menu envy, or to describe some experiment that made it to the dinner table and turned out well. This time I am departing from tradition to describe our pre-anniversary dinner at Farm Burger, a locally owned burger joint that uses meat from animals that didn’t spend their lives in a box or being force-fed things they probably wouldn’t eat otherwise. We found out about the place from an AJC review, and from David, who gave us a glowing recommendation.

Now, regarding how animals were treated before coming to the table, I am quite willing to spend three times as much on animal products from humane sources. Farmer’s market eggs are a particularly good example, because they taste so much better than the plastic they sell in egg cartons at the grocery store. In this case, however, this good quality stuff is fairly comparable in price to the midrange ordinary. It was about $16 for the two of us to have a burger each and a nice-sized bucket of fries to share. How great is that?

The place was busy when we got there Saturday night around 8. All the tables full and only a couple of seats free along the side bar. We only waited about ten minutes to get to the counter and entertained ourselves by inspecting the menu, which contained topping options such as arugula and bone marrow along with the usual suspects–except ketchup. You can get that at the table, but it is not something they appear to believe ought to be on a burger. The ladies ahead of us in line asked the cashier if it was always this busy, and were told that this was slow.

After admitting this was our first time, we were asked about our doneness preferences and medium was suggested. This is something I’d read in comments before about grass-fed burgers–that you can’t let them get too done or they lose the special something that makes them so great. There was a table outside sitting empty when we carried our drinks and order number away to find a seat, and it was lovely weather so we braved the risk of smokers to enjoy the fresh air.

The food arrived quite promptly in little wire baskets lined with brown paper, and the fries were in a little tin bucket of the type that usually contains a mosquito repellent candle, also lined with brown paper. My burger had cheese and tomato, and Grant got one with tomatoes, red onions, chipotle mayo and mustard which he says was wonderful. (The general consensus is that despite the full menu of wild toppings, it is very easy to overwhelm the flavor of this beef, and keeping it simple is probably the ideal way to do it.)

They’re lower in fat than feedlot beef, although you’d never know it, as they were also incredibly juicy. That first bite was just wonderful. The rest were, too, but we’d had a steak recently that was pretty decent, and it didn’t have as much flavor as this burger did. And they were more filling, too.

We have a favored local burger joint whose meat patties are as large and whose buns are more substantial, and who have much bigger fries portions, but the meals we eat there aren’t as filling as these Farm Burger selections. Maybe it was that we’d had a substantial lunch that day, but I like to think that the food tasted so good it slowed us down, made us savor it more, and was as a result just more intrinsically satisfying. We’ll definitely be going back.

(Update): In 2011, Farm Burger opened a second location in Buckhead. With our baby in tow, we stopped by this location a week before Christmas, confirming that these are among the best burgers in the city. They are certainly Marie’s favorite. They’re in the strip mall across from the Disco Kroger, downstairs from a Ru San’s.

Pictured is a daily special, a beef burger with pepper jack cheese, mustard greens, tomatoes, fried onions and FB sauce, along with a pile of very good fries buried under garlic and parmesan. Marie had her burger with beets, goat cheese and arugula. The food, the service and even the music were all excellent. Marie really enjoyed being introduced to a singer named Mike Snow. We really do like this place a heck of a lot.

Other blog posts, among many, about Farm Burger:

The Blissful Glutton (May 14 2010)
Food Near Snellville (May 18 2010)
The Food and Me (Aug. 22 2010)
A Hamburger Today (Aug. 26 2010)
Some Foodie Asshole (Jan. 13 2011)
Eat it, Atlanta (Feb. 15 2012)