Happy Sumo, Norcross GA

One huge difficulty in doing anything around the sprawling mess of Atlanta is that the suburbs are so stupidly spread out and badly managed and maintained. Even something that looks, on a map, simple and straightforward like a twenty-mile shot east to the Gwinnett County suburb of Norcross is a forty-minute slog at the best of times, and better than an hour’s rumble in the evening traffic. I don’t mention this to object in any way to making a trip out that direction to a good meal; far from it, as there are plenty of good restaurants in Duluth, Norcross and points east and I’m glad to go visit them, but man, the traffic engineers who’ve been claiming to be at work on this job have been out to lunch for decades. At this point, there’s nothing wrong with the northern suburbs that two trolleys, twelve people movers, six newly-constructed bus lanes, sixty miles of north-south and east-west heavy-rail track and that big drilling Mole machine from Thunderbirds wouldn’t fix. You heard about that “Big Dig” under Boston? The northern ‘burbs need about seven of those.

At any rate, I’ve mentioned that we try to have some weekly get-together with some of our friends. We have to alternate days to accommodate different people that we know, and last week, between people being sick and people planning weddings and people having jobs, it was only Marie and the girlchild and I who were able to meet up with Matt. Almost all of us live in Cobb County on the northwest side of town; Matt and his wife live up in Gainesville, but he works thirty-odd miles south down around Johns Creek. His commute isn’t that unusual, either, which is why it’s so disagreeable that the city’s traffic planners have spent decades sleeping. Anyway, with the interstates, particularly the top end perimeter, a parking lot at 6 pm, we drove a wonderful back way that I know over to Roswell, and then spent a while crawling east along Holcomb Bridge Road to meet Matt at a place that he knows called Happy Sumo. Matt used to live just around the corner before marriage lured him to Gainesville, and this was one of his favorite places for dinner when he stayed here in Norcross.

Holcomb Bridge, it must be said, really is a depressing drive just for all the businesses that used to be along this stretch of road but have since closed. I counted two comic shops, one bookstore and one CD store that aren’t there anymore, along with two decent restaurants that I had enjoyed. To be honest, I’d rather not find the need to revisit Holcomb Bridge for this reason alone; it’s just too sad.

Happy Sumo is one of Atlanta’s many teppanyaki restaurants. These are often called hibachi steakhouses, but that’s not strictly accurate. At a teppanyaki restaurant, as popularized by chains like Benihana, the chef prepares the meal on a flat, iron surface heated by propane and uses soybean oil to cook the ingredients. We don’t often get out to Japanese steakhouses like this, although I don’t know that I’ve ever had a mediocre meal at one.

We got the requisite cutting up from our chef, who spun his utensils around and made an onion volcano and did goofy stunts involving Easter eggs and rubber chickens. It’s impossible not to be charmed by the silliness, and it put the girlchild in a pretty good mood.

Marie and I each ordered the teriyaki steak with fried rice – watch out for an additional $2 for having your rice fried rather than steamed – and my daughter had chicken. Matt had a nice combo meal of filet mignon and shrimp. It was a little pricy of a dinner, but everybody really enjoyed their food, and the tasty sauces. It was almost as good as Inoko in Athens, which is my standard bearer for hibachi/teppanyaki, and just the sort of evening out we needed.

The drive back, incidentally, was after the evening rush had ended and the interstates were accessible again. It didn’t take anywhere near as long to get home, but I still think International Rescue’s big drill could make it even quicker.

Hillside Orchard Farms, Tiger GA

There’s one other little place – so far – that Marie and I love to visit up in Rabun County, although I’m sad to say that this one tries my daughter’s patience just a little. Between Tallulah Falls and Clayton, there’s apparently a little town called Tiger. We haven’t found the town itself – it’s allegedly a stop sign and a post office somewhere along Old US 441 – but a few miles south of where that town is said to be, in an unincorporated community called Lakemont, you can find just about the best roadside jam-n-cider operation I’ve ever discovered. There are a few signs, but it’s still easy to miss. It’s called Hillside Orchard Farms, and if you’re driving north from Tallulah Falls up US 23, look for the signs and you’ll turn to the left and then make an immediate right and go about half a mile.

I think I like this place so much not just because of the quality of the canned and bottled treats, which I’ll get to in just a moment, but because of its isolation and ever-so-brief feeling of peace and absolute tranquility. It’s a very old-fashioned tourist stop, the sort that I imagine might have been common in the pre-interstate days. Apart from the sales room, there is a small restaurant which we have not tried yet, a cornfield maze, a nice little walk up to a petting zoo, a lazy little river that borders the property, and a “gold mine” for the kiddies complete with a little prospector mannequin. In the fall, there are some additional stands where locals sell some arts and crafts and occasionally, like this past Saturday, a bluegrass band plays for the visitors. If you think that there’s anything nicer than sitting back on one of the last warm weekends of the year enjoying some beautiful scenery and bluegrass in Marie’s company, you’d be mistaken.

All of this, however, bores my daughter silly. Well, she is only eleven.

Let’s be fair; plenty of roadside stands have jars of jams and preserves that have suspiciously similar and cautiously-worded labels about how they’re specially bottled for the operation in question. Short of an interrogation, you’re probably not going to know exactly for sure whether the bottle of “vidalia onion steak sauce” you can buy at A. Schwab’s in Memphis is all that different from the bottle whose label uses the same wording and the same font that you can buy at Hot Thomas in Watkinsville. It amuses me to think that there’s some outfit that makes house brand sauces for big grocery store chains four days a week, and then changes the packaging on Friday to ship out to all the roadside stands to con tourists.

I can’t speak for everything in Hillside Orchard’s inventory, but I do know for sure, now that I’ve seen it, that they do have a large canning and bottling facility about another half-mile up the road. And their sales room is sitting on a pretty big plot of farmland, so I’m comfortable believing that a fair chunk of their products are, genuinely, locally-made. Now maybe that “vidalia onion steak sauce” with that tan label and italic font isn’t, but when you’ve got a place offering all these fresh apples and other fruits along with bottles of these amazing ciders, I choose to believe the best.

The jams and preserves are all completely wonderful. We’ve tried quite a few as spreads for biscuits and loved every one. We have also tried a few of Hillside Orchard’s ciders and enjoy the spiced apple and the peach very much. My favorite, however, is the muscadine cider. A half-gallon of that is absolutely worth six bucks, but every once in a while, we have lucked on an inventory clearance and got a big bottle for three. I did kind of frustrate myself on the drive home, though, when I realized that I had intended to pick up a bottle of strawberry cider and give that a try, but plain forgot.

Fortunately, we’ll be going to Asheville again this month and will be driving right through this neck of the woods. I’m awfully curious about that strawberry cider. I wonder whether it might still be on sale?

Oinkers, Clayton GA

The first time that we went up to hike at Tallulah Gorge a few years ago, we dragged our exhausted carcasses back to the visitors’ center and asked where we could get some good barbecue in the area. The nice lady at the gift shop didn’t skip a beat. “It’s about ten miles up the road,” she said. “Do you mind the drive?” Y’all have probably figured out that I certainly don’t object to a fifteen minute trip for good barbecue.

Going north from Tallulah Gorge, where we try to visit about twice a year, Oinkers is on the right a couple of miles after that new-looking overpass that they built for the Rabun County High School. It’s pretty easy to miss; if you make it into the morass of fast-food chain restaurants of downtown Clayton, you went too far. We’ve come to Oinkers three times now, and each time enjoyed a good Saturday lunch with an absolutely packed house and a parking lot where about half the cars sport Rabun plates and half are from out of town. US 23 runs from I-40 and the Great Smokey Mountains Expressway, near Asheville, through Atlanta and to points down south, so it’s a perfect artery for travelers looking to enjoy the fall colors. In fact, we’ll double-check the mileage later this month, but Oinkers seems to be right around the halfway point between our place in Marietta and the city of Asheville.

Locals and travelers alike have learned that this is a lunchtime destination, and arrive in bulk. There is always a wait, even when it rains, as it did on us about a year ago, and then you have to worry about them running out of food. Well, maybe you don’t have to worry, but I’ve never seen a place that posts quite so many notices about how they only prepare enough food as they think they might need on any given day, and might run out. Evidently, this was once a problem, and so they’ve tried to get the word out that it doesn’t matter how much people might want to eat here, the restaurant might well get overwhelmed.

Oinkers’ specialty is chopped pork with vinegar sauce, but this is definitely a sauce that novices to Carolina-style vinegar need to sample sparingly. Fortunately, for people like Marie who prefer their sauce tomato-based, they also offer a “sweet sauce,” thick and tasty with molasses. Me, I like the hot vinegar sauce, which packs a very nice, peppery punch.

After our most recent trip to Tallulah Gorge last week, we settled on having two small meals. I wanted to revisit the wonderful Hawg Wild down south in Clarkesville, but I also wanted to talk about Oinkers, so we resolved to do both. Oinkers was, as usual, completely packed, and so the staff kindly sat us at the servers’ table.

Between the three of us, we had a sandwich and a plate of chopped pork, along with some fries, stew, baked beans and applesauce, with a slice of peanut butter pie. My daughter and I agreed that the pie needed a tall glass of milk, but that was about the only complaint we could levy against the “snack.” Between authentic and interesting food and service which somehow finds a way to be attentive despite a madhouse of customers, Oinkers has carved out a niche as a local favorite, and if you’re planning to take US 23 up to Asheville from Atlanta, you will quickly find this a very agreeable halfway point.

Mallery Street Cafe, Saint Simons Island GA

This is Marie, contributing another small chapter about a place on St. Simons Island called Mallery Street Cafe. It’s brand new and has no history whatsoever; I don’t even recall having seen it the last time we came down to visit. It’s in the same location as a former CD and tape shop where as a teenager I used to spend what little of my allowance used to be left after the purchase of books and candy; in one of the shops that came in succession after that one, my sister bought altogether too much incense and smelly candles. Its current incarnation is much cuter than either, but not too much so. Continue reading “Mallery Street Cafe, Saint Simons Island GA” →

Shish Kebab, Marietta GA

Last week, it was Marie’s turn to pick a place for one of our weekly get-togethers, and she found a little restaurant in the shadow of Marietta’s infamous Big Chicken which people probably drive right past without blinking. It’s called Shish Kebab and it’s set up in what looks like an old Pizza Hut or some other ’70s-fashioned place. You see a lot of this in the area; one of these days I need to go back to Don Taco, which is a very good Mexican restaurant built into an old Hardee’s*.

David and Neal got to Shish Kebab before us. I had funny work stories to share and my daughter was impressing us by being awesomely eighties, and we settled in for some very good meals.

It’s not mentioned on the menu, but it looks like all dinner guests here get a small tossed salad. Had I known that, I probably would not have also asked for a Shirazi salad. This was a blend of diced tomatoes, cucumbers and onions with olives and lemon juice. David had an appetizer called kashk-o-badmjan, which was eggplant and mint with dried yogurt, along with a small order of seven spices, which was a cup of pickled vegetables served with a very tasty blend of spices, by design so strong that the taste of the spices overpowered the vegetables.

David and my daughter each ordered chicken barg. Asked for the difference between a basic kebab and a barg, the owner explained that they were different cuts of meat, prepared in a different marinade. They also got a slightly different selection of vegetables; Marie and Neal each had kebabs – lamb and beef – and theirs did not come with mushrooms. I happily ate up my daughter’s. They were prepared in a wonderful blend of oils that brought out so much flavor; I could eat those with every meal.

As for me, I was really only peckish enough for a sandwich, and so I had a gyro. It was very good, and really, the only step this place did wrong this evening was to serve it with a bag of Frito-Lay chips. They’ve done such a good job turning this restaurant’s interior into something fairly classy and nice, and they serve such good food and present it so well, and then they give you bags of Frito-Lay? Well, the gyro meat was very good, and supplemented with some of Marie’s excellent lamb and my daughter’s mushrooms, I was very happy with my supper.

We were invited to return for their big Saturday supper shindig, but we had plans already. That said, the prospect of a buffet with food this good and the entertainment of belly dancing really did sound tempting! Hopefully it was a big success for them and they’ll host these more often.

*Or not. Don Taco apparently closed several months ago.

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Hollie Guacamole!, Marietta GA (CLOSED)

I certainly enjoy having the small audience that Marie and I have, but sometimes I think that I’ll do a lot better by y’all once we get a book deal, an expense account and a secretary. Okay, so I’m not really counting on these things, but I bet that if we did have a secretary, then they would have pointed out a remarkable oversight that I made long before now. Back in May, I happened to spot the sign for a new burrito place in downtown Marietta, and resolved to stop in as soon as possible. About a week later, I wandered over there, hungry for such a meal, and was surprised to learn they were still about a week away from opening. I ended up driving to the Chilito’s in Kennesaw instead to get my fix and wrote them up instead. I promptly forgot that the burrito place on the square ever existed until I remembered out of the blue more than five months later. I’m serious; the place fell into a black hole of memory.

My plans for this past Wednesday got juggled around, so, having only remembered that “that burrito place” existed about 48 hours previously, I took advantage of the chance to swing by and see whether they ever opened up. I had to drive to do it, because I couldn’t remember the name, and Google couldn’t help me find the place. Now that I know the name, Google’s still not much help, because the owners have not done much of anything to let the world that they’ve been here for five months. Not even the phone company can track these people down. I’m not sure whether this might be incompetence or somebody’s very clever plan to make customers really work to find the place. But they seriously are there. Look, photographic evidence:

Okay, so let’s get one thing out of the way: that’s a really terrible name for a restaurant. All I could remember about it, once I remembered that “a burrito place on the square” existed at all, was “I think that it had some wacky name.” Amusingly, the owner had his own take on it. I asked of the couple whether one of them was “Hollie,” and he admitted that just about everybody asks that. As for why it’s spelled that way, he said he wanted something memorable. Didn’t work with me, I’m afraid.

Much like the many “fast casual” burrito places in the city, this is a build-to-order place with the ingredients on the other side of the sneeze guard and assembled per your specifications. I had the daily lunch special, which is your choice of a burrito, chips and a canned soda for six bucks. The guacamole is an additional eighty cents, but I have to tell you, it’s easily worth that. All of the ingredients of my “bowl” burrito were very tasty, particularly the fresh jalapenos, but that guac was outstanding. I highly recommend everybody give this recipe a try. While thinner, and more like a dressing than a dip, it’s actually about as good as Bone Garden’s, which has my favorite in the city.

The restaurant seems to get a pretty good crush of business from government workers during the lunch hour. I arrived at 11.30 and had the small space to myself for a few minutes before the county clerks, attorneys and deputies filed in and took up all of the handful of tables. I took from the sort of noncommital way that the owner answered when I asked how business was that as of now, Hollie Guacamole! is dependent on doing a lot of noon to one business to stay afloat, and that they haven’t been able to turn their place into a big word of mouth destination. Places on the square have always seemed to me to have a lot of trouble turning themselves into something that the public wants to search for. I’m not sure what this place is doing wrong, but when a Google search for: “hollie guacamole” marietta turns up (today) exactly five entries and three of those are echoes from one gentleman’s Twitter feed, I can only conclude that there are a hell of a lot of people missing out on this very tasty guacamole and the friendly owners. And the Lime Crush, the soda that I’ve been enjoying the most for the last several weeks.

And this is after five months. I won’t swear that I’m incredibly optimistic that they’ll make it another five at this rate, and that’s a shame*.

*They did better than I expected, but not good enough, making it to June of 2012 before the “Now Leasing” sign appeared in the window. Better luck next time, guys.

Desi Spice, Atlanta GA

It was with a heavy heart that we bid farewell to Roswell’s Moksha, which had been my favorite Indian restaurant in the Atlanta area. Well, now I’m on the lookout for something to claim its former crown, and that is going to mean eating as much Indian food as the wallet will allow. I’ll try and rise to the challenge.

Well, I exaggerate. I really don’t get out for Indian all that often, and still miss that wonderful vegetarian place in Decatur with the no-frills approach and styrofoam plates. But I’m certainly happy to keep my eyes open for something new and very tasty, and this past weekend, with Marie out of town again, I asked David whether he was free to find some grub for a Saturday lunch. The restaurant was his idea; left to me, we might have gone down to Jackson or over to Covington or someplace to fill up some of the list I’m trying to do. No matter; I am perfectly happy to stay in town and have some Indian food. There was only one obstacle: my daughter. It took this girl almost a decade to admit to liking Brunswick stew, so it’s evident that Indian cuisine is simply going to take a little longer.

I was mostly very pleased with my meal. They offer a nicely-priced lunch menu, even on Saturdays, which gets you a small appetizer, rice and dessert along with your main course. I had some mulligatawny soup with my lamb curry. I honestly won’t say that was the best lamb that I’ve ever tried, feeling a little stringier than I prefer, but the sauce was a delicious, medium hot concoction, and I liked that better than many other curries that I’ve had before. The mulligatawny had a delightful zing of ginger with its kick, but the color – a vibrant red – completely surprised me. I’ve always seen it as a yellowy orange.

Instead of soup, David had an onion pakura that he said was wonderful, and an order of chicken tikka which he shared. Much as I liked the curry, I got menu envy again, because this chicken was prepared just perfectly. It was tender and juicy and the light green sauce that came with it proved a nice, if unnecessary, accompaniment. Our desserts were the small bowl of wonderful rice pudding that I ordered, and a dish new to me, gulab jamun, a deep-fried cheese ball dipped in honey. As David felt that his blood sugar was already through the roof on Saturday, he passed that to me and darn if I haven’t found a dessert on Indian restaurant menus that I enjoy even more than rice pudding.

Well, Desi Spice is certainly very tasty indeed, and the girlchild definitely missed out by only agreeing to a stuffed paratha before decamping for the little Rita’s Italian Ice stand down below the restaurant, which was once a Bruster’s. It’s in the shopping center with the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema and the Trader Joe’s. If there was only a nice trail connecting this strip mall on Monroe with the one behind it on Ponce with the Borders, then you could easily spend all afternoon here, shopping, reading, watching good movies and having a few good meals. There are a heck of a lot of decent restaurants in the neighborhood, plus a couple that I’ve been hoping to try.

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