Kitsch’n 155, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

I first read about Kitsch’n 155 back in the summer when the excellent Tomorrow’s News Today blog did a really encouraging preview of the place. I don’t have quite the love of silly ’60s kitsch that I once did – Marie and I, finding less of value in possessions of late, seem to be decluttering down to a zero point of stark austerity to compensate for the unbelievable clutter that comes with a baby – but certain design elements of this retro style are still incredibly appealing. I love clocks and ceiling fixtures with all those silly antenna-like appendages, and the jaunty “kitsch” font – I’m not sure what it is called – that invariably accompanies photo books about the silly 1950s and 1960s found objects that inform the style.

In their report, Tomorrow’s News Today also linked to a favorite site of mine, Not Fooling Anybody, a glorious site that has been promising updates for ages and ages. It’s become so much a part of our road tripping vocabulary that whenever we see a distinctive, vintage fast food building that has been retrofitted to become some other business, we point it out and say “Not fooling anybody!” One fantastic example, just down the road from us, is Dive Shop on Sandy Plains Road, which clearly used to be a Taco Bell. It’s actually about three doors down from a former Del Taco, known to area residents in the late ’80s as “The Murder Del Taco,” which later became a breakfast and meat-and-three place called Joyful Diner. We were sad to see that diner close.

I mention this because owners Randy and Lisa Stewart, serendipity on their side, found a terrific location for their restaurant. It’s the former Athens Pizza Express on Clairmont, which, of course, used to be an Arby’s. A lot of garish paint later, and they are cooking up some mean burgers. Ten essential Atlanta burger joints. Does that sound like a good chapter for a first-of-the-month entry? Maybe in January.

David had driven past this place a few months back and thought, correctly, that I’d like to see it. He and I actually had other lunch plans a couple of Thursdays back, but we were over at the Book Nook on North Druid Hills and I suggested we stop by and try this place instead. The goal here is classic American comfort food, done extremely well. They’re doing all the expected things like getting their meat from local farmers (Coleman and Creekstone) and cutting their fries fresh. Nevertheless, I mused, as we were waiting for our orders, that I probably should have ordered the day’s special, which was cod with two sides. Priced at $9.50, it’s a better value than a cheeseburger with just one side. That was before I had a bite of the cheeseburger, which was even better than I thought it could be. Marie needs to try one of these; I’m not sure that they aren’t even better than Farm Burger.

David had the grown-up grilled cheese, served with bacon, tomatoes and onions, and said that it was quite good. He also had a cup of chili which was better than any chili that I’ve sampled in ages. I really liked the touch of adding fresh jalapenos for maximum punch. I declined to ask them to add jalapenos to my burger, incorrectly thinking that they’d just be the far less tasty canned ones. David figured that he’d rather pass on the peppers once he saw them on his chili and asked whether I wanted them. Despite my burger being a gigantic, sloppy mess already, I found room.

The one sour note was the extremely high prices for bottled sodas and, in turn, ice cream drinks. After already spending $10 for a burger and fries, $2.50’s just feels far too much to pay for a bottle of Red Rock or Cheerwine, although, sadly, a few days later, I ran into another new restaurant that charges even more for a glass bottle of a small-market soda. I did think about getting a float when I finished and had a bit of a sweet tooth, but I couldn’t justify the cost. For five bucks, I could make many Cheerwine floats at home.

Fortunately, David had a mind to spend some money at Wuxtry, and there was a coffee shop right next door. I found my dessert – an iced cookies and cream frappe, served with an Oreo – and was perfectly pleased to enjoy something that I can’t make at home, for about a dollar less. ChocoLaté Coffee reminds me in the best possible way of Jittery Joe’s in Athens, with lots of comfortable couches and a wonderful, relaxed vibe with friendly servers having a great time at work. Certainly a fine day’s outing, I think.

Pino Gelato and Sugar Cakes, Marietta GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about a fun little trip to the Marietta square with the kids. With desserts, of course. I was actually in the mood for cakes and tea, but unfortunately the place I would have gone, which, hopefully, I will get to write about later, was not available since they are closed on Sunday.

I mention that tea shop because it is very likely we would not have gone for gelato if I hadn’t wanted to check out the other place. I could have sworn the restaurant was open, but it turns out that was just the antique store connected to the place. Pino Gelato shares the building as well. It is really an all-purpose sort of place – get cakes and tea, do a little shopping, and then close with ice cream. In our case, however, we just got the gelato. We were the only customers, since it was a slightly chilly day, but the server was helpful and pleasant. There are a dozen or so locations for this small chain, many tucked into other businesses or places like airports, but there are some stand-alone locations.

After starting out our day with dessert, we went to get lunch at Sugar Cakes. On the way we found that the Farmer’s Market that usually populates the Marietta Square on Saturdays was also present, though in somewhat more compact size, on Sunday; I mention this because I got some tea after all! There was a vendor with samples of his products, and I wound up buying a really tasty chamomile-rooibos-mint blend.

Sugar Cakes was incredibly crowded, with diners spilling out into the tables on the sidewalk and a line out the door. Despite the demand, the staff somehow managed not to to seem harried or impatient. However, due to the noise and the lack of outside tables I did decide that we should take our food home rather than subject the baby to such massive overstimulation.

As a result, I have no photos of what we ate, such as the really flavorful and decadent tomato soup, so have a look at these delectable baked goods instead. I definitely plan to eat some of them when I am back on dairy and can have something with that much butter in the dough! A slice of the quiche that some of the other diners appeared to be enjoying tremendously wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Bloggers Invade the Buckhead Diner

A couple of weeks ago, Marie and I finally got to put some faces to some names and meet a few of our fellow hobbyists. We were invited to join a little gang called the Atlanta Food Bloggers Society – you’ve probably seen the little “plate” icon on the sidebar to your right by now – and the launch party for the group was held at the venerable Buckhead Diner, in conjunction with some new menu items that they have rolled out. Well, there is one face that we knew ahead of time; we’ve known Rebecca Mendelsohn of Atlanta Foodies, who organized this group, for a few months in our “civilian” identities before we realized that we were each bloggers. Also present that afternoon: Amy on Food, Atlanta Restaurant Blog, The Blissful Glutton, Fiddlehead Foraging and The Food and Me. All we needed was for me to pretend to be dead and everybody else could have played an awesome game of How To Host a Murder.

We met at the Diner, which I recall opening with great hoopla in 1987, because its owners, the Buckhead Life Group, wanted a chance to show off some of its new menu offerings from the new executive chef, Charles Schwab. I confess that I felt a moment’s pause about offering a “review” of the goodies that we tried, as just about every chapter that we’ve written here has been written from the perspective of us, anonymously, enjoying, and paying for, a good meal at someplace that we would like to share with our readers. I trust that our readers will understand that on this occasion, we were invited under the purview of a small social media event to greet the chef and representatives of Buckhead Life Group for a complementary presentation of the new concoctions on their menu, specifically to get the word out to our readers. I can’t, therefore, “review” the restaurant, whose sterling reputation has been speaking for itself since I was in high school anyway, as the experience was not at all like what regular diners will experience.

With that in mind, they started us off with some white truffle deviled eggs before giving us some pimento cheese-filled hush puppies that they termed “fritters.” I really lucked out here, as Marie’s nursing-mandated avoidance of dairy meant that I got her fritters. They then brought out “day boats” of ceviche, made from rotating recipes, served with plantain and sweet potato chips. The ceviche that we enjoyed included shrimp, calamari and small scallops. It was followed by a plate of spicy tempura shrimp, and that was followed by a pizza, made with a very thin crust and pesto sauce, then a Cobb salad, pecan-encrusted Maine cod, an entree of turkey jardiniere, and finally a renowned and decadent – I am definitely using that word far too frequently to describe desserts, but I mean it here – white chocolate banana cream pie.

The tempura rock shrimp was my personal favorite of the selections.

The Cobb salad, however, was possibly the consensus favorite of the group.

The turkey jardiniere is served underneath a salad of its own, with tomatoes, arugula, radishes and potatoes, with a lemon vinaigrette drizzle.

I’ll tell you honestly, there was not one thing that I disliked. They have put together a splendid menu – it is a pricey one, mind – of some incredibly tasty things, and if they did so knowing that any misstep could be magnified and communicated to readers who might (in my experience) blow things further out of proportion, then so be it. They didn’t make any missteps. Possibly the least interesting thing among the treats they provided was the pizza, but it was still exponentially superior to plenty of other pizzas in town.

I enjoyed the tempura shrimp best, followed by the turkey dish, and then probably the pimento cheese fritters. They really balanced the spice of the shrimp quite perfectly. It had a kick without lingering, but was the most pleasant possible kick. The turkey was utterly unlike the dry meat that I typically dislike. It was moist and juicy and exciting, and served with a splendid complement of veggies that I would never have guessed would go so well with it. These little paper-thin radishes, of all things, just went perfectly with it.

The Cobb salad seemed to be the overall favorite of the table, and I wouldn’t say that anybody was wrong for loving it. This has to have been one of the freshest salads that I’ve ever had; every vegetable tasted like it was picked that morning, with the avocado in particular just electrifyingly vibrant. The blue cheese – apparently Point Reyes blue rather than the Diner’s popular and famous Maytag blue – was probably my favorite thing in it, though. I could have had a heaping spoonful of that cheese.

We thanked our hosts at the Diner for showing off their treats and enjoyed sharing a little shop talk with each other. The Blissful Glutton, whose blog has sadly been a little dormant while she has been working as the editor of Eater Atlanta, has probably been doing this longer than anybody else in town, but she still has a lot of passion for good meals. That’s reassuring; we have all seen some good food blogs dry up and blow away as their writers lose interest. This was a very positive afternoon. We all have blogs that we enjoy reading, and restaurants that we love to visit, and everybody wanted to talk about engaging writers and good places to eat, without dwelling on the bad. I suppose, when a hobby remains as, sensibly, unorganized as ours, there’s really no opportunity for drama unless you just want to be a diva and call other people out for daring to disagree with you about a restaurant. Life’s just better, though, when you’re pleasant.

We touched on the curious alchemy of Urbanspoon rankings, a subject near and dear to my heart, what with so many restaurants that I’ve visited proving so colossally unpopular, unhip and uncool that I’d have to post about two thousand trips to Frankie & Johnny’s to have the same statistical impact as a single visit to Fogo de Chao. On that note, I have tried, without much success, to invite some other writers whose blogs that I enjoy to join Urbanspoon and start enjoying the benefits of the spoonback linking. It brings a good deal more traffic to our blog, and I enjoy seeing how my chief peers and I move up and down the rankings. Of course, many of these sites that I enjoy most – Buster’s BBQ Blog, Chopped Onion, Where’s the Best BBQ? – detail older roadfood and rural places, and not on the more intown trendy joints – like Buckhead Diner – that get you higher up the big city rankings, but it sure would be easier to follow good blogs like them were they in my Urbanspoon news feed.

Leslie, of The Food and Me, hoped that the rest of us might offer suggestions about prompting more comments from her readers. Short of going negative, we were all stumped, noting that pretty much the only time that any of us can reliably expect comments of any sort is when we tick off a restaurant’s owner. Or his sockpuppets. I think that we would all like more interaction with our readers, though. Sometimes, I wonder how Marie and I managed to pick up so darn many of you. Drop us a line once in a while; let us know how we’re doing. All of us!

Red Queen Tarts

This is Marie, contributing a tiny little article about a tiny little treat – pop tarts. Sort of, anyway. You know that my articles are mainly about dessert, right?

Well, despite my unfortunate weakness for artificial grape flavoring and seasonal sugar bombs like candy corn, I’m not really a big fan of toaster pastries that come in cardboard with silver wrappers around them. They smell like chemicals to me. I have been known to buy them for the fans in my household, and then flee with my nose pinched shut when the odor of toasted pop tart wafts through the kitchen.

So, what am I doing writing about them? Well, this article is more about pop tarts as they would be if we lived in a world where there actually were little elves who baked for the sheer pleasure of feeding people, so you could get stuff from the grocery store that had as much love in the making as the treats you swiped off of Grandma’s cooling racks on visits to her kitchen. I mean, look at these. If you opened cardboard box and took out a silver foil package and found this inside, you’d just have to believe in elves, right?

These cute little treats are a labor of love by Candice Reynolds, a.k.a. The Red Queen. She shares my opinion that the truly decadent treat should involve real care and attention to detail, and takes it just a little farther. Heirloom flour, aluminum-free baking powder, fillings made from seasonal (never-frozen) ingredients, and nearly all of what she uses is organic – some serious thought and care went into the selection of her ingredients. And after all that, as you can see she uses personal care and attention as each tart is very clearly fork-crimped. I do hope she’s using ergonomic work practices, as she apparently has quite a respectable output each week.

The crust is almost like a cookie with those lovely sugar crystals on top, but the fillings are not overly sweet, so there is no need to risk a toothache on biting into them. In fact, some, like the Meyer Lemon, make the word tart an adjective as well as a noun – and that is as it should be. Flavors vary by season and availability. So far I’ve tried mainly the fruit flavors but have heard that some like the chocolate hazelnut should not be missed.

One of the neat things that the cafeteria my my workplace does is occasionally check out local vendors and test their products on the happy guinea pigs (excuse me, customers) who come through the line. Sadly, these were a little on the pricey side to make the cut as a regular offering, but every so often a group of us will get together and pitch in for a minimum order to get these delivered to the office for a late afternoon snack. She generally can be tracked down at farmer’s markets (often found at Peachtree Road Farmers Market and East Point Farmers Market based on her Facebook page), and for catered events. It may take a little searching to lay hands on some, but they’re worth it.

Also, thanks to Adventurous Tastes for an enticing write-up (since deleted) that got me interested in further exploration (if I remember correctly, I ran across this piece while looking for inspiration on writing up an article about cupcakes), and also includes some much better pictures of these treats than the one I took!

The Georgia Rib Company, Marietta GA (CLOSED)

The Georgia Rib Company is, without question, the strangest looking barbecue restaurant that I have ever visited. There are many businesses where guests might question the layout or the decor, but this was the first time that I have ever entered a business and thought that somebody stole the sign from the actual restaurant and moved it somewhere else as a practical joke.

I had never heard of this place until I started cleaning up Urbanspoon’s barbecue listings several weeks ago. I was working through the G-named restaurants in the Atlanta section and found this place in Marietta. Reasonably certain that I would have heard somebody mention it if it was still in business, I phoned them fully expecting the number to have been disconnected. But no, they’ve just been quietly doing business in a huge building that once housed a skating rink, keeping to themselves for many months in the shadow of the celebrated and popular Sam’s BBQ-1. Seriously, you can see this building from Sam’s, and would have no idea that it was a barbecue joint unless you went inside to check it out for yourself.

So basically, you’ve got a huge barn of a skating rink building, but the interior has been retrofitted to look like the most dated, early-eighties wall-carpeted event space that you’ve ever seen. The corridor has meaningless little angles in it, and there are at least three dining rooms. We entered and found nobody in the airlock or the hostess station. Ahead on the left, there was a private room that seats close to a hundred, lights out. Further along this new wave corridor, on the right, Marie and I could hear light R&B, and we found a bar that was a little smaller than the event room. It was only slightly more alive than the closed private room; there was one couple in a booth waiting for their meal to arrive. Further down the corridor is a gigantic room, also darkened, that, in the evening, hosts live music in a barn for about four hundred.

We figured that the middle room was where we were meant to be, so we returned. The room looks like a sports bar, with plenty of college football banners and several flat-screen TVs tuned to either games or some Angelina Jolie movie, but all of the TVs were muted so that we could listen to the smooth sounds of people who, like Kenny G, could play rhythm but had no idea what the blues were. There were no staff around in this enormous complex, just that one older couple, patiently and happily enjoying each other’s company, while important games played silently with a soundtrack of a meaningless, quiet pulse of love songs for the soulless.

This was, in point of fact, the weirdest and most out-of-place that I have ever felt since a co-worker in Athens once invited me to visit her at this bar where she worked, which I’d never heard of, in the old Ramada Inn on Broad Street that’s now a Holiday Inn Express, and the bar turned out to be a pick-up joint for the Centrum Silver crowd who wanted to dance to a bad cover band playing “Smooth Operator.”

In time, some hungover teenage girl emerged to show us to a booth. She had no idea that the restaurant’s web site offered a $4.95 lunch special of a sandwich and a side. This food would have to be something else to make up for this utterly bizarre atmosphere. Fortunately, it was pretty good, and struck a pleasant chord in my memory.

Marie and I each had chopped pork sandwiches. Getting the problem out of the way, the sides were pretty disappointing. Marie had the collard greens and did not finish them, and I had the Brunswick stew, and while it was pleasant, it didn’t bowl me over.

But the chopped pork here really is something else. It is really smoky, dark, pink and dry. It’s so distinctive and so dry that, more than most in Atlanta, it genuinely needs some sauce to mix right. It’s probably not accurate to say that it is “crying” for sauce, but it is definitely coughing and clearing its throat for some. This was a real treat, finding something so wholly, utterly unlike the usual suburban standard of moist-to-greasy pulled pork that I have seen lately. There is only one sauce here, a sweet, brown, Memphis style. It goes excellently with the pork.

Much as I enjoyed the meat, I quickly found myself wishing that I had gone against convention and tried the ribs. Even though ribs are in this restaurant’s name, it just didn’t occur to me to order them, as I prefer chopped pork. However, this place must certainly know what it is doing, as the young server informed us that the owner, many years before, had once run Jilly’s, The Place For Ribs. I didn’t even half-remember that place when I saw Georgia Rib Company’s boastful slogan, “The Only Place for Ribs” and thought that a bit bold of them.

But when the girl mentioned Jilly’s, a lot came flooding back. This was a small chain in Georgia many years ago. When I was a kid, my family would occasionally visit the one on Cobb Parkway in Smyrna. Not yet interested in barbecue, I’d always just get a burger – of course – but I recall that they had amazing, messy, greasy onion rings. There were also stores, locally, in Roswell and near the East Lake shopping center in Marietta, and stores in Macon and Columbus. I enjoyed the nice rush of pleasant nostalgia for long-gone restaurants, as I often do, and affirmed that this gentleman has probably been smoking and grilling almost as long as I’ve been alive.

I don’t know the circumstances that led him to resume serving barbecue in this really weird space, of all places, but I’m glad that he’s back. Now that I’m older and know what the heck good ribs are supposed to taste like, I might need to return and try what stubbornness had kept me from trying as a child. While there’s only limited information about Jilly’s online, I’ve asked around and a few friends have since told me that they enjoyed the old Place for Ribs. If you’re among their number, swing by this oddball restaurant and see whether your own nostalgia might be tickled a little.

A Friday Night’s Eating, Atlanta GA

The situation was grim. Marie had requested that we spend the second weekend of October relaxing. After several out-of-town trips in September and the madness of the convention over the first weekend of the month, she wanted a Saturday where we didn’t do anything. That meant that if I wanted some new things to talk about, then on Friday night, I needed to please everybody with a couple of small meals and a couple of great desserts.

There was, first, the problem of my daughter. I had decided that I wanted to go back to Everybody’s, the terrific pizza joint by Emory’s main campus, but I was not keen on being so far away from my daughter while she was at a football game in the suburbs. She didn’t want to come eat pizza. “You’ll just put anchovies on it,” she said, not unreasonably. A bribe was necessary.

“What if we get ice cream afterward?” I asked. She declined.

“What if we get Jake’s ice cream, then?” Oh. That changed things. She’d drop the lead singer of My Chemical Romance on his butt for a scoop of Jake’s.

Then Marie piped in. She can’t eat ice cream, as I should remember. The dairy gets in her breast milk and gives the baby stomach aches. We would have to get desserts from two different places, at least once I figured out where you can get any Jake’s these days. She also wasn’t keen on pizza for the same reason. Maybe we could get a hamburger somewhere instead.

Imagine. There are some people in this world who would handle this problem with a single trip to a Picadilly Cafeteria. I hope we never turn into those people. In point of fact, I wouldn’t mind if this baby one day piped up to demand we insert stops for seafood and chicken mull into the menu. While we live in a city as large as Atlanta, there’s not one blessed thing stopping us from having the best of all possible worlds in one evening. Well, apart from the chicken mull. We’d have to drive to Athens for that, but we could come back here for the ice cream and cake.

The children and I picked up Marie at work, allowing her fellow employees to admire the baby for a few minutes – well, and the tween girl as well, I suppose – and giving Marie a chance to feed him. We then made our slow, agonizing way from Dunwoody through Friday “rush” hour traffic to Decatur.

Everybody’s has been serving the community for forty years now and, while fad and fashion have thrown other pizza places in the limelight, I still believe that Everybody’s serves one of the best pies in the region. Vingenzo’s might have knocked it out of my Atlanta top five, but it’s still a great pizza and worth a visit. This was actually the slowest I’ve ever seen it, but we arrived before the Friday dinner rush really got going.

With Marie planning for a burger in a few minutes’ time and the threat of anchovies infuriating my daughter, they simply shared a salad and some amazing breadsticks. My individual pie was, unwittingly, a carnivore’s delight, with anchovies, chicken, and Italian sausage. I promise that I intended to have them with tomatoes and peppers, but something went stupid in my brain once I sat down. I have no legitimate excuse, but good grief, was it ever good.

Afterward, we walked down to the end of this strip mall to Wonderful World. I should note that we took the risk of leaving our car in Everybody’s lot and leaving the premises. I have heard, before and since, that this is never a good idea. We didn’t get towed or booted, but I don’t advise doing this.

Wonderful World has very quietly been grilling up some of the very best hamburgers in the city, without attention or hype, sliding their sliders right under everyone’s radar during the last three years of the city’s hamburger madness. I’m certain I never heard of this place at all before I looked up Everybody’s on Urbanspoon the day before we went down and was amused to see the name of this place listed as “nearby.” The name tickled me, because I frequently get one of two different songs named “Wonderful World” stuck in my head.

Anyway, Wonderful World is a very small side venture by Stephen Chan, who has opened a small chain of cafes called Tin Drum around the city. It has received virtually no attention from my fellow hobbyists, although Evan Mah, from The Toothfish, gave it a good review when it opened two years ago. Two years! This is one of the best hamburgers in the city, for pete’s sake. Folk need to get over here and try one.

They’re quite small and very nicely priced. Most are under $3 and are made from fresh, local beef, never frozen. The fries are also fresh and just incredibly yummy. We’ve had some good burgers lately. In fact, we’ve had a lot of ’em. This knocks just about all of them to the side, easily ranking among the juiciest and tastiest our town can offer. I had the WonderfulBurger, which comes with cheese, lettuce, pickles and a house sauce. It was just perfect.

I really like the interior decor a lot, too. Slotted wood paneling covers the lights behind them, resulting in a very comfortable and laid-back vibe. It only seats a couple of dozen at long, communal tables, but I think that once people get their food here, they’ll be in no rush to leave. It’s a complete delight, but we did have to make our way. I had promised the girlchild some Jake’s.

(Before we leave, however, a follow-up note. One of those songs that I enjoyed replaying in my head was “Wonderful World,” a track from one of David Sylvian’s countless odd projects, Nine Horses. As Tin Drum was also the title of Japan’s last studio album, I amused myself concluding that Chan must also be a Sylvian fan. This was confirmed a couple of weeks later, when I was walking down Broad Street downtown, passed one of the Tin Drum locations, and did a double-take when I saw, through the window, a giant blow-up of the front cover of that Japan LP. Chan makes terrific burgers and he appreciates one of my favorite musicians. I’d have said favorite, period, before he released that awful Manafon. Yeeesh.)

Now, not long ago, there were a few more Jake’s locations than there are now. Most magical was the great one in Decatur, at the end of the strip mall where Wuxtry has long resided. We could kick back and indulge in ice cream there for hours. It would appear that only a single Jake’s location is left, although they supply a few other coffee shops and places with their amazing product.

Inman Perk Coffee is one that Marie and I had visited once before. It’s a splendid little place where locals on laptops are always kicking back. Honestly, it’s next to impossible to make much comment on a coffee shop’s product, as I don’t drink coffee, but I figure, as long as the ice cream is good, it’s worth a visit. A relaxed and comfortable environment like this is just a bonus.

Unfortunately, Marie was deprived of this most excellent ice cream. She departed to change and feed the baby, possibly so her heart would not be broken that we were indulging in front of her. Mine was a cherry and vanilla double-scoop – their reliable “brown sugah vanillah” has been either replaced by or supplanted with a “thrillah vanillah” that I found myself enjoying even more.

Marie’s treat was a few miles up the road at OK Cafe. This venerable meat and three buffet diner has been around since the mid-eighties. Their long line of customers waiting for a table is so legendary that they installed a big digital sign out front informing anybody driving past how long the current expected wait is.

While the OK Cafe prides itself on its classic American diner food, with their chicken and fried trout particular favorites of everybody, we were just there for dessert. Marie got a big slice of chocolate cake. It was not a ridiculous, oversized chunk of a thousand calories, but something sensibly-portioned and tasty. They do fantastic work here, and getting to-go orders is incredibly simple.

This was a fine evening out. We discovered someplace new and fantastic and each of us came home satisfied. I’d call it a success all around. There remained, however, the problem of Marie decreeing the next day to be one of relaxation and late sleeping. That was fine, because I knew that we’d need to have lunch sometime, and I had a plan for that.

(Update, 3/24/12: Sadly, the Wonderful World shuttered this week to make way for another Tin Drum. Right across the street from a Doc Chey’s…? Wow.)

Rise-n-Dine, Atlanta GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about breakfast. My relationship with breakfast has been a little out of the ordinary because I am one of about four people in the world who dislike bacon (on its own merits, that is – not for religious, moral, or health reasons). When I was a teen, I learned how to make pancakes so I could tie up the griddle and get something to eat, then escape before my dad and uncle could fill the kitchen with the smell of frying meat. It was also fun to make smiley face pancakes and such for the littler kids.

My personal favorite breakfast is a bowl of fresh fruit with good yogurt, a bowl of cereal if it is warm, an egg or oatmeal in cold weather, some toast with a top-quality jam, and some hot black tea. A nice creamy Dutch cheese also goes well with the toast. Obviously, it’s easier to have this breakfast at home. Except on workdays, of course, when peanut butter on half a bagel is more typical!

However, every so often I am called to go out for breakfast. In this particular case, it was a friend’s visit. Our friend Chris, from Jacksonville, was back in town on the last leg of a road trip up to New Jersey and back on family business. When someone is visiting from out of town you let them have a good bit of leeway in picking out a place to meet, and he was the one to pick Rise-n-Dine, based primarily on the fact that it was the highest-rated breakfast place near his hotel. I made the trek to Decatur with the kids to meet up with Chris, knowing the wait time would be pretty daunting, so a bottle came along for the baby. It’s fairly popular place and if you either like people-watching or are meeting more for the opportunity for conversation than a quick meal, the wait isn’t bothersome. The wait was a little hard for a 12-year-old to take, but she managed with a little window shopping and the help of her phone. Twosomes will get in faster than larger groups. There don’t seem to be many larger tables.

Once actually inside, we were served quickly and had a cheerful server. He was a little bewildered by the request for a mug of hot water to heat the bottle, but complied promptly, and barely in time – the baby just barely began to fuss before his milk was done. The baby passed out in time for the food to arrive, nice timing on his part, and generous of him considering the fairly high noise level inside. The server had pretty decent hearing. I have been avoiding dairy due to the apparent allergy of a certain little person who shares my meals, and I have been unpleasantly surprised before to get rye toast (with butter on it) instead of dry toast; despite the noise, that server got it right.

Ivy saw grilled cheese on the menu and asked if she could have that. Generally the answer is no, because we feel it is not right to pay 5 bucks for something that costs about 11 cents to make at home. However, in certain circumstances, such as when the restaurant uses multiple kinds of cheese on bread that isn’t unnaturally square, we make exceptions. She also ordered the orange juice. When her drink arrived and I saw how brilliantly orange and dense it was, I had to have some for myself. That, I think, was the best part of the meal, and it was surely better than the hot tea that would have been my alternate choice.

Unfortunately we didn’t order anything terribly photogenic. The table voted the herbed fried potatoes the best item after the orange juice. Next time I will make a point of getting the sweet potato pancakes.

Breakfast isn’t a hard meal to get right, as long as service is reasonably fast. However, Rise-n-Dine manages to take a step past the ordinary. I’d go again.