Ringside Franks & Shakes, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)

The day after Thanksgiving, I spent the morning exhausting my baby boy. He started crawling the day before, and, with his day care closed and potential baby sitters out of town, I took him to work with me. It was one of my short shifts and he got appropriate levels of admiration and tickling, and really showed off some crawling. We then drove to Dunwoody to visit Marie at work and allow her to nurse him and visit with her co-workers, and then he and I went to lunch. He missed it entirely. He fell asleep on the way there, and snoozed all the way through the meal, only waking when we returned home to the suburbs. Continue reading “Ringside Franks & Shakes, Atlanta GA (CLOSED)” →

Penzeys Spices, Sandy Springs GA

This is Marie, contributing a chapter about a new branch of our favorite chain of cooking store – Penzeys Spices. If you haven’t run across them before and you have any touch of the love of cooking in you, make sure you come to the store with a decent stash of money. Let’s just put it this way: the first year I made the traditional family spice cake with my first haul of Penzeys, it was roundly acknowledged to have been the best batch ever. Mom was converted immediately.

Anyway, it seemed perfectly reasonable to work Penzeys into some trips we made to Birmingham and Memphis, as seen in our previous article about them. You might imagine how pleased we were to hear then that a store would be coming to Atlanta sometime soon. It turned out to be opening this summer within 5 minutes of where I work. If only our budget weren’t constrained by the baby, I would consider this an excellent opportunity to clear out some of the older jars and replace them with new ones. Although honestly, although they recommend refreshing your spices once a year, the three-year-old cinnamon I kept out of curiosity’s sake seems just as flavorful as it was when I bought it. Maybe opening the jar doesn’t knock me off my feet any more, but then I’ve gotten terribly spoiled.

There’s a reason one of the popular dinners in our household comes on the night when I take out the chicken and ask what spices people want on their piece. Results vary (well, except for the person who shall remain unnamed because she’s a minor who chooses lemon pepper 99% of the time) but they are always at least good and often excellent. Grant has taken to asking for the Bicentennial Rub most of the time.

Penzeys sent a post card to let us know that they were hiring, and I thought that was rather clever as a marketing strategy, especially considering the unemployment rate here in Atlanta. They had to have gotten a huge pool of people really interested in the product that way, and if there’s a better way to staff a cooking store than pulling from the people who love their stuff already. That’s one of the real pleasures of shopping at a true foodie’s store. Unlike, say, the spice rack of the local supermarket, where if you see anyone hesitating it’s often only to compare prices, a fellow shopper at Penzeys is someone you can compare notes with, and ask what their favorite recipe is for whatever they’ve got in their hands.

Closer to the actual opening we got a coupon for a free box of four spices with a small purchase. The store is located on Roswell Road, in a shopping center near the intersection with Johnson Ferry. I smelled some new items and some old friends. The spacious, well-laid-out store was absolutely full of families and people browsing. I asked a few people what they like and got some terrific ideas for the kitchen.

Tin Can Fish House and Oyster Bar, Sandy Springs GA

I’d been hoping for several weeks to get a chance to visit Tin Can Fish House and Oyster Bar, as several of the region’s food writers have been raving about it. This past Saturday, Marie wanted to visit a maternity consignment shop in Buckhead. It was a really gorgeous and warm day – far too warm for it to really be February! – and so the two of us left the children to their own devices and drove over to Sandy Springs for an early lunch. We arrived a little too early, as it turned out – they do not open until 11.30 – and so that gave us twenty minutes to walk around the curious strip mall where the restaurant is located. The development is centered around a Kroger, but rather than a conventional strip, it’s four or five short two-story buildings, all hidden above and behind Roswell Road and Hammond. It’s really not that easy to find; basically, if you are standing at the entrance to Kroger, then Tin Can is ahead of you and to the right, next door to their older sister restaurant, Teela Taquiera.

Interestingly, it appears that the spot was previously taken by the same brother and sister ownership team’s Italian restaurant, but back in September, they elected to convert it to a seafood place. They had previously run a seafood restaurant called Fishmonger in the same area of town. I never tried it, but it was said to be pretty good. I read an article over at the Atlanta Business Chronicle where co-owner Arte Antoniades said that our area was lacking in casual, relaxed places to get good seafood. I’d agree with that. It’s all big-roomed family places full of long waits and screaming kids or high-end joints.

The closest that I can recall of a simple, no-wait place for great, reasonably-priced seafood was Blue Ocean in Alpharetta. Unfortunately, they chose to build on Windward Parkway and were part of that gigantic and regular restaurant turnover that I mentioned in this blog earlier in the month.

Tin Can certainly has the casual and relaxed part down pat. Despite the trappings of the very nice strip mall, this is a really laid-back and friendly place. Marie picked a table by the window – we missed a trick not going outside, but then again it was awfully bright – with a wobbly bit on the floor that no chair would evenly sit. She ordered grilled grouper with a salad and saffron rice. The salad was excellent – mixed greens with tomatoes, figs and walnuts in a light balsamic dressing, although the rice was a little saltier than she liked.

The grouper itself was really tasty, but I preferred my selection. I had the standard cod and fries with slaw, and if there’s a better seafood meal around town for nine bucks, I never heard of it. The cod was flaky and delicate and just wonderful. The shoestring fries were almost just right; they could have used a hair of the salt from Marie’s rice. The slaw was really good, with just the right blend of vinegar and thin mayo. I also ordered a side of fried green tomatoes, unsurprisingly. A side order comes with three slices and a small cup of spicy remoulade.

Honestly, the cod and grouper were as good as any I’ve had, and for a little bit less than I’m used to spending. It’s a hair more of a drive from our neighborhood than would be ideal, but it’s certainly worth another visit the next time we are in the area. And relaxing with some good food like this put me in a much better mood than I had been, just in time to spend the next hour or so thumbing through baby clothes. See, told you I’d be diverting some of our disposable income and dining money on clothes for the kid. I’m not a complete beast.

Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries, Sandy Springs GA (CLOSED)

Here’s an example of a restaurant that just crept into town. I think that the manager has done everything that anyone in his position is meant to do to get the word out – there’s a whacking great billboard right above his shop – but it hasn’t taken and people aren’t talking about it. This is a huge shame, because Boardwalk Fresh Burgers & Fries really is worth a visit, and worth a lot of talk.

Admittedly, sometimes it takes a little while for word of mouth to build. Boardwalk has been building very slowly, with most of their business over thirty years confined to sports arenas and fry carts around the mid-Atlantic states. The conversion to a “fast casual” burger joint came in 2007, and they now claim nine restaurants in six states.

The french fries are definitely this place’s draw. Don’t get me wrong; they cook up some very good burgers, but Atlanta is, as we’ve established, more than awash in very good burgers and it is tough to stand out. But these fries, well, darned if I can think of any other burger joint in town to offer fries this good. There are better burgers in Atlanta, but I don’t believe that any of Boardwalk’s many competitors in the field have such good fries.

Last week, Marie and I met up with Samantha and with Neal, who had just returned from his California trip. We all drove separately, and Neal and Marie each mentioned something which might be blocking the restaurant’s hopes for success: nobody can find the place. Marie, using Google Maps and Neal, using GPS, each got bad directions to a place which should be incredibly easy to find. I just tried it myself on Google and it says, quite wrongly, “destination will be on the left” when coming from downtown Atlanta. That’s not true. Going north on Roswell Road from the perimeter, it is less than a mile on the right, just past the El Azteca in a strip mall in front of the Lowe’s.

Once you do find the place, you’ll find a menu board that’s not hugely different from the industry standard. Customers can order a basic burger with one or two patties and an assortment of toppings or one of a few different specialty items with the extra-priced toppings added. Honestly, I don’t see the need to pay for mushrooms or bacon when I have come to sample ground beef, unless I want something considerably different. Neal went with the chicken, but the rest of us just had single patties with basic lettuce and tomatoes. I had ketchup and their chipotle sauce on the side. This turned out to be the only disappointment of the meal; as a little bit on the bottom of my burger, the chipotle was unmemorable and brought out nothing, but as a fry dip, the sauce had no tang at all to it, and the flavor did not mix with the potato.

Five Guys is the obvious comparison point here. Despite the flashy design and colorful interior, Boardwalk feels like it is following in Five Guys’ shadow, but they excel in every way. I enjoy Five Guys, although I have not eaten at one in a very long time – they are big enough that they don’t miss me – and they provide a good baseline for acceptable quality in a good burger. Marie, Samantha and I all agreed that this was a better hamburger, and far less greasy than what Five Guys offers. It is certainly on a par with Cheeseburger Bobby’s.

But these fries, well, these are superior to Five Guys in every possible way, and miles better than the awful fries that the otherwise great Bobby’s makes. Unfortunately, I made the calamitously bad mistake of ordering chili cheese fries. These were not bad, but I assure you, these fries need neither chili nor cheese. The restaurant suggests that you eat them “Maryland style” with vinegar and Old Bay seasoning. Fortunately, Neal and Samantha each had more than enough fries to share for us to try those add-ons. I like Old Bay seasoning a lot – it’s basically celery salt with mustard, black and red pepper and pinches of another ten things – and if I’d ordered fries without chili and cheese, I’d have blanketed ’em in Old Bay.

Neal bought a dessert for us all to share, probably because he was still smarting from the funnel cakes that he didn’t get to try out in California. Boardwalk’s “funnel fries” are (and there’s no way to explain this without repeatedly using this word like a bad, novice journalist, hence this lengthy parenthetical comment to break them up) fried to come out in a fry shape and covered in powdered sugar. Because we’re all trying to find some compromise between watching our weight and eating the bejezus out of everything wonderful that comes our direction, one order of funnel anything is plenty for four people.

Besides, with the overeating planned for the weekend, nobody needed more than a quarter-order of funnel fries. More on that next time.

(Update 11/29/11: Sadly, the Sandy Springs store closed this month. Boardwalk is continuing to open stores in the New England states, and a second Atlanta location has opened in midtown’s Ansley Mall.)

(Update 3/25/12: But wait! Another franchisee has reopened this store! Better luck this time, fellows!)

(Update 10/15/12: Aaaaand, it has closed again.)