Oysters: a thin line between love and hate

Growing up in Southwest Florida I remember using every trick in the book to wriggle one more away oyster from my dad, who also reduced himself to subterfuge in the never ending oyster war between us. These were the raw oysters; right off the boat, on a saltine or slurped, with the holy trinity of horseradish/hot sauce/cocktail sauce to accompany them. My mother, not fond of raw food or food that has the consistency of mucus, was amused by our endless game of oneupsmanship.

Nowadays, far from the ocean, I battle with my husband over who gets the 13th oyster or the "No honey, you must have eaten 4 already...not me..." argument. We do follow the "R month" old wives tale because we do know about Gulf coast oyster reproductive cycles and like the winter month flavors better.

Our picks for oysters in Atlanta?

How can you not love a fish place that has a skyline and cemetery view?
Six Feet Under serves some of the best cheap seafood in the area. The dishes can be as simple as po-boys with greens, to a more elaborate seared tuna with cucumber wasabi drizzle & fried jalapenos. I dream about the tacos: spicy fried calamari, blackened shrimp, and catfish all filled with unique and fresh toppings and of course- spicy. Six Feet Under also has good beer, a price above rubies, but the wait can sometimes be daunting especially on weekends.

Want to hit a neighborhood spot with literary pretensions? Tucked away in Oakhurst, Steinbeck's has some of the best oysters and a friendly vibe. Good beer on tap, a crazy hot sauce selection, and some pretty good New Orleans-ish food. This is a great place to just chill out, drink some beer and suck down those little gray devils. It's never crowded, and we easily are recognized even though we don't live at this particular bar.

Woodfire Grill - Taste of Spain

Recently Woodfire Grill, one of our favorite restaurants, celebrated its 5 year anniversary with 5 nights of special Prix Fixe menus. We went on the night highlighting the cuisine of Spain. We brought along one of our favorite partners in crime who we knew would appreciate the meal. Two of us elected to do the wine pairings with the meal and frankly, this was the only part of this meal I was unhappy with. The wines chosen, while highlighting the food, were boring on their own. I wouldn’t buy a bottle of any of these, except for the port which was exceptional. However, I don’t think this was a failure in wine selection, rather this was the intent to highlight the food as much as possible. Here is the menu:

Amuse Bouche – Jamon Serrano & Gala Apple
While waiting for the first course we were treated to a wafer thin slice of Serrano ham wrapped around a freshly sliced gala apple ‘toothpick’. The saltiness of the ham is paired perfectly with the sweetness of the apple and serves as a hint of the good food to come. This sort of simplicity is really the heart and soul of Woodfire Grill…Keep it Simple. Keep it Fresh. Keep it Good.

First – Late Season Gazpacho: Tomatoes, marcona almonds, and sourdough bread
The thick puree arrived and we could smell the smokiness from the tomatoes, roasted in house of course. Some roasted peppers added a hint of sweetness to the soup. Sourdough bread was apparently added to the soup to thicken it up but I missed it. More importantly were the finely chopped marcona almonds which provided a bit of crunch and nuttiness to the meal. This smoky, slightly sweet, nutty soup was made for the end of summer and was simply perfect.

Second – Wood grilled octopus with spiced chickpea and basque tuna salad
Overcooked octopus is an all too familiar problem and I was concerned when I saw it on the menu. I should know better. This was by far my favorite course of the evening.
Each of us were served a small roasted octopus (baby size) that was tender and delicious with a hint of olive oil. The chickpea salad was perfect for cleansing the palate so each bite of octopus was made brand new. The tuna salad was a nice accompaniment. But that octopus was just amazing.

Main- Paella: calaspara rice, saffron, shrimp, mussels, clams, chorizo, peppers
We discussed this quite a bit over dinner. Paella is not really a hard dish to make and there was no twist to this one, so was this just a phone-in course? I really don’t think so. When one thinks of dishes which define Spain, Paella is within the top 5 of almost everyone’s list. Here again we see Woodfire doing what it does best: simple foods prepared to perfection. The Georgia shrimp were plump and perfectly cooked as was the rest of the seafood. The star here was the chorizo of which I am not normally a fan. This chorizo was the best I have ever had, not too spicy, not too fatty…just right. This dish was really a no-brainer for a Spanish menu and I am almost surprised this hasn’t made it to the regular menu.

Cheese Course - Spanish cheese
The cheese course was nice. There was a blue cheese variant that was particularly strong and tasty. There was nothing in this course that I felt the need to run out and buy. It was a perfect way to start the wrap-up of the meal.


Dessert - Churros and Chocolate (port Hidalgo- La Triana-Viejo)
Mexican donuts. That is how churros have always been described to me. So I was a little dismayed when I saw this. So I must ask myself: When will I stop doubting this place? Light fritters dusted with sugar show up the table with a warm sauce of slightly bitter chocolate. The mixture was so good we almost asked for more churros to finish the chocolate. Most importantly, we end how we began with two contrasting flavors. I am certain this was not by accident… so little in this restaurant is.

Labor Day Weekend – Dragon*Con (D*Con)

The infamous 4-day “Mardi Gras for Nerds” floods the streets of Atlanta with Stormtroopers, Hogwart’s students, a million Jack Sparrows (excuse me: Captain Jack Sparrows), and a variety of additional fictional characters some ridiculously esoteric while others are easily recognizable. D*con typically means copious amounts of alcohol, long waits for elevators, and nasty food. The latter of these coming from either the adjacent mall’s food court or any of the crappy chains (Hard Rock, Hooters, etc…) that surround the hotels that comprise the convention. Our friends, who come for the convention, are often reluctant, and understandably so, to get into their cars and leave downtown for a single meal. To their credit for 4 years now they have trekked out to Decatur for pizza, Indian, or sushi and have been rewarded for their adventurous spirit. However, with the on-going revitalization of downtown we attempted to stick to local restaurants within walking distance of D*Con. As a result we got to share more meals with friends and ate a whole lot better than we would have at the food court. Nor were we alone! Many of the convention goers have tired of the same nasty food and were exploring smaller local venues. What follows is a condensed summary of our dining adventures.

Thursday night we started out at Ted’s Montana Grill. A chain started by local crazy billionaire Ted Turner we had never gotten around to eating at one before. I opted for one of their buffalo meat burgers and some thick cut onion rings. The onion rings were just how I like them thick cut and not over battered. I eat onion rings about once a year so it is nice to have good ones on that rare occasion. The burger was tasty but I’ve had equal of better burgers at The Vortex or Houston’s. The servers were friendly and fairly efficient but the bar appeared out of half the beers we wanted to try. If someone wanted to go again I would not say no but it certainly is not the first place I would recommend.

Thursday night I checked into the room and proceeded to do what most people come to D*con for… drink. I’ll spare you the gory details and move into Friday’s culinary excursions. A trio of ‘Tallahasseans’ and I made the pilgrimage to the brew pub within eye sight of the hotel: Max Lager’s. This has become our D*Con lunch spot on Friday over the past few years but it would be worth the trek to downtown to support local brew pubs. Typically, they have about 6 to 7 homebrews ready to go. While stouts and porters are good I’d recommend sticking to lighter summer beers which they do really well. Unfortunately, Max Lager suffers from the all too common schizophrenic pub menu syndrome trying to serve burgers, pizzas, steaks, and pseudo-asian dishes with the result that half the menu is a wasteland. The burgers are pretty good but the chicken is dry. If one wants to diverge from standard pub fare I recommend the duck quesadilla which manages to not be overly greasy nor are all the flavors overpowered by the duck as one might expect.


Friday night we supported foreign oil and headed out to Little 5 Points for dinner at Ru San’s. This local chain appears to have a branch in almost every ‘cool’ neighborhood in town (except Decatur notably) and is notorious for the blaring techno and elaborate sushi confections. I don’t really want to get into a sushi article here so I’ll just say that the best sushi is simple and highlights the protein (fish, eel, etc.) rather than masking it’s lower quality. I’ve made similar comments regarding Hummus so I think my thoughts on such things are already clear. What Ru San’s lacks in Sushi they make up for in Soup. They are easily the best source of Japanese inspired soups. A vegetable soup I had was warm and satisfying filled with bean sprouts, onion, carrot, cabbage, and more. The salty broth was great fortification for the night of drinking ahead. Thick avocado slices adorned the soup providing the necessary fat to keep you sated for several hours. The Five Points Location is a party on Friday night, filled with a good cross section of Atlanta nightlife.

Saturday was so busy my lunch was a bagel and cream cheese from Atlanta Bread Company. That night vegetarians and carnivores united and headed out into the streets of downtown for Indian food at Haveli Indian Cuisine. I’ll start by saying that this place does not make my Top 5 of Indian restaurants in town, a list we’ll discuss some other time, that said this place is okay. Tandoori and curry chicken dishes were a little overdone but the spiced shrimp were surprisingly high quality and well received by the table. Like most Indian places in Atlanta these folks excel in vegetarian dishes with excellent Saag Paneer (Spinach and cheese). My one criticism of this place would be in the lack of spices. While most Indian places are guilty of dumping a bunch of spices in at the end the kitchen here don’t add enough. The Saag had a hint of coriander but a few shredded leaves might have helped bring out some earthiness in this dish.

Sunday night we headed out to Slice, a new branch of a local ‘hipster’ pizza joint. Before we get into food I have to say that the service was simply abysmal. For the entire restaurant (over 15 tables) there was one waiter. Based on how long it took for the food to come out (over 1hr) I can only imagine there was only one chef also. That said, the antipasto appetizer was big enough for two with a standard assortment of meats, cheeses and olives. The meat and cheese were all of decent to better than average quality but the real stars were the olives. The olives had only the faint hint of brine, a flavor which is normally overpowering on antipasto plates, and were just spectacular. Pizzas have a nice thin crackly crust and are neither overly greasy nor soggy with sauce. To the staff’s credit as short handed as they were everyone’s food still came out at the same time and was warm without feeling like it had sat under a heat lamp. With food this good I am certainly willing to see if Slice’s staffing problem was a one time thing.

So there you have it. No longer do D*con attendees need be contented with the dreaded Food Court of Peachtree Center, McDonald’s, Hooters, Hard Rock Café, or any of the other chains that have populated downtown for so long. Cuisine has finally begun to catch up with the spirit of revitalization throughout the downtown area. Thanks to all my friends, both the locals and out of towners, who hit the pavement with me to make this review possible. We’ll see you next year!

Road Trip: Asheville, NC

Deep in the heart of downtown, the Early Girl Eatery serves up consistently fresh, tasty, and seasonal breakfasts. We also hear they serve lunch but the breakfast is just so good we’ve never tried coming in a little later. Shrimp and grits, pan fried trout, and black-eyed pea cakes are some of the down home Southern type dishes; but pancakes and omelets are not left behind in this Asheville institution. Good coffee, and attentive but not clingy service rounds out a solid entry in the Asheville canon.



This is not your unwashed hippie aunt’s restaurant, and there are no tofurkeys or boring salads. The Laughing Seed features consistently innovative vegetarian cuisine aimed at capturing the hearts and minds of hip young bohemians with discretionary funds. The sandwiches are always a good bet as they tend to be a departure from the usual grilled veggies or veggie burger, a recent cashew spread-feta-avocado with harissa sauce sandwich is a stand out. Of course the house hemp-nut burger is legendary in Asheville, but I’m more likely to go after the various tempeh sandwiches: tempeh reuben, tempeh Cuban, etc. The east/west quesadilla was a super cool mix of Tex-mex and Indian flavors featuring a mole-style sauce, cheese, and curried vegetables; it was a brilliant idea and I felt that the taste delivered on the promise. Low Country Roll-Ups feature tangy bbq tofu in tortillas with cheese covered in a tahini-mustard sauce that I have tried to unsuccessfully duplicate at home. Also featuring a full bar, Green Man beer, juices, smoothies, teas, and even elixir tonics.




What can I say about the pub decorated in Celtic fertility god themes? Not only does it have its own beer, Green Man Brewing Company, but Jack of the Wood is also part of the Laughing Seed collective so it has wonderfully greasy vegetarian selections among the usual pub fare. The tempeh reuben is a sandwich worth driving for, and it even tasted great before you have begun sampling the excellent beer. I think over the many times we have staked out our stools at bar for untold hours, we’ve tried every appetizer at least once and most of the sandwiches. Everything pleased the sober and drunk palate, maybe the spinach/artichoke dip was a little boring and the standard Irish pie fare was heavy and uninteresting; but for $god’s sake don’t always order the fish and chips, they may be all greasy and tasty but come pub food always tastes the same. Live music (Irish, Bluegrass and Old Time sessions!) and a very friendly atmosphere make Jack of the Wood our default hang-out when in Asheville.



Heiwa Shokudo: When we first came to this place in 2005, it was crazy busy and full of hippie families. I broke with tradition and did not order sushi, instead trying something new that I couldn’t pronounce. Coming back in 2007 to the place that prides itself on fresh ingredients and a little side of fusion in its recipes, the exciting flavors are still as much of a revelation now as they were when I left my sushi/tempura comfort zone. The menu is broken into soups, sushi, noodle dishes, and the flexible multi-dishes placed in cute trays. Plenty of vegetarian dishes mingle seamlessly with the seafood entrees. All of the fish I have ever tasted in this tiny restaurant have been of equal or better quality to any big city sushi joint; the cold ahi poki combined fresh tuna, avocado, and veggies in a soy-ginger marinade can make me instantly want to get in the car and drive up there just thinking about it. The ‘choose my own adventure’ menu also included a firm and flavorful tofu misoyaki, a perfect balanced seaweed salad, and crunchy brown rice. The fried edamame with a tofu crust was a great salty/crunchy beginning to a meal I can only describe as high-class hippie bento.

Other places of note:

For a quick or leisurely coffee and some light baked goods, the City Bakery is a good bet for an early crowd.

If chocolate is your thing, Chocolate Fetish has many different flavors of quality sin. The dark chocolate covered figs and ancho-chipotle truffles are a pricy indulgence.

While we didn’t try the food menu, the extensive beer menu of the Bier Garden is worth a meal when we come back to Asheville. Local beers such as French Broad, Highland, and the Pisgah Brewing companies sit along venerable micro-brews and Belgium beers in the massive collection. Cool new to me beer: Vermont’s Magic Hat no.9.

Savannah II: Miller time

Not surprisingly, some of the places we seem to enjoy the most while traveling are pubs. We can be fairly social people when we want and a great way to be casually social is to park yourself at the bar in a pub; we are also very into going local when we travel and not being the typical tourist. We are more likely to be seated at the bar having a conversation with that drunk guy than out taking the "Midnight in the Garden of Good and evil" tour. Neither one of us was raised in or around pubs, like most Americans I was raised that alcohol was very very bad until you were 21 for some reason and that bars were for loser drunks. So of course I stole booze as a teen. Living briefly in a country where pubs were the social focal point of the community gave me a glimpse into a mode of living that was very cool to me. Its not about the alcohol, its really the sense of the community that most people my age never had as we were all raised in generic suburbia, never knew our neighbors, and only had TV and malls as our social outlets. And I like beer.

In Savannah, famous for its pubs and even more famous for its St. Patrick's Day binge, we felt more at home in the pubs than the restaurants. The tasty wild Georgia shrimp were not limited to the high end restaurants, in fact the tasty shrimp were pretty much everywhere food was served. At Churchill's Pub my husband had a shrimp pasta dish that actually tasted better than the shrimp at the recommended River St. place. I fed my inner Brit with a small but filling chicken-stilton pie, tasting pretty average for pub food. Churchill's had a great selection of draft and bottled British beers, and even offered half-pints which I know are for girls but I am a girl! I miss being able to get half-pints mainly because I like to taste as many different flavors as possible, I'd pick off other peoples' plates if they let me. The pub was huge, with a basement and seating on the roof; overall the atmosphere was lovely and pub-like but not really small enough for our tastes being so near the touristy stuff, and the food was decent but not a Savannah memory to savor.

Next door to the Churchill's was the local brew pub the Moon River Brewery. The in-house brewery served up some nice beers with the porter and wit beer being real stand outs. While we weren't terribly hungry when we visited, we did want to try the Bombay Turkey Minis. Three cute little turkey-curry-ginger burgers served up with some tasty curry 'aioli' were just the kind of interesting pub munchies we are always on the lookout for. Not only did they sound great, they were the perfect yummy little pub snack for people who are sick of chips and don't want to drop $20 on some fussy gastro-pub truffle-wasabi nachos. The atmosphere could have been cozier, but with the brewery's proximity to the touristy areas we assumed that the place could get pretty slammed so they needed the space and the slightly aloof young waitstaff.

It was in the little Scottish pub
Mollie MacPherson's that we found our Savannah pub home. Originally we were planning a ghost pub crawl as the concession to tourism, but upon seeing the our fellow crawlers our scorn overrode our desire for tourism. By the time the frat kids or middle-aged non-drinking ladies all arrived, we had already settled into our seats with some lovely beer and a lovely sarcastic publican to chat with. Plus we calculated the tour cost with how much more we could drink, the drink won. Mollie's has a nice selection of Scottish beers, and of course lots of scotch availible by the glass or in small groups as a flight. Either way, the scotch seemed to dear to me so I chose beer to blow my money on. We came and went for two nights, we were nodded to by not only barstaff but also by the obvious regular in the corner working on the great American novel. This small pub off the well-trod path felt like a real community center with its large central fireplace. The menu was standard with a few Scottish dishes. The smoked salmon rolls were cool and refreshingly full of fat but the lightly greased and fried potato scones were perfect with the sweet rasberry jam. The scones were just filling enough to help us sober up but did not make us feel full or artery-clogged. The dessert was not so much, but being able to drink Innis and Gunn and Fraoch (for cheaper than ATL) was a small price to pay. Mollie MacPherson's: if we lived in Savannah, that would OUR pub.

Sarcasm on the road: Savannah

Since our planned vacation of an Alaskan cruise complete with all-you-eat food fell through, we recently went to Plan B and decided to visit some nearby towns to cross them off our list. First stop: Savannah.

Friends have often told us we'd like the town's style, not to mention food. We imagined a smaller New Orleans; complete with old buildings, walkable neighborhoods, scary tourists, and good food. Three out of four is not bad. Savannah is very walkable, even in July it is much cooler than the hell we are used to from Florida, and we wanted to be able to easily walk off the food. Getting a good mid-week summer rate from the Savannah Bed and Breakfast overlooking Chatham Square downtown, we were ready to explore.


Not being terribly prepared since this was a last minute trip, we went ahead and asked a local for a cheapish fish house recommendation. Twenty minutes later we found ourselves wandering in tourism purgatory (River St) and ate at Tubby's on River Street.
Yes, it has a nice patio overlooking the river and the throngs. Yes, it has fish. But we were very disappointed in the bad service, the worse salad, and the overpriced average fish. I'm not sure what our appetizer would have tasted like as we never got it, my broiled shrimp platter was tolerable but not a good value, my husband had overbreaded grouper fingers, and both of us found the frozen centers of our corn on the cob. Given how long it took us to get the food, at least it could have been uniformly warm. Perhaps if we didn't grow up near the ocean and thus know the value and taste of fresh seafood, we would have been happy chugging some beer and munching on fried shrimp with microwaved corn.

Generally, we are not the kind of people who get attitude at a coffeehouse, we exude aloof hipness at all times so we were a little surprised at getting treated like loud fat Americans at a Parisian cafe. Perhaps we were not wearing enough black or took too long looking at the menu (horrors!) for the surly girl at the Sentient Bean. The weary sighs and rolled-eyes "You haven't been here before have you?" could have been negated by good food. But no, and we were 0-2. The ciabetta sandwiches were pretty crappy. The bread was thick and gummy. The substance that was supposed to be pesto pretty much tasted only of the canned garlic used in its creation. The eggplant was leathery, the olives were so sparingly doled out you'd think we were on rations, and the salad dressing was very tart and there was way too much of it. Even sharing 2 different sandwiches between us we could not feel good about our choice. The house coffee and limeade were good at least, but that wasn't helping my garlicky burps later on. Maybe we caught them on a bad day, certainly the other staff we watched were not as surly as ours, or maybe this a place for coffee and hanging out. Not for food.

All is not lost. A spot of hope appears in the unlikliest of places. We drove out a little ways to get some saltwater action and ended up on Tybee Island which really isn't an island. It was low tide so in order to get our feet wet and out of the burning sand, we had to cross the very full midweek beach. Sick of being thwarted for seafood, we hoped that Fannie's on the Beach would offer some tasty food. Honestly, I think I picked the place because it had the least hideous website of many Tybee places I'd seen.

What visit to Savannah would be complete without a mention of Paula Deen's Lady and Sons restaurant? The website even tells you to start standing in line at 9:30 for lunch at 11, and 3:30 for dinner at 5, but I didn't believe it until I saw it.

10AM on a Wednesday morning. Screw that. No place can have consistently good food and have that high of a turnover. I realize its mostly a buffet, but for $diety's sake, its still just a meat + 3. Its not like Paula Deen is there in the kitchen, and its not like I can't get great meat +3s here in Atlanta or pretty much any town in the freaking South.

*Its not all bad news, Savannah's good pubs are reviewed next!

Mediterranean Grill

Sometimes, especially in the summer, I get an overwhelming craving for Hummus and/or Falafels. These gastronomical delights fuel my fantasies of desert adventures, a la T.E. Lawrence, as well as just being great summer food. Unfortunately, the relative low cost and mistaken ease of making both items has led more than a few restaurants to add them to their menu; the result being a general lowering of our expectations of these simple delights. Good hummus should be creamy but firm, with just a hint of lemon and garlic. “Hummus expansion packs” like black bean, sun dried tomato, etc. can be good but should be approached with trepidation, as often these are made to cover up a fundamental weakness in the starting product. A good falafel has a crispy outer coating with a soft interior, not unlike a properly made hushpuppy, and should leave a thin layer of oil on the lips, a reminder of its fried origins. Bad falafels run the gamut from rock hard greasy heavy balls to undercooked runny interiors. Unlike hummus in which additions can produce interesting, sometimes even good results, falafel “variants” such as the addition of corn or soybeans (I do not kid) just do not work. Somehow these great tastes have gone the way of the quiche: kitchen sink foods for the disposal of yesterday’s leftovers.

For roughly a decade Mediterranean Grill, on the corner of N. Decatur and Clairmont, has been teaching by example providing some of the best hummus and falafels to be found in the area. Falafels, in sandwiches or on a platter are made to order and are always warm and crispy. The hummus is platonic: slightly tangy, creamy, and cool. These guys also make a mean baba ghanoush (creamy eggplant salad) and a fantastic tabbouleh, a fantastic salad of bulgur wheat, mint, parsely, scallions, and tomato. For non vegetarians, the gyros are some of the best I’ve ever had, the chicken has a nice smoky flavor, and the kufta kabobs (spiced ground beef sausages) are fantastic. Turkish coffee is made to order and richly spiced with cardamom.

While the good far outweighs the bad at this restaurant it would be wrong of me to ignore those points where Mediterranean Grill falls short. The salads are made from iceberg lettuce, a bed of spicy field greens or an arugula salad would be a far better pairing. The fried calamari is overly chewy, and tastes like it is the frozen and pre-breaded variety. The stuffed grape leaves are dripping with oil and share the same “pre-made” feel as the calamari. Finally, the “Greek potatoes” feel like a feeble attempt to satisfy people’s need for fries and the staff would do well to tell those people to piss off and eat some tabbouleh instead.

Prices are good with most of the platters running around $8 and sandwiches around $4-6. Large servings of hummus are a meal in their own right, and come in around $4. Order at the counter, take a number, and bus you own table, there are no servers here, only an opportunity to support a local restaurant trying to educate the masses about some grossly misunderstood food.