FoodieBuddha.com

It’s amazing how often one can drive by a restaurant and never even think to enter.  It’s even more astounding when one breaks from tradition (Peking Duck), samples the grub, and finds that the restaurant is a real gem.  Such is the case for Wong Kee BBQ & Peking Duck, a stealth bomber Chinese restaurant in Norcross, GA.  Even if the meal wasn’t flat out perfect, there isn’t a single reason to think that our abbreviated lunch experience at Wong Kee won’t go down as one of the more scrumptious samplings of this calendar year.

Tucked in the corner of Ben Thanh Plaza (know to us Gaijin as Oakbrook Square Shopping Center), foot traffic for this strip mall usually goes the way of Hong Kong Supermarket.  To (Peking duck) complicate matters, Wong Kee’s immediate neighbor is the widely overrated Bento Café (which I’ll recap in the next few days if not hours).  As a consequence of those two hot topics, this “little Chinese restaurant that could” seems to get a little lost in the mix.  After a single glance, that appears to be a real shame.

Having just spent a good 30-minutes stuffing my face full of Celia’s, Spark Plug and I left Brother Chris behind and went to top off over at Bento Café (Peking Duck).  On our way through the Ben Thanh parking lot, two words of mystical harmony caught my eye: “Peking Duck.”  One look in the window and we were hooked.  Adventures were in order and Wong Kee gladly obliged.

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As I hobble through life with a Droid as my sole camera, it’s time for another one of my first impressions that really isn’t a first impression.  Falafel King sits on the Emory campus just off the junction of Oxford and N. Decatur.  Though it’s purveyors are of Korean lineage, this shack sized, spit using restaurant actually sells the oddly married cuisines of Japan (in this case sushi) and the Mediterranean.  This odd mish mash of grub, combined with a distinct facade (displayed at right by babythekitten) and pocket book friendly prices, helps to draw customers from areas well beyond Emory.

In many circles, the King is treated as royalty.  The reality is closer to something more understated; however, for a place that freshly pats down their chickpea mixture, they do just fine.

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Café Alice is one of those non-descript restaurants that exists in every strip center in every city around the country.  In this case, you’ll find this glorified sandwich shop in the Windy Hill Shopping Center off Cobb Pkwy.  It’s probably family owned (seemingly Asian in persuasion) and the idea of being “chef driven” is as foreign to the staff as nuclear physics is to me.  They aren’t trying to win any awards or garner the attention of foodies near and far.  No, it seems instead that this is one of those business run by people who want to do the best they can without any misconceptions or false hopes.  Mind you, that statement is entirely assumptive.

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It’s been several years since Taka Moriuchi packed his knives, left his position as understudy to sushi God Sotohiro Kosugi (aka the dude who ran the much discussed Soto), and settled in as the leader of Taka Sushi Café.

Much like my father, it took me some time before I warmed to the idea of visiting Taka-san in Buckhead.  Even after Soto departed our fare city, something in me caused this undue shackling of obligations.  Mind you, nothing about that decision had anything to do with the kind and approachable Taka.

Time passed and wounds healed, and so began my long inevitable decent into complacency.  Yes, I finally started to drift in and out of this notable Buckhead establishment.  As it happened, 24-months had flown by since my last soirée, well before the young Buddha was born within.  Rather than try and recall experiences buried in the cobwebs someone might call “my brain,” a recent night cap inspired this infant impression.

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Some meals are so transcendent, so illuminating, and so invigorating that you are left speechless.  Some meals are just that good, incapable of being captured in text or image, and ethereally delicious.  This my friends, was not one of those meals.  No, the recent torture session of a meal that took place that fateful night left me feeling a bit like Tyson (post Buster).  No, actually … take that back, this meal made me feel like Ernie looks after an ass whooping at the hands of Peter (Ernie’s died several times over).

Café Antalya failed so epically on so many fronts that I fear nothing short of a tactical strike could save it.  Blow this blight of an establishment straight to heck and back.  Start over … get rid of the chef, get rid of the *cough* designer, and shoot whomever is in charge of sourcing.  Then, they might have a chance … maybe.  If I lived in the Dunwoody area, I’d be calling the fire department just to make sure they had enough water in the tanks.  I want my tax dollars back… who hands out the business licenses?

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Nestled in the ground floor of Morningside’s Belvedere building, Amuse has taken shape as a pseudo French bistro.  Now the tenants of the shuttered Allegro space, Amuse comes backed by Andy Alibaksh (via  Diem Restaurant Group) and Arnaud Michel (of Anis restaurant).  The duo brought in a fresh staff, hired a known chef (Lenny Robinson), and let him come up with a playful menu.  But like so many before them, this “accomplished” set of restaurateurs seems to imagine dreams that just don’t become reality.

I’m lucky in that I have yet to get a serious case of writers block.  Instead, I’m usually smothered by writers apathy … or whatever you may call it.  Recently, this has been complicated by experiences that have left me a shell of my former self.  Something about me was off … had I become soft?  Had I succumbed to the whims of beautiful women? Was all not well in the life of Foodie Buddha?  Maybe … maybe not.  Regardless, thanks to a recent pep talk courtesy of Spark Plug … I’m back.  Well, actually internal motivators aside, the true culprit here was the meal at Amuse.  After several weeks of quasi uneventful dining, this little bomb blew me strait to heck … and it took a couple of my friends with me.

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It would seem that The Burger Club has gotten off to a rocky start.  First, there was the name fiasco; then the opening date was repeatedly pushed back.  After all that, the lukewarm reviews started to come in.  Despite these adverse factors, this Vinings burger joint seems like a bustling hotspot; at least that was the case during lunch the other day.

Packed near capacity, families, local businessmen, and a slew of shopping entourages lined up to get their fill of classic American gluttony.  Inside this friendly little space, meaty food trays flew about with purpose.  Severs and food runners ran around with haphazard fervor and there seemed to be a 50’s diner energy to the restaurant.

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Hot on the heels of the much more fashionable, Fünke and I took a little ride to the just opened Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft, a Thai restaurant in the former Taurus location.  Backed by the familial lineage of Nan and Tamarind Seed, daughter DD Niyomkul has taken the helm of the kitchen (and the restaurant) in an attempt to offer a “casual” experience powered by authentic Thai food via small plates.

You may have noticed the quotation marks encompassing the word casual.  Most every press piece and notation that I’ve seen on Tuk Tuk mentions the casual nature of the restaurant.  While the vibe here is far from the tie-wearing atmosphere of Il Mulino, it’s not any closer to that of the flip-flop and jeans places that dot our cityscape.  What you have is an elegant room that banters back and forth between the intimate date night and the more friendly “scene” spot.  To put it another way, Tuk Tuk is Buckhead casual, not BuHi casual.

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I feel like I should preemptively duck for this one.  Community Q, a Decatur meat emporium, is the result of a Triforcean partnership between David Roberts, Jim Laber, and Stuart Baesel.  Backed by Roberts’ foundation at Sam and Dave’s, the trio has set out to save Atlanta from the clutches of the evil Ganon and his barbecue minions.

Not surprisingly, the amount of love doled out on Community Q has been nothing short of intense and swift.  The Geek chimed in (several times in fact), Top Chef did it, and the carnivorously anxious gang at Creative Loafing also made a trip out.  Speckled in between these notations were riblets from the young, the restless, and the truly irascible.  In between all this hustle and bustle, I, joined by a duo of foodies, managed to sneak my way in to dine on some swine.

After seeing what S&D has put out for the past few years, I’d say CQ is playing in that pigpen.  Though people often dismiss me as a curmudgeon, I wasn’t the only one at the table to walk away less than blown away.  This was advertised as something transcendent … alas, it was not.  While one of the better barbecues in Atlanta, there is still a long way to go.  Though I will most certainly be back, this meal did little to make me feel like a drive beyond Daddy D’s or Fox Bros is necessary.

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I’ve had a few watershed traffic days in my soon to be 12-months of blogging.  One of those days came from a little blurb about the devastating flood damage to Canoe, that effervescent contemporary American restaurant which sits on the banks of the not-so-mighty ‘Hooch.  While the restaurant may or may not be in your daily dialect, it is almost always mentioned as one of the elite Atlanta restaurants.  Further to the point, after roughly 14-years, Canoe has the longest legs in the notoriety department of any restaurant in the Vinings/Smyrna area.

Sure enough, there was a big outcry when word spread that the restaurant was forced to close because of ridiculously high waters (yes … that’s the absurdly high waterline).  If there was ever any doubt as to its status in the “pantheon” of the ATL dining-scape, the public support that followed, which was swift AND substantial, would quell most any doubts. 

Some two-months later, riding the hardworking backs of executive chef Carvel Grant Gould, special events manager Laurie Vance, and the rest of the team, Canoe is back.  The excitement was pronounced enough to draw John Kessler’s attention, he returned to wax-foodetic in his last post of the awesomeness that was 30 restaurants, 30 days series.  It’s a great read.  Though I didn’t check it out until post meal, I noticed some subtle differences in the mutual dishes.

Anywho, when Papa Buddha and I headed over there for lunch a few days ago, something happened to me.  I got all giddy like a school girl.  You should consider just how disturbing that statement is … remember, I’m a straight dude.  But back on point, regardless of the culinary experience that was immanent, I just got all warm and fuzzy inside.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the same would happen for most any “culinarian” with Canoe on their schedule.  That alone may make a trip there worthwhile.

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