FoodieBuddha.com

Sorry folks, I’ve been absolutely swamped with work and such.  Alas, my blogging has been essentially non-existent.  However, I promise to get back on the hobby horse momentarily.  While you were sleeping, I’ve been out and about and taken a couple of trips to Hugh Acheson’s Empire State South.  While y’all wait on that … check out Cliff’s notes!  Now on to the sad but true.

Wan Lai (4897 Buford Hwy) is apparently the latest BuHi Chinese hot spot to go tits up.  Infused by EatDrinkMan [If you don’t follow him – you are dead to me] and confirmed by DrZachary thru their own website, this place is gone to the Dead Pool.  Take it upon Spark Plug to have the goods as well … her photo is the one above.  

Let’s all mourn for a restaurant that most every foodie in the city hit up more than once.  I’m sure there’s more to the story, but I’m not privy to any of it.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, might I suggest that ignorance is bliss.  If you have a hankering to find out more about that chicken, check out my first impression.

Last night, I rolled out of the house ‘bout 8pm hell bent on a mission.  You see, Buford Highway is canvassed with Korean restaurants.  It’s a cuisine I love and covered in the past and a culinary adventure reviewed extensively by stalwarts like Eat, Drink, Man (linky), Take Thou Food (linky), and Chow Down Atlanta (linky).  My mission: find a place untouched by our collective obsession.  That’s no small task but as luck would have it … the food gods smiled on me.

Stationed in one of the dime a dozen strip centers in Chamblee is a brand new Korean restaurant.  It’s so new that they don’t even have menus and even the name seems to be debatable.  The sign outside might tell you the name, but I don’t know cuz I can’t read the damn thing.  For now, I’ve assigned it the title of Korea Soup House.  It’s located at 7130 Buford Highway, denoted by a 24-hour sign, and sits next to Mirak, a Korean joint discussed by the aforementioned Gene Lee, aka EDM.  Let’s put it like this … despite casual digs and no menus, I felt like I had fleeced them when I saw the $25.00 pre-tip bill they handed me.

Continue reading…

What The Pho (actually spelled phở and pronounced fuh as in fuck – hey someone’s gotta say it!) is one of suburban Atlanta’s long standing Vietnamese restaurants.  It’s been in the Duluth/Gwinnett area for a handful of years and has seen its share of foodistas slip quietly through its very casual digs.  Though I’ve dusted my share of pho bowls, it’s been some time since my last visit and hence we have a faux first impression.

Joined in arm by one sleek beauty, we set off from the inner city one Tuesday evening destined for this Pleasant Hill mainstay.  It’s just a few steps east of Buford Highway, sitting north side and next to the destination worthy Café Todahmgol.  Given the area’s propensity for mysterious signs that might as well say “Go Pho-ck Yourself” in some other language, you might want to tote a GPS with you if you’re navigationally challenged.  Somehow, even though I’ve been in the area a million times … I managed to take a wrong turn!

Detours aside, I finally manage to convince Laura that when I pulled into the strip center, I meant to.  We walked in ready to Narfle the Garthok and chit chat our night away. [This is where you ask yourself … What the Pho is he talking about?]

Continue reading…

Mrs. Vennerable and I make it our personal quest to check out as many bulgolgi offerings as we can.  That being the case, it should be no surprise that the two of us made our way up to Doraville and stumbled into Today Restaurant (or Woori Jip for the Korean in you) to add another notch in that bedpost.  You see, most Atlanta foodie fanatics have made a food quest or two up Buford Highway in search of great grub.  The area is knee deep in what we American’s identify as “ethnic food;” and, if you didn’t know better … you could probably spend a few years eating a meal a day there and never enter the same stronghold more than once.

Despite the endless array of options, a handful of restaurants in each cultural compartment always seem to garner a good bit of attention.  In the case of Korean cuisine, Hae Woon Dae is one such establishment.  Why do I mention HWD in a review of Today Restaurant?  Simple, because they are smack dab on top of each other.  Unfortunately for Today, Hae Woon Dae is a bit of a behemoth in reputation and I can’t imagine it helps to be their neighbor.  However, as Vennerable and I turned into the somewhat off the beaten path parking lot at 5805 Buford Highway, the mystery of the unknown is exactly why we stepped out of the shadows for a meal (well, that and the fact that Don Quixote is closed on Sunday’s).

Snuggled between those two eateries you’ll find a demonstrative sign and a busy as a bee doorway.  Behind that door sits the predictably styled establishment known around these English speaking parts as Today Restaurant.  At first sight, the ground work was certainly there for a foodie discovery worthy of the “Foodie Finds” tag (currently reserved for The Kind Pie and Celia’s Carniceria).  While the meal didn’t quite knock it out of the park like those two, we left feeling like we got our monies’ worth.

Continue reading…

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.

Continue reading…

Buford Highway restaurants carry with them a certain pedigree that is often unsubstantiated.  The straight shot road that stretches from the inners of the city to well beyond the loop is home to a number of ethnic delights.  However, self-proclaimed foodies seem to treat any establishment located on or near BuHi with unabashed reverence.  Call it guilt by association.

Public enemy number one, none other than the ever popular Café 101.  The large, free-standing rotunda that sits about a half-mile inside the loop, has been there for years.  It seems like a good two or three since I myself last sat down to sample C101’s goods.  So though this isn’t quite a first impression, this isn’t a full review nor a quick hits post.

Continue reading…

Last week, I mentioned that a well respected NYC foodie and a local heavyweight were scampering around town to try some of the best Atlanta has to offer.  Yesterday, Ed Levine, the NYC dude of Serious Eats fame, posted a writing by John Kessler, the AJC’s food dude.  Topics included the delicious pizzas that we all talk oh so much about.  Yes, that’s Varasano’s, Antico Pizza, & Fritti, for all you rock dwellers.  Though there isn’t a great deal of “review” details in the post, the article does seem to tip its hat in the direction of Antico.

Kessler goes on to discuss Atlanta’s burgeoning farm-to-table scene, BuHi’s Korean BBQ and ramen, and checks out with a tip of the hat to Woodfire Grill’s Kevin Gillespie and The Hil’s Hilary White.  I’m not sure if Levine actually went anywhere other than Antico and V’s, and his opinion is notably absent from the piece.  Still, it’s great to see Kessler pushing us on the national scene, and it’s a well-written summary piece for anyone trying to get a lay of the land.

[via Serious Eats]

There is a certain dance that occurs every few months in Atlanta’s Chinese restaurant community.  The formula is simple: Well regarded chef shows up; foodies flock to said location; chef up and leaves soon thereafter; foodies follow.  Rinse and repeat.  It’s happened with Frank Ma, it’s happened with Chef Chang (of Tasty China), and it’s happened with countless others.  The latest rendition finds us at Bo Bo Garden up in the Doraville/Chamblee area.

The chef, whose name is still a mystery to me, showed up a few months ago at Wan Lai, a Cantonese job up BuHi.  Word spread like hot sauce at a cook out and foodies flocked (myself included).  Most loved it, some enjoyed it (that’s me), and a only a few turned their nose up.  Then, like a fart in the wind, the head chef, his wife, and a handful of others vanished.  Turns out, that group shot up the street and settled in Pinetree Plaza.

Continue reading…

Last week, a few of us got together for some lunch at Taqueria El Rey Del Taco. It seems almost like clockwork: once every handful of months, an Atlanta food blogger heads over to Buford Highway to grab some of ERDT’s lauded tacos.  Last week was my turn.

Continue reading…

Open roughly four years (at least by my count), Co’m Vietnamese Grill has become one of the de facto responses to the question: “Where do I go in Atlanta for good Vietnamese?”  It is therefore no surprise that this BuHi hotspot now has a devout following and a satellite location.

Continue reading…