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Writing about Café Todahmgol in Duluth is an exercise in frustration … I just get hungry.  Perhaps that is why I’ve never spent the time to relay my thoughts on this tucked away Korean restaurant way up yonder.  You see, as you begin to reach the Northeast border of Atlanta, most often identified by Interstate 285 and Spaghetti Junction, Korean restaurants become as common place as even the most inundating of fast food chains.

Though these spots are everywhere, it seems as if most “ethnic food” passionistas continually identify just a handful of restaurant when discussing Atlanta’s best Korean Barbecue.  Restaurants like Han Il Kwan, Hae Woon Dae, Honey Pig, Iron Age, and Myung Ga Won repeatedly get a nod.  Cho Sun Ok, Sun and Moon Café, and Star Daepo also get mentioned.  That’s frankly just the tip of the iceberg.  I’ve been to all of those places, some several times over, and yet I’m constantly disappointed that Café T, one of Atlanta’s best Korean restaurants of any discipline, is buried beneath a heap of the less worthy. 

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Time to get all “journalistic” on you peeps.

Step 1
On Friday, Spark Plug let it be known that David Sweeney, Atlanta’s leading vegetablemonger, was on his way to Cakes & Ale.  As she noted:

Dynamic Dish chef David Sweeney is slated to head the new bakery at Cakes & Ale for its daily lunch service that will start in a couple of weeks. This is perhaps the best restaurant news we’ve had in a long time. So excited!!!

Sweeney, who rose to fame on the heels of Dynamic Dish restaurant, was most recently at Restaurant Eugene.  Subsequently, I hit up the folks over at Eugene to see if there was anything else to be known.  They told me that Sweeney’s last week with the H+F family just concluded.  No word yet on the exact date of Sweeney’s arrival at C&A.

Oh, btw … Chloe also told y’all to get up to Bo Bo Garden post haste as their chef is getting ready to open a new restaurant on P’Hill in Gwinnett.

Step  2
In other H+F news, there have been some changes at H+F Bottle Shop.  Ashley Hall, Atlanta’s redheaded and bright-eyed wine maven who was the Bottle Shop’s opening wine specialist, has moved on.  According to the HF people, Hall “left about a month ago to work on a business of her own.”  To bide her time, Hall is rummaging through her old stomping grounds with the Quality Wine & Spirits folks.  She goes live there on the 1st of Sep.

Ian Mendelsohn has replaced Hall and while admittedly far less appealing to gentleman like me, he comes with a respectable amount of experience in his own right.  For the past few months he has been with Avant Partir and prior to that, he served as wine specialist for the Concentrics group and the wine director for the St. Regis Hotel.

UPDATES: It has been confirmed that only one vehicle was stolen from Bocado last night.  This according to owner Brian Lewis via a third party.  Twitter user @ETK1 has also said that only one was taken!  However, 3 Sets of keys were acquired by the perp(s)

Last night, while some of you probably slumbered and others of you danced the night away (and I met up with Spark Plug), several customers were robbed at Bocado.  My understanding is that the thief stole the keys from the valet and then took five automobiles from the nearby lot.  I’ll see what else I can find out about this,

I still have not been able to confirm exactly how the theft took place, but my understanding is still that the keys were taken from the valet stand

For someone like me who usually doesn’t care for valet service, I wonder if this will make restaurants think twice about how they employ the service.  Bocado does have a parking issue in that their lot is actually a block away, and it was a Friday night, but this can’t be good news for anyone involved.

In the meantime, be careful … even over in the ever popular Westside.

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.

Chinese Soup Dumplings (xiaolongbao and tang bao) courtesy misoponia

In Atlanta, and many other cities across the states, the popularity of Asian cuisine seems to be growing.  In years past, it was essentially relegated to take-out status whereby hurried families grabbed their nearest American-influenced Chinese food (see: Mongolian Beef, General Tso’s Chicken, etc…).  Nowadays, we just can’t seem to get enough of the stuff.  Thanks in part to the education doled out by blogs like Take Thou Food (website), Chow Down Atlanta (web), and Eat, Drink Man (web), foodies from all walks of life can’t seem to get enough of that far off cuisine that drapes Buford Highway.

Though the methods used to both execute and consume Chinese food are as varied as the people themselves, I see many a people anxiously dive into dumpling buckets in a fashion that might not be ideal for the task at hand.  This habitual flocking of forks and hands leads me to ask and answer two questions: What are soup dumplings? and How do you eat them?

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A few days ago on my way up Buford Highway, a couple of changes to the Doraville section of the thoroughfare caught my attention.

1) 88 Tofu House is now closed.  If you’re the type that likes to reminisce, you can check out Chow Down Atlanta’s review of the now defunct 24-hour joint.  If you can’t tell by the watermark, it’s her picture that I stole for this post.

2) Meanwhile, Pung Mie, a longstanding “upscale” Chinese restaurant just down the street from 88 Tofu House, is also closed.  It appears though that this closing is simply a part of the relocation process.  According to their website, Pung Mie is moving to 1605 Pleasant Hill Rd.  That address used to house Corky’s Ribs in Duluth.

Call it a chicken biscuit … call it a sandwich … call it a coronary heart attack … I don’t care what you call it, so long as you make it a point to grab Noon Midtown’s “Stack” sooner than later.  Katie Birmingham’s top notch restaurant has been kicking ass and taking names since I first stumbled in there a little over a year ago.

Though it has grown beyond its conceptual roots as a lunch place, Noon Midtown has become one of my favorite dinner spots and best bets for a noon time meal.  Case in point, I’ve been there enough times that they can pick me out in a crowd.  However, until this past weekend, I had never ventured over to try their Saturday brunch.  After watching my beloved Oranji win them some football, I took advantage of the break in the action to meet up with Atlanta’s favorite bachelorette blogger.  Having seen Noon’s brunch menu some time ago, I was particularly inspired by Live to Feast’s memo and Chow Down Atlanta’s love note.

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Since my introduction to Yakitori Jinbei in late 2009 (thanks Spark Plug), the restaurant has worked itself into my regular rotation.  I’ve introduced several people to the joint, told countless others, and return whenever I get a hankering for some ramen. (occasional acts of indiscretion at Haru Ichiban notwithstanding).

Having successfully convinced many a foodie that I am not actually cuckoo for cocoa puffs, the newly minted Ramen Brigade set out late last week for a little Hi, Hello, and some much needed sustenance.  Having grabbed Spark Plug and @NoKungFu in route, we met up with Dea (website) and Weigy (website) for some good ole fashion yakitori.  Needless to say, I had no business at the table with people who might as well bleed Asiatic cuisine.  Still, I managed to sneak a seat, and the Ramen Brigade was up and running.

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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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It seems almost shameful.  Not only am I deeply passionate about Japanese culture and cuisine, but I pride myself on visiting most anything that resembles a Japanese restaurant here in the Dirty.  Such was the basis for my dismay as I met up with ChowDownAtlanta (website) for a little grub late last week.  After our usual game of who’s gonna make the call, we finally settled on the long standing Yakitori Jinbei for our lunch endeavor.  Located up Cobb Pkwy, just outside I-285, it is beyond shocking that I had never before ventured into the tiny strip mall eatery.  Open since ‘02, I lived not more than 3 miles from the place for many a year.

Walking into the 40 some-odd seat room, you can’t help but identify the formulaic Japanese décor.  Heavy on the soft, and accented with the deep, the simplicity of the space is both expected and demanded.  It is a style that I will never tire of.  My affinity for the layout, however, is inconsequential.  What is of importance is that the place is clean and the furniture and such are all of relatively high build quality.

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