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Good news for we fans of Café Agora, a Buckhead gyro and Mediterranean spot where I’ve popped more foodie cherries at than I can count.  In July, the Atlanta Business Chronicle broke the news that Café Agora was adding a satellite location in Midtown.  At the time, ABC reported that Agora hoped to be open at 92 Peachtree Place by late September.  As is common place with these sorts of things, that didn’t actually happen.

Fast forward a few months to present day, and it SEEMS like change is just around the corner.  Word around the campfire is that owner Mr. Ozelci (but you don’t need to call him that) hopes to have Al’s Café Agora Midtown open in the early parts of February.  I can wait nary another day as I have yet to find a Greek/Mediterranean/Turkish restaurant in the area that can hold a candle to CA.  Their gyros burst in the mouth with flavor as pronounced as pop rocks.  Beyond that, who doesn’t love to watch the jovial Al feed his customers as spoons goodies from a meze plate into the mouths of customer after customer?  Seriously – the dude likes to feed people as if he’s teaching a baby how to eat!  Don’t be scared … just go with it.

Also, Agora is finally starting to expand its mother ship, which TNT told us about last year.  The build out shouldn’t take long, but I have no time frame for when its actually going to be completed.  All I know is that Café Agora is expanding, and Atlanta will be better for it.

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After a strong first encounter with Octopus Bar, the late night East Atlanta eatery in So Ba’s porch, I returned last night eager to enjoy a repeat appearance.  I was stunningly disappointed.  Nearly all of the goodwill Angus Brown and Nhan Le had garnered crashed in a blaze of “unglory.”  This meal was such a disconnect and such a complete 180 from my first experience, that it is incumbent upon me to relay some portion of the updated experience.

Octopus Bar runs from 10pm until 3am on a daily basis (sans Sundays) and it’s a completely different execution than is So Ba’s.  Whereas So Ba is a dedicated Vietnamese restaurant, Octopus Bar is a culinary potpourri of dishes mostly in the $8-$15 dollar range.  To my surprise, the menu for last night’s meal was significantly reworked from my initial trip.  As nothing on the menu informed me that it would change with any frequency, this was an observation doused in apprehension.

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While perusing my community message board this past morning, I stumbled across this particular exchange.  Is it something y’all are dying to read?  Probably not – in fact, this may be a complete and total waste of time.  But it’s Friday, so let’s have a little fun.

Basically, this is a cautionary tale of late night drinking, fast food runs, and what happens when best intentions go to all hell.  Thankfully, it was a far less sordid tale then the story behind that little driving mishap pictured here.  After I secured permission to post this, I did change some identifiable details.  The rest is as it was written.

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I must, in all fairness, give credit where credit is due.  A few months back, as my West Coast food orgy impended, I got an email from one of my best friends.  Though he’s a guy who finds food as interesting as petrified wood, he happens to call East Atlanta home.  Consequently, he tipped me off to Octopus Bar, a restaurant within a restaurant set to takeover late night at So Ba in East Atlanta Village.

After a little asking around, I found out that Octopus was the brainchild of So Ba’s Nhan Le and one Angus Brown, who serves as the executive chef and last collected a paycheck from the Steven Satterfield helmed Miller Union.  While I’ve had little positive to say about So Ba, simply hearing about this odd couple of the culinary world piqued my interest.

Since that initial offering of info, the project got some airtime thanks to Atlanta’s sauciest of servers.  Fast forward to late last week and I was finally able to settle in and see if there was anything good about Octopus.  Turns out, there was a lot to hang our hats on after one meal at the East Atlanta restaurant/bar.

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Let’s assume for a second that you have yet to step foot inside of Victory Sandwich Bar, the 9-month old bouncing baby Inman Park sandwich shop.  If you find yourself in that unfortunate group of people, I have a suggestion: Lie and say you have.  That’s right.  I said it and I meant it.

I’d like to think that amongst my friends and cohorts, I serve as a Zuul-like gatekeeper for restaurant recs (albeit one absent of demonic qualities and a pair of boobs).  I don’t think that it’s much of a stretch to say you readers serve a similar role amongst your peeps.  So if your qualifying of a restaurant serves as an emotional experience in the way sharing a new tune does, I suggest you add Victory to your repertoire.  Even since my first visit on day three, this friendly on the pocket “deli with edge” has been one smooth operator.

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While it’s far from the most expensive thing in town and there are certainly more elevated restaurants  in the city, Buckhead’s Café Agora always finds its way onto my list of favorite/best/suggested eats in Atlanta.  Not much has changed with the food since I used Agora as an early guinea pig in my writing career.  Though I did have a worse than usual experience during one of my many recent visits, it was only a negligible drop-off and a temporary one at that.

But all that’s neither here nor there.  The meze platters still kick ass, the mixed grill (below) almost always finds itself to my table, and the beautifully presented gyro wraps show that the “law of diminishing returns” does have its exceptions.  But despite all of my fervor for Agora and familiarity with it, there was one thing I did not know was possible there until last week.

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In a lot of ways, Delia’s Chicken Sausage Stand is an all out surprise.  You’ll find Delia’s on a somewhat downtrodden strip of Moreland Ave just south of I20 and roughly a half mile from East Atlanta Village.  Not exactly the epicenter of Atlanta’s food scene, you’ll know it by the sharp orange and green accented sign serving as an immediate call to arms amongst the nearby row of fast food chains and gas stations.  It’s almost too pretty for the neighborhood. 

Yes, when one considers an East Atlanta food stand powered by chicken sausage, it would follow that said establishment was probably just a dive.  The Sausage Stand is anything but.  With alpha-branding, a color scheme that screams “ad agency,” and a cutesy-adult menu that reads like something out of Go The **** To Sleep, it’s apparent that owners Molly Gunn and Delia Champion have their sites set on a larger game.  That assumption aside, several internet sites have quotes from the duo attesting to such intentions.  After one such encounter with Delia’s … it seems that it might be best if they put the horse before the cart.

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Since Perla Taqueria first showed up, the restaurant has already had it’s fair share of adversity.  A fire delayed the December opening of this Piedmont Heights taqueria, located in a converted Mrs. Winner’s, until just a few weeks ago.  Despite this, one would be hard pressed to find evidence of said destruction inside of the Mexi-kitsch, fast casual dinning spot.

Given the concept, the fact that they employ the previous tenant’s drive-thru, and the location, one can’t help but draw some comparisons to Perla’s not too distant neighbors Taco Cabana and Taqueria Del Sol.  When Frosty Alabama and I showed up just after the grand opening, the place was already a buzz with families checking out one of Atlanta’s newer taco spots.

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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.

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When word spread that Woody’s Famous Philadelphia Cheesesteaks in Midtown had closed, Atlanta’s food fans took a collective sigh.  Though not everyone found the place destination worthy, Woody’s had a distinct personality and better than average grub.  Opened in 1975 by David Pastoria, the free standing hut had served as a fixture of quirky Atlanta for roughly 35 years.

But 12,784 days is a stretch and Pastoria had his fill of the restaurant life.  Though I’m not exactly sure of the new ownership structure, Steven Renner decided that Pastoria’s departure was the opportunity he needed.  So in early June of this year, marked with a little elbow grease and some TLC, Renner gave Woody’s Cheesesteaks a new life in its old location.

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