Posted by Foodie Buddha
on April 07, 2010
Sauced, Ria Pell’s new fusion soul food venture in Inman Park Atlanta, has been motoring along for several months. Though the restaurant came up for a brief breath of air in 2009, it actually opened for real in early 2010. Soon after, Spark Plug and I made it the appetizer stop on one of our habitual dinning excursions. Though it’s taken me a while to recap the less than stellar experience, ATLiens have been treated to several reviews during my hiatus thanks to some of our mainstream media brethren (linkage at the bottom). It seems I’m not alone in my total lack of fandom for Sauced.
Sauced itself is Pell’s attempt to offer entry-level fine dining. After building up her eponymous Ria’s Bluebird to the point where it’s one of the more well-known breakfast places, Pell is now serving "inspired” soul food in the midst of a late 60’s-esc dinning hall. I use the words inspired here loosely because the only true inspiration seems to be coming from the servers. In the world of take it or leave it, this grub is definitely a leave it. To put it another way, it’s never a good thing when someone spends the first part of a review talking about something other than the atmosphere or the food itself. In the case of Meridith Ford Goldman, she talked about the bathrooms. Not a good sign.
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Posted by Foodie Buddha
on December 28, 2009
If you take a trip down to the corner of Edgewood and Waddell, you’ll find yourself smack dab in front of one of Atlanta’s newest southern food spots, albeit a slightly modified one. Sauced, a new rendition from the gang at Ria’s Bluebird, is just about ready to rock and roll. As you’ll see from the image above (taken from the Sauced website), they’re really going to get it started on NYE. However, they were open for a bit at the end of August and have already started letting people in the door over the past few days.
In the news as early as this past January, Ria Pell’s newest venture is a step towards the high-brow. Keep in mind, that is a statement of relativity. The food is cost conscious and there is a lot of focus on the sauces. That said, I don’t believe they’ve employed a saucier (that’d probably be a little too fru fru anyway). While you sip on your Courvoisier, you and the Ladies Man can chilax on the big couch in the midst of the brown and cream space. If you are heading down there in the next few, make sure to be liquid – it’s cash only.
I’ll wax-foodetic once I work through my back log. In the meantime, check out their facebook page, as it already has quite the following, and get ready to munch away.
Sauced Restaurant Address & Information
753 Edgewood Ave, Atlanta, GA 30307 // 404.688.6554 // Sauced website // Sauced on facebook
Posted by Foodie Buddha
on November 20, 2009
On a recent working weekend, after Adam and I were rejected by Busy Bee Cafe (they are closed on Saturdays), we were forced to look elsewhere for grub. We volleyed back and forth until Adam suggested Paschal’s, a long-standing highbrow soul food joint. It’s amazing to me how many times I’ve visited Castleberry Hills for a meal, only to drive right past Paschal’s. Furthermore, it’s not a particularly good sign that when pressed to come up with a place to get my Suth’un fix in, Paschal’s almost never comes to mind. This despite the fact that it is in close proximity to where I work/live.
Started as a motor hotel by a couple of brothers way back yonder, this Atlanta mainstay has gone the way of corporate America. As my only previous visits to Paschal’s occurred around the time I just started to learn my two plus two’s, I cannot really speak to what once was. What we have now, for better or worse, is the fine dining version of Mary Mac’s Tea Room.
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Posted by Foodie Buddha
on June 15, 2009
Overall: 
Ahhhhhhhhh … everyone’s favorite gut buster … none other than Carver’s Grocery on the Westside of Midtown. Okay, in all technicality – what you have is a restaurant (aka Carver’s Country Kitchen) inside a grocery (aka Carver’s Grocery). The reality is that in all my years of visiting the Carver’s and their restaurant, I’ve never once see anyone purchase anything remotely approaching a “grocery.” So for the sake of brevity, let’s just call them one in the same.
Carver’s, named after owners Robert and Sharon Carver, is yet another in a long list of Atlanta institutions that serves soul food, aka southern cuisine, aka meat’n three (though they are actually a meat-and-two). Truth is, the vast majority of long standing Atlanta restaurants serves the aforementioned. But that’s neither here nor there, and the culinary classification that you ascribe to this joint is nothing more than a matter of semantics. At the end of the day, you’re going to walk out with your waist line expanded and your health calorically challenged by indigenous food from south of the Mason-Dixon.
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