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Ten Things I Hate About You
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
THE BATHROOM AT NAN is serene and clean.
Photo: Phil Skinner/AJC staff
Continuing on my men’s mag fetish, I noticed that a regular feature for most is a female celebrity 10-question story form of what that person thinks men should know. You know, like Kim Cattrall letting guys know that multiple orgasms aren’t a luxury, they’re a must.
Strange ground for an idea for a food blog, I admit, but fertile nonetheless. I started thinking about the ten things I’d like restaurateurs to know. Here’s my list:
The bathroom is part of your restaurant. Pay someone to keep it clean. Always.
Servers should know how to pronounce everything on your menu. “Gestapo” for “gazpacho” doesn’t cut it.
Servers should know what everything on your menu tastes like. The worst answer to the question, “how’s the coconut milk soup?’ is “I don’t know, I’ve never tasted it.”
Never think that #2 and #3, above, don’t happen. They do. They have.
Terms like “vine-ripened” and “organic” are only worth using if your ingredients actually are.
“Made-from-scratch” does not mean the same thing as opening a box and adding eggs and water.
The customer is always right. Really.
There is no place for smoking in a restaurant, including you, smoking at the back door on your break.
Sure, Anthony Bourdain is cool. You are not Anthony Bourdain, no matter how cool you think you are. Be yourself.
“Award winning” means that you have actually won an award. It’s not a catch phrase.
So, what would your list include?
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Manuel’s Is in Esquire
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Manuel’s has been pouring beers since 1956.
Photo: Frank Niemeir/AJC
Reading Esquire (men’s mags are SOOOOO much more interesting to read than the crud the industry offers women, plus it was my fiance’s) on the plane back from NYC yesterday I came across an article about the best bars in the USA.
One Atlanta spot made the list: Manuel’s Tavern in Poncey-Hi. Of one of the city’s oldest taps (Manuel’s opened in 1956), writer Justin Heckert had this to say, “…the bar top here holds the urn and ashes of Manuel Maloof … the dusty pictures on the wall are of people — Jimmy Carter, for instance — telling the same types of stories as they are tonight … a place where journalists and lawyers and politicians have always communed at the same tap.” Absolutely. Plus the burgers rock. And for that matter, so do the blueberry pancakes long about 11 O-clock on Sunday morning…. congrats Manuel’s.
Where’s your favorite Everyman’s bar?
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It’s Not All Black And White
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is truly the city that never sleeps — trucks, jackhammers and rain all had a hand in making my night a long one.
Or was I just dreaming of another black-and-white cookie? The urban legend in NYC these days is that there are only one or two bakeries that actually make these cookie-cum-cakes striped with chocolate and vanilla fondant. They are one of my favorite things to eat in the entire world. You can get them in lots of spots in this town, but the freshest I’ve ever had come from Stage Deli on Seventh Avenue. The selections further downtown, at busy lunch joints like Duke’s are never as fresh and the cake part is too yellow and not as buttery as what I get at the Stage.
You can get black-and-white cookies in Atlanta (Goldberg’s and the Marietta Diner both have them). But they are never the same as they are in NYC. Street food in general just doesn’t exist in Atlanta, which is a shame — the first thing I eat whenever I come to the Big Apple is a pretzel from a street vendor gobbed with mustard. Then I head for the roasted nuts…..
Meanwhile, I had more kobe beef last night, this time at Kobe Club, where Japanese katana swords dangled from the ceiling like icicles. Glad I wasn’t sitting under them. This time the ticket came up $115, but it was for four ounces, not five. The fat had been seared into the surface, creating a super thin crustiness that gave way to incredible flavor inside. This joint is way too gimicky for me (and I’ll share lots more on that when I return), but this steak was better than the one I had last night, though I’m tiring of beef in general. How much steak can one girl eat?
Tonight, I’m headed to Craft. Tom Colicchio’s crew is gonna have to come up with something other than kobe beef to entertain my taste buds.
And it’s going to be pretty tough to beat the black-and-white cookie craving. Do you have a favorite regional food or street goodie that you wish we had in Atlanta? Tastykakes? A Philly cheese steak?
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Buying in bulk at farmstands and wholesalers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Buying in bulk is an old strategy for cutting food costs, which is why you’ll usually pay more for smaller boxes of cereal than large ones.
It holds true for fresh food, too. One of my favorite farmstands, Osage’s in north Georgia’s Mountain City, offers such good prices on large amounts of just-picked produce that it draws buyers from metro Atlanta eager to stock up on strawberries by the gallon and peaches by the bushel basket. (At least, it did last year. Higher gas prices will probably dissuade some this year.)
Closer to home, those who want large quantities of fresh produce usually head to the Atlanta State Farmers Market in Forest Park and go to the wholesale side, on the right as you enter the market. Here, you don’t buy straight from the farmer. You buy from a company that could have purchased directly from the farmer, or could be just the last link in a long chain of brokers and packagers that stretches to other regions or around the world.
Some of the wholesalers welcome walk-in customers; others focus on large accounts that include supermarkets and restaurants. Usually you must buy by the case or half-case.
Recently, I visited Destiny Produce, a certified organic distributor at the state market that welcomes walk-in customers. It’s open daily, with weekend hours of 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. and weekday hours from 5 a.m. until around 4 p.m. DeeDee Digby, who manages Destiny and works to reach out to local growers, showed me around.
Some of Destiny’s offerings are purchased directly from Georgia farmers, like Sparkman’s Cream Valley milk from Moultrie, and baby beets and organic Vidalias from Relinda Walker in southeast Georgia’s Screven County. Like other wholesalers at the market, they sell in bulk by the case or occasionally a half-case. (Case quantities vary depending on the product. A case of milk, for example, is eight half-gallon bottles.) Some of its offerings are organic, but not all. It’s all spelled out on product lists that are updated weekly.
As warmer weather boosts local harvests, Destiny expects to have more from farmers within a 250-mile drive of Atlanta. Organic broccoli, cauliflower and carrots are coming in from Georgia farmers, and organic peaches and plums from South Carolina growers. (In early May, much of their stock came from California, with Florida and Central America other sources).
Prices change weekly. They’re lower than retail, but it’s a tradeoff: You’ll wind up with a lot of perishable food. And because some of these foods carry premiums in grocery stores, they’re priced higher than conventionally raised produce available from other wholesalers at the market.
Some of Destiny’s customers are buying clubs, which split the large quantities among neighbors or customers. Maybe others are like one of my co-workers, who likes to buy tomatoes a case at a time, drizzle them with olive oil and then slow roast for a couple of hours, saving them to use in pastas, on pizzas, etc.
If you’ve bought produce by the case, how do you prepare or preserve it? If you share with friends, how has that worked out? Do you find that you’re saving money?
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How Much Would You Pay for a Steak??
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In New York for the rest of this week to check out some of the Big Boy restaurants that are opening in Atlanta, I tried a kobe steak at BLT Steak last night.
I’ll give a full report when I return, but let’s start with the marked difference between what this restaurant looks like in New York — a small bistro, very loud, and believe me the distance between tables doesn’t pass the fire code (read: I’m not sure why they bothered with more than one table at all; they should have just given us all a spot at the same large trough) — and what I suspect it will look like in Atlanta. In Atlanta, inside the W Hotel Downtown, my guess is that it will lack most of the annoying little qualities — like a din so loud we couldn’t even hear the people sitting next to, um I mean on top of, us — that actually make it interesting. The look is New York, not Paris, but there are small touches like the signature blackboard menu, that includes daily specials like English peas with strong hints of mint and bacon and salsify with trumpet royale mushrooms.
That said, the food, designed by tres cosmopolitan French chef Laurent Tourondel, centers around beef (Lourondel has a slew of restaurants here and elsewhere that focus on a particular fill-in-the-blank for consumption: BLT Steak, BLT Fish, BLT Market. Here, beef gets all the perspective, sometimes naked and exposed (BLT-cut bone-in double sirloin), sometimes airbrushed until the last blemish has been removed (Japanese kobe strip steak, though on this evening the cut was filet).
The kobe costs $26 an ounce, and there is a five-ounce minimum. The waiter brought it to the table before it was grilled for me to see its perfectly marbled flesh. And once cooked to a perfect medium rare, it was velvety, juicy and exceptional. But it wasn’t $130 exceptional. Russell Crowe could have cooked it naked tableside and it wouldn’t have been $130 exceptional.
Kobe is incredible beef, and I’m a big believer in “you-get-what-you-pay-for.” And I don’t think BLT Steak is necessarily overcharging. I just don’t think it’s worth it. There’s just not as much there there as everyone yammers on about.
How much would you pay for a steak? How far would you go to get a really great steak?
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Not sure what happens inside the doughnut but the landscape in suburbia is barren when it comes to dining out. I think that there is such a dearth of qualified cooks and waitstaff that restaurant owners will hire pretty much anyone with a pulse, and that... read the full comment by deegee | Comment on Ten Things I Hate About You Read Ten Things I Hate About You
Wow, now you are telling people they can’t smoke OUTSIDE???? You’re actually making me miss Kessler.... read the full comment by tobias | Comment on Ten Things I Hate About You Read Ten Things I Hate About You
The is not always right but they are always the customer. This thought kept me from “losing it” many of times.... read the full comment by Kaye | Comment on Ten Things I Hate About You Read Ten Things I Hate About You
If a customer orders coffee, don’t ask if they want cream, bring it out with the coffee, I find it rude when ask. Also, bring out a spoon, no one likes to stir with a knife.... read the full comment by JEM | Comment on Ten Things I Hate About You Read Ten Things I Hate About You