Omnivore Atlanta

Steakhead of the Atlanta Eats blog is reminding people of his Mother’s Day brunch last year at Pastis. Read his review here….He has also published a list of recommendations from Melissa Libby and Associates here….

Tanai, one of the lovely ladies of the Atlanta Dish blog, has published basically the same list with some additions. Check it out here….

Jennifer Zyman, who writes our Cheap Eats column and the renowned Blissful Glutton blog, has a great post up about outdoor cookware. At the top of Jennifer’s personal wish list is the beehive-shaped pizza oven (left). Read her post here for details….

This is from Chow Down Atlanta:

Just a reminder that the new McDonald’s chicken biscuits will be handed out next week for free on Wednesday, May 14th from 6-9am at 1404 Spring Street (parking lot of The Center for Puppetry Arts). Rock 100.5 (my newest favorite station) will be on hand to make things lively. This should be fun.

Why does this make me picture a reformed playground drug dealer passing out junk food?…

Running with Tweezers posts a thoughtful review about dining on Richard Blais’ menu at Home…

The folks at AtlantaCuisine.com are reporting about their visits to Parish here. (I stopped by for a muffaletta in the very pleasant downstairs section myself on Thursday. I’ll report more soon.)…The AC site also features a discussion about green curry. The originator of the thread mentions the green curry at Little Bangkok as being very good. It’s long been my favorite in town, but he waxes musically, literally, about one he sampled recently at Penang:

From the first little bite of green bean, I was amazed. My problems with other places’ curry are that they are never as spicy as I ask for them to be, and that, even ignoring the spiciness, they are just bland. At Penang, I forgot to say that I wanted it spicy, so it wasn’t very spicy (though still spicier than at many places that I asked for it to be spicy), but the flavor was explosive. It was deep, complex, earthy and bright. I’m a trumpet player and I tend to think of taste [in the way] I think of sound resonance. A good sound is full of deep fundamental tones, but balanced by sparkling, ringing, higher overtones. This had that kind of balance and resonance.

The super-cool Ice Cream Fellow files this report:

The ice cream world has lost one of its 20th century pioneers. Irvine Robbins, co-founder of Baskin-Robbins passed away on Monday at the age of 90. His obituary appears in the LA Times.

It was reported that he started each day with a bowl of cereal topped with a scoop of banana ice cream. I would like to think that was his secret to living to 90.

He’s also posted a recipe for ice cream inspired by a favorite drink of Jack Daniels and ginger ale. I want some.

(Photo of Ronald McDonald under arrest from GreenPeace.org.)

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Mr. Steakhead accepted my challenge to compare the brisket at Rolling Bones and Fox Bros. B-B-Q. I was sure that if he did this, he would find the former’s superior. It is usually moist and delectably tangy. Steakhead reports the results on his Atlanta Eats blog here. Of course, he found Fox Bros.’ better. He writes:

[Fox Bros.'] brisket may be served dry (without sauce), but the meat is moist and tender. The flavor is much smokier than RB. Nick, my partner in crime for this all day fiesta, raves about the sides at Fox Brothers, and he is right. The baked beans here put to shame the pintos offered at RB. Fox Brothers also offers a bigger selection, including brunswick stew. So, in the end, it really wasn’t that close. Fox Brothers won on all three areas I was judging- brisket, sides, atmosphere.

Alright. I agree that Fox Bros. has the better atmosphere. I don’t like eating-in at Rolling Bones. I also agree with his assessment of the side dishes. But I have yet to taste “moist and tender” brisket at Fox Bros.

Mr. Steakhead reports that following his St. Patrick’s Day progressive dinner, he went to Limerick Junction where he drank “several (maybe more) pints.” Following his colossal bender of barbecue and beer, he stumbled in the parking lot and injured his knee. Granted, this followed his taste tests, but can we be sure of his sobriety prior to eating?…

Dua, a Vietnamese restaurant has opened downtown at 53 Broad Street, according to Mr. Micropundit’s March 24 post on E Gullet. He also reports that Dish, which closed a few months back, will be home to a new project called Diesel. (Original plans for Dish to continue under the ownership of a former chef fell through.)…

Matt, who writes the incomparably hip Rowdy Food blog, has fallen in love with Corner Pizza. He sings:

The crust is better. It is evolving. It is slowly becoming a more uniformly thin pie. The crispy bottom is consistent. Then the bite, when the tooth penetrates the crispy crust and enters an immediate zone of chew. Now we can look at cheese and sauce. This most recent pie had a much better ratio of cheese to sauce to crust. At this rate, we may catch New York?

Matt apparently shares my preference for thin-crusted pizza. Read his entire review here. It includes a link to his You Tube video about the place.

Matt also has a post with some gossip, including this welcome news about Pura Vida:

Hector Santiago will apparently be opening up a new restaurant downstairs from his current restaurant Pura Vida. When Pura Vida gets full, they have occasionally used this space for over-flow dining. In the next month or so, this space will become an small upscale restaurant with a chef’s table. Sounds pretty cool.

We reported this six months or more ago. I hope it’s actually gonna happen now. Read the rest of Matt’s gossip and see some photos of the much anticipated Holeman & Finch here….

Cathy of Live to Nibble reports on a visit to Cypress Street Pint and Plate, which has replaced Toast. Read her comments here.

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Our own Kitchen Witch, Kim O’Donnel, has released a cookbook to get you through the holidays. The slim book, A Mighty Appetite for the Holidays, will get you through this entire insanity-filled season, from Thanksgiving turkey to hangover noodles on New Year’s Day. Other standouts include Kim’s awesome pumpkin-tofu pie, a primer on doing Thanksgiving for one, and as always, Kitchen Witch’s soothing, funny, helpful commentary.

You can order the book here.

Also, check out Kim’s Washington Post food blog, A Mighty Appetite, here.

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Michael Ruhlman, author and blogger, is coming to Atlanta to host a cooking class at the Viking Cooking School.

Ruhlman has long had one of the best food blogs around, and he’s also the author of some fantastic books about food and the cooking life, including The Making of a Chef. He has a new book, The Elements of Cooking, and he’ll be at the Viking Cooking School this Friday to teach a class. The cost is $69.99. Follow this link to sign up.

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Walking through the aisles of the grocery store last night, I was thrilled to see giant boxes of pomegranates, bins of brown chestnuts and big, beautiful oranges. They were like signs of cold weather to come.

Apparently, though, more than Mother Nature wants to get in on the premonitions: In addition to the seasonal produce, the grocery store was stocked with products already advertising, not for Thanksgiving, but for Christmas. Coke’s boxes already had its classic Santa, and Oreos were stuffed with thick, red icing.

I know the holiday season starts earlier every year, but I really didn’t expect to find Christmas staring at me in the face before the calendar had even switched over to November. I’m just going to hope that Coke was playing Santa for Halloween.

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