Omnivore Atlanta

Don’t forget: This is Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week. All week, through July 27, you can have a three-course meal for $25 in some good restaurants (including Spoon, Cafe Circa and French American Brasserie).

The event coincides with the National Black Arts Festival, so you should definitely make reservations before heading out. For full details, go here….

Paging Miss Ann. You have competition! Best burger in town? As if….

Slate, the online magazine, is tracking the closing of 600 Starbucks stores. It’s issued an invitation to readers to participate in a memorial project:

We want to hear from you. If you frequented a Starbucks that’s soon to be closed, write a testimonial about it for the map. What’s the history of the place? Did it force a mom-and-pop joint out of business? Or was it the kaffeeklatsch of the community? Did the service suck? Was there a certain demographic (hipsters, old folk, caffeine-addled yuppies) who swarmed the premises? Pictures and video are all welcome, as well.

Get the whole story here. You can read some of the submissions here….

The Standard in Grant Park is toying with its Wednesday night specials. For weeks, it was Korean barbecue, which didn’t really rock my palate. Last week it was a Thai curry whose appearance on another table immediately convinced me not to order it. This week it was a very strange and quite tasty “South African curry” made of ground beef served like meat loaf over rice….

It’s a hassle to find a parking space in the booming Luckie Marietta District downtown, right? Stop your complaining and go whirlybird…..

Nathalie Dupree re-emerges….

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The image at right is a metaphor. It’s the ghostly silhouette of a former figure on the side of a building in downtown Atlanta, which seems to become a ghost town every night after all the worker bees fly back out to Alpharetta.

In the last three months or so, I’ve tried to dine in three different downtown restaurants. In each case, I called the restaurant ahead to make sure it would be open that evening. And each time, I found it closed. The latest was the new Sugar on Trinity Avenue.

We did find Ted’s Montana Grill open, but sparsely patronized, to say the least, as you can tell by the chilled-out staff in the photo above. Apparently, I’m the only Atlantan who hasn’t eaten in Ted Turner’s buffalo-meat eatery until now. You can read about it in next week’s paper.

Don’t forget next week (Aug. 13-19) is Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week. Ted’s does not seem to be among the restaurants participating, but there are a bunch of quality places, including newbies like Luckie Food Lounge and French American Brasserie, that will be serving three-course meals for only $25. You can find the list of participants here. Make your reservations now. It will be one of those rare weeks downtown isn’t a ghost town.

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Here are some notable food happenings from the city’s PR folks:

Taqueria del Sol’s specials this week include one of my favorites — a burrito filled with brisket under a tomatillo sauce. There’s also a taco featuring shrimp fried in a nut crust, served with honey-habanero mayo….

On Thursday, Aug. 9, from 6:30-8:30 p.m., Whole Foods Market at 2111 Briarcliff Road is celebrating the arrival of EARTH University bananas and pineapples. The event will feature live music, samples and cooking demonstrations with the fruits that are now available in all Whole Foods stores in Atlanta.

EARTH University is a sustainable agriculture school in Costa Rica dedicated to educating students throughout Latin America holistically in the areas of entrepreneurship, sustainable agriculture, ethics and human relations. For more information, visit www.earth-usa.org….

Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week, Aug. 13-19, is coming up soon. The participating restaurants will be featuring three-course meals for just $25. Among the participants are newbies French American Brasserie and Luckie Food Lounge, as well as great old-timers like Trader Vic’s. It’s best to make reservations now!…

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