Omnivore Atlanta

Those eighth-graders spelled some serious food words last night at the National Spelling Bee finals. NYC blog The Life Vicarious put up some of the highlights. They include:

Neufchatel: a soft cheese from Normandy.

Palatschinken: The Austrian and Central Bavarian name for a central European pancake.

Simnel: a light fruit cake covered in marzipan.

Check out the whole list at The Life Vicarious, but take their quiz first to see if you can match the food names to their pictures.

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Cheese find: Whole Foods on Ponce de Leon was selling Parrano for only $9.49 a pound today. That’s less than half what I’ve seen it usually priced around town. It’s great with the organic Fuji apples, my obsession, that are on sale at Kroger for $1.69 a pound….

Are you a hyperlocavore? Of course you are. Check out this great site….

Nick Setty writes to recommend the new Cuban Diner in Marietta. It’s getting positive reviews on Yelp….

For Women: Chef Asata Reid seems to be here, there and everywhere. She was recently featured in the Emory University student newspaper.  Check out her website. She will be conducting two classes at Sevananda Natural Foods Market in Little Five Points: “Natural Foods 101″ on May 6, 12 noon-2 p.m. and “Celebrate Women’s Wellness” on May 9, 10 a.m.-12 noon. Cost is $10 or Sevananda members and $12 for non-members. She’s also conducting classses through Spicy Wifey….

“Can we afford to eat ethically?” asks Salon.com. Writer Siobhan Phillips establishes her task:

So last year, when global food prices began to soar, I devised an experiment: My husband and I would eat conscientiously for a month, not just on our regular grocery allotment but on the government-defined, food-stamp minimum: $248 for two people in our hometown of New Haven, Conn. We would choose the SOLE-est products available — that is, the sustainable, organic, local or ethical alternative. We would start from a bare pantry, shop only at places that took food stamps and could be reached on foot, and use only basic appliances. The test would mean some painful changes; gone was my husband’s customary breakfast of Honey Nut Cheerios and our favorite dinner of pepperoni pizza. But it would answer that nagging question: When shopping for food, did I have to choose between my budget and my beliefs?…

Sex and McDonald’s: I recently wrote a post about two Domino’s employees who posted a YouTube video of themselves having unsanitary fun with a sandwich one of them was making. While looking for background information about it, I found an incredible story about a video of the sexual assault of an 18-year-old McDonald’s employee by co-workers that was broadcast by ABC and is now on the Internet too. If you want to (see and) read about it, check out my personal blog, Sacred Disorder.

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Have you visited my other site, Savory Exposure? My “photo name” is Broderick Smylie. I took all these pictures … except the blurry ones.

But seriously, folks, nobody depicts the restaurant scene like Broderick. Bookmark him now. …

Who would have guessed? The FoodieBuddha likes tea more than coffee. He’s very peaceful. He’s inventoried the new selection of teas at Danneman’s. Bookmark his site too. …

Jennifer Zyman, the Blissful Glutton and author of our Cheap Eats column, has just returned from a visit to Madrid, Berlin and Prague. Check out her pictures of Madrid, probably my favorite big city in the world (with Sevilla, south of there, being my favorite small city). Unfortunately, Spain’s economy is tanking in a major way. …

Steakhead has started a tour of dining deals under $25. We must be on the same wavelength. His first visit was to Fritti, where Wayne and I dined a few nights ago too. …

Bill Addison waxes Proustian during a final visit to Pano’s and Paul’s on his Atlanta Magazine blog. …

Some of the folks on Atlanta Cuisine are complaining about a dip in quality and escalating prices at Dynamic Dish. They blame the restaurant’s success. I continue to have good meals there — when I can get in the damn place. I called a few days ago to reserve space for pizza night and got a recording that said they were all booked up. Grrrr.

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I thought blending a Krispy Kreme donut into a milk shake, like they do at Flip, was on the edge of bad taste. But this, a sloppy joe made with a Krispy Kreme, is light years ahead in the galaxy of culinary kitsch.

You can see more such delights on This is Why You’re Fat, a blog “where dreams become heart attacks.”

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Our former dining critic, Bill Addison, is back in Atlanta.

When Bill left Creative Loafing, he moved to San Francisco where he worked at the Chronicle about a year. Then he became critic for the Dallas Morning News. Now, he is dining editor and restaurant critic for Atlanta Magazine. I feel sure this is a temporary gig while he waits for Frank Bruni’s job to become available at the New York Times. Gourmet Magazine will likely try to derail that by offering him Ruth Reichl’s job.

Meanwhile, you can read Bill’s blog, Covered Dish, on the Atlanta Magazine site. (Bill did not choose the name of the blog, by the way.) He’s posted a great photo piece about his Chinese New Year dinner.

It is really great to have him back in town!

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Bon Appétit’s website is featuring a slideshow of its favorite food blogs, with great pictures and recipes. It’s true food porn. You can fantasize and drool and not gain a single ounce of bodyweight!

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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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Jennifer Zyman, the Blissful Glutton, recently returned from a trip to San Francisco and she recorded every bite of food. Check out her blog here, and scroll down a bit to find the San Francisco material. Jennifer reports that she is sick with pneumonia. Get well soon, Jennifer.

Dynamic Dish continues to draw raves from everyone who visits. I took picky friends there last week for lunch and they were awestruck. Besides the food, we enjoyed our server Paul, a deaf comedian. The proprietors of RowdyFood.com and DirtySouthWine.com had dinner there recently and both recounted their experiences, here and here, respectively. They’ve renamed the cafe “Dynamic Dave’s” after the owner, David Sweeney. Even the devoted carnivore named Steakhead raved about the place on his Atlanta Eats blog.

The foodies at AtlantaCuisine.com are promoting their favorite dive bars, past and present, in this thread. It’s like a road map of the years I used to drink.

Cathy, of Live to Nibble, has a great post on Huong Giang, a Vietnamese restaurant on Buford Highway. Cathy reports that the restaurant has deviated from its focus on Hue cuisine by adding pho to its menu. Check out her interesting post 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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Time to check the other foodie sites in town.

Over at AtlantaCuisine.com, I see the folks agree with my positive assessment of the Glenwood — and my negative assessment of the music. Look here. … The discussion of Fox Bros. B-B-Q there is now 31 pages. Besha Rodell’s review in this week’s paper, which duplicates my own earlier impression of wildly inconsistent quality, gets some comment. Click here. … Heading to St. Simon’s Island? Here’s a thread about dining there. Unfortunately, the AC folks failed to rave sufficiently about the three restaurants my brother operates there, so they get a D- for this thread. …

When I was a kid, my favorite lunch was shrimp and cucumber sandwiches with a bowl of pea soup. Running with Tweezers, a charmingly written cooking blog, includes an interesting, quick recipe for pea soup here. The secret is balsamic vinegar. …

OMG! OMG! Figs covered in Valhrona chocolate? Two of my favorite foods are combined by John and Kira’s in Philly, according to an Oct. 27 post on Live to Nibble. The perfect food was sent to the blog’s writer, Cathy, for her birthday, along with several other decadent treats. …

Cool pics, haiku-like commentary and pop culture? It’s RowdyFood.com. The man’s a nonstop eater, it appears. He also makes cool vids. Look at ‘em here. …

If you like reading food blogs, you can find a directory of zillions of them on the foodblogblog.com. After you land on the main page, scroll down to find the directory.

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