Carver's Country Kitchen

Good food and a unique atmosphere. Carver's Country Kitchen is a unique place that serves up some tasty Southern cooking.

The atmosphere is unique because it is like eating lunch at a convenience store. You walk in, walk back to a small area open to the kitchen. They take your order and make your plate. You then carry your plate and drink to one of the tables in the middle of the room. It is very similar to a barbecue buffet but rather than being a buffet you choose a meat, two vegetables, and your choice of bread. The clientele ranges from college students, to construction workers, to well-dressed office workers. Don't be scared by the clientele or the odd location. It is all part of the experience.

The food is not the best example of Southern cooking I have ever had, but it is good. I ordered the fried chicken with collard greens, macaroni and cheese, and jalapeno cornbread.

The chicken was moist and flavorful on the interior with a crunch, greasy fried exterior. The chicken was a little greasier and heavier than the perfect fried chicken that I remember my granny making when I visited my grandparents as a child. But I can't really fault them for failing to meet the standard of my granny. The fried chicken is good and worth ordering. The macaroni and cheese was creamy and tasty. The collards were fairly good but lacking a little bit of flavor. The jalapeno cornbread was excellent, but by the time I got around to it I could barely do more than take a tiny nibble.

My friend ordered the same plate except he had the hashbrown casserole instead of the macaroni and cheese.

The jalapenos on top of his chicken are from the free offering of pickled peppers.

The plate of food is enormous. The amount of food you get for your money, plus the quality of the food, makes this a real value. I recommend going to Carver's for the experience alone, the fact that the food is rather good is a nice bonus. Be sure to bring a big appetite.

Carver's is only open for lunch from 11 to 3 on weekdays.

Carver's Country Kitchen
1118 W. Marietta Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
404-794-4410

Cafe Lily

Horrible. Utterly disappointing.

I went to Cafe Lily for brunch. I ordered the lamb with potatoes and eggs. I thought the $14 was a little high, but not ridiculous, for a lamb brunch item. I asked for my eggs over easy. No dice. The chef is busy and can only do the eggs scrambled. While refusing requests is no reason to hate a restaurant, a brunch place should be able to accommodate eggs however you like them. But that was only the beginning of the disaster.

I received my food. I was shocked.

Five tiny nuggets of lamb. Where does a lamb nugget come from? No cut of lamb I can think of yields lamb nuggets. Was I being served the trimmings from someone else's piece of lamb? The potatoes had way too much garlic. I put heaping spoonfulls of minced garlic in nearly everything I cook. I love garlic. The garlic on the potatoes made them unappetizing. The eggs were just "blah." They had no distinctive taste and no redeeming qualities. They reminded me of the eggs served at a cheap hotel's breakfast buffet: poured out of a container rather than made fresh. The tomato slices were from the tiniest, most unripe tomato. Not only that but one of the four slices was the end of the tomato with the hard stem portion intact.

I would not pay a penny for this food when I can go elsewhere and receive much better. Much less would I pay $14 for this plate. To top it all off, the service was lackluster at best.

My wife ordered the french toast.

It is hard to screw up french toast. She said it was decent but not amazing.

She also ordered a side of sausage.

I have never seen sausage served this way before. It is a large sausage link cut several times so that it would lay flat. It wasn't bad with some syrup over top. However, the additional charge of, I believe, $4 for this one piece of sausage was excessive.

Overall, avoid Cafe Lily. It is a waste of money and time.

Cafe Lily
308 W. Ponce De Leon Ave.
Decatur, GA 30030
404-371-9119

Rincon Latino

I highly recommend Rincon Latino because the food is tasty and the prices are cheap. The restaurant was clean and well kept and the service was friendly and moderately prompt.

After we placed our drink order and while we were still perusing the menu, our waitress brought us chips and two types of salsa.

One was a red salsa and the other was a green salsa. Both were creamier than the typical red or green salsa. The green salsa also had a nice heat, whereas the red was very mild.

My wife had a tasty strawberry milkshake and I ordered an orange Jarritos. I am usually not a big fan of soft drinks, as in I never drink them, but I really love Jarritos. It is sweet but not sickeningly sweet like I find American soft drinks and it washes down Latin food very well.

We ordered way too much food. Take it easy when you eat here. You will think that the prices are so cheap that surely you need to order more to be satisfied. You don't. Probably the highlight of the meal was the sopes.

Closeup of the pig skin ("chicharrones").

Sopes are a traditional Mexican dish from the Sinaloa region. They consist of a flat disk with pinched sides made of thick fried masa. Masa is ground corn and is the same thing used to make tortillas. The masa in a sope is thick and it is fried only lightly so that the exterior is crispy and the interior is still soft and moist. The particular sopes I ordered were the chicharrones con salsa verde - pig skin sopes with green sauce. The sopes were topped with cooked pig skins covered in a green sauce. On top of that was lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, and sour cream. The pig skin was fatty and almost creamy. The fattiness paired well with the creamy, rich, acidic green sauce with a slight heat. All of that meatiness and creaminess then was contrasted against the fresh tastes of the toppings. The sopes were fantastic and cost $5 for two sopes. Just writing about them makes me want more. We were nearly full after just splitting the sopes and the chips.

I also ordered one of the seafood cocktails - the shrimp and octopus cocktail.

It had shrimp, octopus, avocado slices, cilantro, and onions all mixed in a sauce. The sauce was a tomato sauce that was a little too sweet for me and tasted a little like a sweet cocktail sauce with less horseradish. The cocktail was good, but it did not blow me away like the sopes or the pupusas (below) did. The cocktail cost $11 which made it one of the more expensive items on the menu, but it was huge.

Next we had two different pupusas. Pupusas are a Salvadoran dish made out of a griddle fried masa outer layer stuffed with different items inside. Pupusas are sort of a like a greasy, stuffed corn pancake. Pupusas are traditionally served with curtido. Curtido consists of lightly fermented cabbage, carrots, and onions. It is similar to a vinegar colesalw or sauerkraut, but sauerkraut is fermented much more heavily than curtido. The first pupusa was essentially a combination pupusa with everything in it. It had pork, beans, cheese, and loroco. Loroco is the flower bud of a vine that grows in Central America. It is a popular ingredient in El Salvador and Guatemala. The second was a loroco and cheese pupusa. Loroco has a fairly unique taste. It tastes very plant like and is mildly reminiscent of a roasted pepper. Overall, it is a pleasing taste that I recommend trying.

stacked pupusas

the inside of the combination pupusa

The pupusas were fantastic. The hot, greasy, grainy shell with the rich, cheesy filling contrasting against the cold, acidic, crunchy relish is perfect. The vinegar in the relish cuts through the richness of the pupusa. In conclusion, an excellent combination. It would make great hangover food. The pupusas are also very cheap at $2 each.

Finally, although we could barely eat anything more at this point and took most of it home, we had a chicken gordita. A gordita also consists of a masa shell but it is stuffed to the brim with fillings. It is similar to a pupusa but filled to a greater degree, less greasy, and containing different fillings.

The gordita was also excellent. The chicken was shredded and sauced well. It was topped with lettuce and cheese. The earthy, grainy corn taste, as in the other masa based dishes, paired well against the meat and fresh toppings.

As stated before, I highly recommend Rincon Latino. I can't wait to go back.

Rincon Latino
5055 Buford Hwy. NE
Doraville, GA 30340
770-936-8181

Sawicki's

We had sandwhiches at Sawicki's for lunch last weekend. Scoutmob got me in the door, but the sandwiches may bring me back. While I was not blown away, the sandwiches were fairly good.

I had the Italian sandwich.

The Italian runs $7.25 and, per the menu, contains "Genoa salami, hot soppressata, finocchiona, fontina cheese, field greens, tomato, hot giardiniera (a vegetable relish) and salsa verde on ciabtta." Soppressata is a form of salami, a dried cured pork sausage. Finocchiona is another variety of salami. The soppressata was quite hot and gave the sandwich a nice spiceness. The sandwich was spicy, salty, sour, and sweet. The giardiniera gave it sourness and saltiness. Giardiniera consists of pickled vegetables. The meats were salty, and the soppressata was spicy as mentioned before. The tomatoes were juicy and slightly sweet. Overall, a very tasty sandwich. My only complaint was that the bread was a little too chewy.

My wife had the Mediterranean sandwich.

Again, per the menu, the Mediterannean consists of "chicken, hummus, tomato, field greens and salsa verde on ciabatta" and runs $8.00. Both my wife and I thought that the chicken was juicy and flavorful. I liked the mix of all the flavors and liked the sandwich. It tasted very fresh. My wife liked it but thought that it was a little dry and could use more hummus. Again, the bread was a little too chewy which made it hard to eat.

A funny sidenote, Sawicki's is a tight space. It is especially tight when filled to the brim with people. While we were there, two, not one but two, nimrod fathers thought it would be a good idea to wheel their baby stroller all the way through the restaurant. I am talking about a double wide running stroller. People had to move and tables were moved just so he could get in line. Fortunately, we had left before he finished ordering and had to conduct his exit manuvers. While I understand that you can't leave your children outside unattended, both fathers were accompanied by their wives. The father or mother should order while the other waits outside or at a table. If you are going to bring a stroller then sit near the window and watch it outside or buy a bike lock for the thing. Don't be that obnoxious guy trying to push it through the restaurant. You look stupid and you annoy everyone else. End of rant.

Sawicki's gets my usual, "good, but not amazing." The prices are a little high for a sandwich, but the ingredients are top quality and the taste is fresh and satisfying. If you are in the area, need lunch, and have been to Farmburger and Taqueria del Sol on numerous occasions, then stop in at Sawicki's and give it a try.

Sawicki's also has a wide selection of local, sustainable produce, meats, and cheeses. As you may know from previous posts, I am a strong supporter of local and sustainable. However, I am not quite sure when I will be able to afford tenderloin for $37 per pound.

Sawicki's Meat Seafood and More
250 West Ponce De Leon Ave.
Decatur, GA 30030
404-377-0992
http://www.sawickisfoods.com/

The Porter

Maybe the best way to sum up The Porter is a line I used to describe a dish later in this post: "I would never have expected to find something this good and this exciting in a bar in Little Five Points."

Food in America has changed. We have gone from a not so distant past where the majority of neighborhood bars served Budweiser, Coors, Miller, french fries, hamburgers, and nachos, to today where you can find a bar serving beef hearts, mussels, deconstructed caesar salads, and creme brulee. Are we in the midst of a food fad, a food bubble? I'm not really sure, but I sure hope not. I find this to be a happy or tasty state of affairs.

The Porter is the new breed of bars. It has a beer list that goes on for pages. You will not find any Bud, Miller, or Coors products on it. You will find Belgian Trappist beers, German weizens, barleywines, IPAs and every other variety of beer you can imagine. More heady adventures than any one man could possibly hope to sample. I had one of my absolute favorite beers, a Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA. I also had a Smuttynose IPA because it was the suggested beer pairing for my mussels and a Smuttynose Wheat Wine Ale for dessert. The wheat wine ale was a combination of a wheat beer and a barleywine. All were good, although I am still a little unsure about barleywines.

For food we sampled a number of items thanks to our friends, a couple who invited us out and suggested The Porter. A hat tip is owed to R and E. We started off with the goat cheese fritters.

There were five to start. This picture was taken after two were consumed.

We had a small debate at the table about these. They were decent and could have been a little warmer, but should they really be called fritters? We concurred that "logs" or "sticks" would have been more accurate. I understand that a fritter is any food coated in batter and fried, but it just didn't seem to accurately describe the dish. Maybe that is a trend at The Porter. See the description of my wife's salad below. The fritters were battered and fried logs of goat cheese covered with a honey sauce. Anything with goat cheese or fried will be good, and you can't fail with the combination of the two.

We also tried the salt and vinegar popcorn. This was a very interesting dish and a great idea for bar food.

I often find popcorn to be a little bland and boring. The vinegar gave it a welcome kick. It almost tasted like salt and vinegar chips. One bite had such a strong vinegar kick that I felt it in my nose, but other than that the popcorn was delicious, and I love the idea.

For my appetizer I ordered the beef hearts. Of course I ordered the beef hearts, it was the weirdest thing on the menu. The beef hearts were shaved with red wine blueberries, pickled scallions, and radishes.

The beef hearts were excellent. The meat was super tender and had a taste I can't describe. Everyone at the table agreed that it was good but also was unable to describe the taste. The taste is a little bit organy but not in a strong, overpowering way. The blueberries, pickled scallions, and radishes added some sweetness, tang, and crunch that paired well with the deep, rich taste of the meat. Overall, this was a tasty, bold, and inventive dish that worked well. I would never have expected to find something this good and this exciting in a bar in Little Five Points.

My wife had the macaroni and cheese as an appetizer.

It is hard to have bad macaroni and cheese, and this was good, but far from the best macaroni and cheese we have ever had. The dish consisted of shells with white cheddar cheese. It was super cheesy and very creamy, to the point of being a little soupy.

As an entree, I had the mussels appetizer.

The mussels were cooked in a broth with carrots, onions, some other vegetables, and sriracha. I am a huge fan of sriracha, and liked the idea, but I wish the sriracha was a little stronger in the broth. Overall, the mussels were good, but not amazing.

My wife ordered a caesar salad as her entree. The menu stated caesar salad and then something like "parmesan, anchovies, egg, . . . "  But nowhere did it give a clear indication that the salad was a deconstructed caesar salad.

The lack of clear description on the menu was more than a little annoying for several reasons. First, the dish brought to the table was not what was expected. Second, it required significant work to get the salad to be anything close to a caesar salad. My wife had to spend several minutes mashing up the egg and anchovies and slicing the romaine and cheese. This would not have been a problem if it was expected. It is not that we are lazy diners, but one would like to know that the diner will be doing all of the work. Finally, it was a little annoying because the dish didn't totally work. Caesar dressing requires a thorough mixing of the ingredients. The resulting salad was not gross and had some interesting taste, but it wasn't really a caesar salad. This one dish was a bit of a failure in my judgment. I would award and A+ for inventiveness and thinking outside the box but a B- for execution and taste.

Finally, I had one other complaint. We were seated at a table in a small passageway between the front bar and the back room. Our table was directly across from the bathroom. I could almost reach out and touch the bathroom door. While I would find this to be a problem in almost any establishment, in an establishment that is just as much a bar as a restaurant this is a real problem. There were frequently lines of people waiting to use the restroom. For a while there was a long piece of toilet paper on the floor outside one of the bathrooms, and at one point a waiting patron thought it would be perfectly acceptable to rest his drink on our table without asking. I understand that The Porter is a small place and tables have to be placed where there is available space. But no one should be seated across from the bathroom. Give up one table and take the small hit in your ability to turn a table. Don't try so hard in terms of beers and food and then squander it all away by seating someone next to a bar bathroom.

Other than the bar bathroom table and the deconstructed caesar salad, I was rather impressed with The Porter. I would definitely go back. However, I would make clear that I would gladly wait any additional time necessary to not be seated next to the bathroom.

The Porter
1156 Euclid Ave. NE
Atlanta, GA 30307
404-223-0393
http://www.theporterbeerbar.com/

Thien Thanh

I left Thien Thanh disappointed. While it could have just been the dish I ordered, I don't think I will be heading back to Thien Thanh anytime soon.

I ordered the hu tieu dac biet. Hu tieu is a vermicelli rice noodle soup and dac biet just means that it is a combination soup. It comes with all of the available proteins: shrimp, squid, pork meat, pork heart, pork liver, and eggs.

The soup broth had a taste reminiscent of ramen noodles from my high school days. Overall, there was not a strong flavor in anything, and it was just sort of bland the whole way through. The one exception was the strong taste of celery.

The pork meat was a little overdone. The eggs consisted of one quail egg softboiled. It was tasty and interesting when it popped in my mouth and let out the runny yolk. The shrimp and squid were okay. I am not sure which component the pork heart and liver were or if they were even present. There were some unidentified protein bits in my soup that could have been them, but the bits looked more like the meatballs you usually find in pho. Whatever they were, they were slightly odd tasting but good.

Other than the lack of any distinctive or appealing flavor, the one thing that struck me about the dish was the stinginess with the proteins. There was one egg, two shrimp, maybe two or three pieces of squid, and a small portion of pork meat. You can easily go to a different Vietnamese restuarant on Buford Highway, or anywhere else, order a bowl of pho and receive a generous helping of protein.

The best thing about Thien Thanh may be the cheesy Vietnamese karaoke videos playing on the giant screen in the center of the restaurant.

My final verdict would be to take a pass on Thien Thanh. At the very least, put it down at the bottom of your list and give it a try after you sample all of the popular Vietnamese restaurants on Buford Highway. I was excited to try a new, odd Vietnamese dish, but I was let down. Be wary of suffering the same fate.

Thien Thanh
5219 Buford Highway
Doraville, GA 30340
770-676-0512

Farmburger

Ah, Farm Burger, how I love thee. Farm Burger is in our standard restaurant rotation. Why? Because it is quick, easy, and delicious. Farmburger serves up the tastiest burgers around, in my opinion. Although, I have yet to try Flip. The place is simple and the food seems simple, but the menu offers up a dizzying array of combinations all centered around the prototypical American food, the hamburger.

The entire burger portion of the menu starts with a $6 grassfed beef burger or a veggie quinoa burger for the vegetarians. I have yet to try the quinoa burger, but I have heard from two friends that it is at least decent. From there the burger portion of the menu revolves around deciding what you want added to it.

Farmburger's menu offers up six different pre-arranged burger combinations. These combinations range from "The Farm Burger" with grafton smoked white cheddar, caramelized onions, and FB sauce for $8 to the "No 5" with braised pork belly, beer-battered onion ring, pickled jalapenos, and BBQ sauce for $9.50 to the "No 6" with a pork burger, bacon, sunny side up egg, pepper jack cheese, and salsa verde. Both The Farm Burger and the No 5 are excellent.

But say you think you can create a better burger or you don't like having people make decisions for you, Farm Burger's menu lets you go wild with crazy toppings. The toppings come in three categories: free, $1, and $2. You can get all of your standard toppings like ketchup, mayo, mustard, lettuce, and onions for free. Plus you can also get slightly more unusual items like pickled jalapenos, fresh jalapenos, roasted garlic, or FB sauce for free. The FB sauce is a delicious mayonnaise concoction. My best guess is that the FB sauce has some paprika and maybe some ketchup in it. It has a slightly smoky, sweet taste. For $1 you can get toppings ranging from a fried egg to arugula to blue cheese to cured lardo and more. For $2 you can get toppings ranging from house-cured bacon to oxtail marmalade to pork belly to pimento 'n cheese. The $2 category also includes a delicious blue cheese from Georgia's own Sweet Grass dairy.

My personal favorite is a burger, medium rare, with fresh jalapenos, house-cured bacon, and the Sweet Grass blue cheese.

These burgers are so good my wife thinks they should rename the place "Crack Burger." She usually orders The Farm Burger which is shown below.

My only complaint is that sometimes the burgers come out overcooked. I like my meat rare, but regardless of how you order the meat, about 20% of the time cooks cook it one level more done than you asked for. If I had one wish it would be for consistency in the level of "doneness." When they get my burger properly medium-rare with a cool red center, I am in heaven.

Farm Burger has much more than burgers to offer. The fried chicken liver "snack" is excellent.
They are some of the best chicken livers I have had. They are fried in a near tempura style with just slightly thicker than tempura batter and served with a whole grain mustard sauce.

The "rings n' fries" basket is also excellent. The fries are nicely salted and spiced and the onion rings are fried perfectly. Even better they are served with FB sauce which makes the perfect accompaniment.

We were so eager to dive into the basket of rings n' fries that we ate most of the fries and part of the onion rings before I remembered to take the picture.

As I said, the menu offers an array of choices, but the restaurant is pretty simple. You walk in and get in line.

At the end of the line you order your food and then find a table. The servers bring your food to your table and you consume away. It always seems that the line is too long and there will not be enough tables for everyone to take a seat, but somehow it always seems to work out. The staff have a nice system of ensuring that people do not attempt to claim seats prior to ordering.

The dining room, if you can call it that, is no frills.

Most of the seats are picnic tables. The napkins are paper towels. The food comes out in a basket with a paper bottom. The ketchup and mustard are in squirt bottles on the table. But come on, it is a burger place. This is how it should be! White linen napkins and sparkling water aren't always needed or even wanted. The burgers are messy and the atmosphere is lively, in other words: it's fun.

Finally, not only is the food delicious and the atmosphere fun, Farm Burger is committed to local, sustainable, ethically raised food. I am a huge fun of their practices for environmental, ethical, and health reasons. They try to get as many of their products from local farms as possible. The beef is grassfed which is better for the environment and your health. So not only can you relax over a tasty burger, you can feel good afterwards that you supported your community and yourself.

I did my best to photograph the food side of the menu, but it did not come out well. Sorry. Fortunately, you can check out the menu and more at http://www.farmburger.net/.

Farm Burger

410 B W. Ponce De Leon Ave.

Decatur, GA 30030

404-378-5077
http://www.farmburger.net/

Poutine at Hobnob Neighberhood Tavern

I recently learned about Quebec's most ubiquitous dish: poutine. Poutine in its simplest form is french fries topped with gravy and cheese curds. It sounded odd enough to pique my interest. A quick internet search revealed that a bar not far from my house serves poutine. We made a trip to try out poutine for the first time.

While gravy and cheese on fries sounds rather odd, it tastes great. It is an excellent bar food and would be great to eat when you have a hangover. It is no culinary masterpiece, but I recommend it.

Hobnob's poutine is the usual and simple fries, gravy, and cheese curds. These cheese curds were mozzarella cheese curds. Cheese curds taste similar to cheese but are much chewier. The gravy had a delicious rich, meaty, and peppery flavor. The gravy combined with the warm, salty fries and the chewy and creamy cheese produce a nice combination.

I had the poutine with the recommended High Seas Loose Cannon IPA. While I understand the recommendation and think it was a fairly good one, the Loose Cannon IPA does not rank high on my list of IPAs. It just does not have enough hops or flavor.

We also tried an order of the Belgian endive boats. The endive was filled with warm goat cheese and prosciutto topped with fig slices and Tabasco honey. While the boats were tasty, they were a little too simple. They had no novelty factor or complexity to them. They were not a bad snack, but not really worth the money.

Don't rush out to Hobnob, but if you find yourself in the area with some free time to spare, it is worth dropping in for a beer and some poutine. I would recommend giving poutine a try whenever you get the chance.

Hobnob Neighberhood Tavern
1551 Piedmont Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30324