The other Caravan Members: Alexander Carver, J.D. Forinash, Joel Fuernsinn, Avinash Honkan, Erik Lystad, Kim Martin, Vernard Martin, Sean Marston
One day, Joel sends me a link to Creative Loafing's Best Of
Atlanta 2001 survey, which is here:
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2001-09-19/oral_toc.html
I started looking over the list and saw "Best Onion Rings" and thought
"What the heck makes those Onion Rings 'Best'? We'll have to try that one of these days." Then I did the same for "Best Soup", "Best
Fries", and "Best-looking Waitstaff." I looked at the addresses and thought to
myself, "This is a long ways to go to get a bloody order of Onion Rings. Maybe if we did this road trip and hit a bunch of them in a day..." Those
of you who know me know that I have a tendency to overthink things. Naturally,
after I started thinking about the issue, it was only a slippery slope from
"visiting a few places" to "can we hit all of them?". There
was nothing more to do after that wacky idea popped into my head except to get a
bunch of people together, work out a Traveling Salesman solution by hand (which,
as we discovered, I suck at), pick a day, load up the cameras (film and digital)
and go.
So Saturday, Nov 17th at 9 in the morning, 9 of us met at Georgia Tech
(Vernard, Kim, J.D., Joel, Alex, Sean, Erik, Alex, and myself). We waited for
about a half hour for Avinash. After a quick phone call, we discovered that he
was still on California time and couldn't get up in time to join us. We left in three cars; probably the maximum
number of vehicles that you want when wandering in a twisty metropolitan area
filled with insane drivers. In any caravan, the responsibility of getting
everyone else from Point A to Point B belongs to the Lead Car. Therefore, in the
Lead Car, you generally want a Navigator who's hopefully also the Guy who
Planned the Route. This optimization minimizes the chances that you'll get lost.
In the Last Car, you want the fastest, nimblest vehicle with the most aggressive
driver who can nip through yellow lights without blinking. In the Middle Car(s), you want the rational and calm decision
maker who can keep the caravan linked and can take over as Lead Car in an odd
situation. Unfortunately this
was not the case in our caravan. The Navigator and Route Guy were not the same person
and the Last Car was not nimble or aggressive. Fortunately, the Middle Car
(Vernard) was of the sober variety so we didn't lose anyone during the day.
Right from the start, after a massive bit of misdirection, resulting from a bit
of unresolvable and ill-timed confusion between the Navigator and the Planner,
combined with an unexpected road closure, we headed down the freeway, instead of
down Northside. There was some verbal thumping of the guy who drew up the route
using Mapquest (yours truly) but we still managed to reach Best Soul Food (Busy
Bee Cafe) which was fortunately only a block away from Mayoral Candidate Victory
Party (Paschal's). Alex's car had a GPS locator which amusingly showed us making
a large 8 mile circle where the correct turn would have
only taken a mile or so. In any case, both restaurants were closed so we headed
to Historic Oakland Cemetery for Best Breakfast because most of us were pretty
hungry by this point. Besides which, it would have been too early in the day for
Soul Food.
A quick geographical/social analysis of Atlanta will show that the metropolitan
part of the sprawling city can be almost neatly divided into two basic sections.
North of Ponce de Leon and South of Ponce de Leon. North of Ponce tends to be
fairly affluent, mostly non-African American. South of Ponce tends to be the
inverse of those two qualities. One historical fact that posed a lot of problems
for the route finder (me) is that street names change across this divide. The
same street, geographically speaking, will have a different name when you cross
Ponce. For example, Monroe turns into Boulevard. White folks back in the good
ole' days didn't want to be associated with a street where black folks lived.
For various reasons, social, historical and controversial, these areas south of
Ponce de Leon tend to be statistically unsafe and a study showing average
response times for emergency vehicles done by our local newspaper proves it.
You're more likely to see an ambulance appear faster for a sprained ankle in
Cobb County or Buckhead than you will a fire truck for a 4-alarm fire in those
areas. Right now, we're South of Ponce.
That we were in a questionable neighborhood much of the first half of the day
was made evident by the tall, reinforced, security fences and the impolite razor
wire generously strung around the perimeter of Ria's Blue Bird (Best Breakfast) located across the street from the southern end of the scenic cemetery (resting
place of Margaret Mitchell of Gone With The Wind fame). In addition to the
intimidating deterrents to casual theft and vandalism, Ria's Blue Bird has a
charming outside courtyard with uneven benches and tables and some nice
graffiti-style art decorating the tall brick walls. We split and enjoyed an
order of pancakes, two orders of their special House home fries, and an order of
biscuits and gravy. The breakfast was very good for the price. Their grits
actually had flavor to them and Kim said complimentary things about the gravy on
the biscuits.
Ria's Blue Bird - The courtyard in back
Breakfast took us about 40 minutes and it was becoming clear that we weren't
going to be able to visit 60 restaurants in a day and eat at them all.
Conservatively speaking, even if we only spent an average of 10 minutes at each
place, that would be 10 hours worth of time, not counting the travel time
between places and assuming near-instantaneous service and food consumption. I had already thrown out restaurants in the extremely remote
areas from the center of Atlanta. We would not be visiting Best Fusion, located
near the Airport or Best BBQ, located up in the Yuppie Boonies of Alpharetta. I
also took all the restaurants that we've previously visited off the list (only
13 restaurants). The real purpose was to go to those places that would not have
appeared on our radar because of either geographical or ordinary ignorance or
both.
Around the corner from Ria's Blue Bird, and still next to the Oakland Cemetery
is the Carroll Street Cafe, home of Best Use of Coconut. We stopped in only to
discover that they were out of their signature Coconut Cake. This was
disappointing but potentially good news. For any item, you can draw two
conclusions from encountering either extreme of current inventory. If the
merchant has a lot of something in stock, it's either not very popular or high
in demand. If they don't, it's either very popular and gone (like bread in a
good bakery by the afternoon) or it's not very popular so is made in small
quantities for a small but loyal customer base. I optimistically assumed that it
was very popular and sold out based on a Jedi-style analysis of the menu which
looked promising.
We had now visited only 4 places and eaten at 1 in the space of an hour and a
half. Fortunately, this one stop was good and we were encouraged to continue
rather than bail on the plan and invoke Plan B which was to head up to some
Buford Highway stop for near-authentic Asian cuisine and after that, a movie.
Why was the quality of the restaurants on this list an issue? Coming into this
day, we've been very suspicious of Best Restaurant surveys and recommendations
from random people in the not-friends category. In the past, we had been burned
by going to places on various Best-Cuisine Lists and now avoid surveys that rate
restaurants based on some overall opinion of some anonymous population of
readers. Atlanta, as a fairly young city in terms of wealth and cultural
sophistication (compared to New York and Chicago, for example), seems to have
rather immature eating standards (this opinion was formed by me from visiting
those aforementioned restaurants selected by those surveys). Since I lack the
budget or inclination to eat out at random, I choose restaurants based on either
very qualified recommendations or, more commonly, on some intuitive exercise of
Jedi Menu-Fu where I look and reverse engineer the dishes on a menu based on
their description to determine quality, basically asking myself "Do I know
what this tastes like?", "Could I cook this?", and "Could I
cook this for less?". I've spent some time informally studying cooking and
food and basically, I trust my opinion on food much better than some survey
based on anonymous responses. This elitist opinion and behavior probably
requires some explanation:
I have a basic metric that I apply to all restaurants that I visit. Take a basic
2-D graph. The x-axis represents quality of the food - some combined measure of
taste, presentation, quantity, materials used, and so on. The y-axis represents
cost. If we take 0 to be no quality (Ramen noodles possibly), or no cost along
the other axis, we can draw a line where x=y along the graph. We'd get the
following:
In short, the graph expresses a measure of whether you think you're getting a
fair deal for the money that you spend (quality = cost). Eating at a restaurant
under the line is best, of course. This means that you're eating at a place
which is either inexpensive for the quality, better quality than the price
suggests, or inexpensive and high quality. You can find places under the line if
you look carefully. I try to be realistic for the most part and will settle for
eating along the line but will rarely go back to a place that lives above the
line unless driven to for social reasons (i.e. Mick's during Dragoncon). Now
cost is easily quantified as "Dollar amount per Person". The fuzzy
part of the graph is the concept of "quality" and that's where we tend
to disagree with a large number of people that fall, of course, into two
categories.
First, there are many people that equate or will substitute "quality"
with "quantity". Someone using the Quantity = Quality metric will
enjoy eating what they believe to be a larger amount than what they think they
should be getting for the same price. Las Vegas thrives because there are plenty
of "Quantity" people in the world despite the fact that many
all-you-can-eat buffets will often pad their dishes with heart-stopping,
carbohydrate-laden, fat-saturated, and sodium-filled foods to maintain the
illusion of Conspicuous Quantity while preserving their profit margin. They fill
you up quickly and make you thirsty so you drink more. A lot of marketing messes
with getting people to believe that they are getting more for their money. In
Las Vegas, probably the international capital of the All-you-can-eat buffet,
marketing the smorgasbord is an Art. Now, there are some good physiological and
economic reasons for the Quantity = Quality rationale. The human body basically
does crave food, especially fats and sugars. This is a function of hundreds of
thousands of years worth of evolution as a hunter-gatherer type species. We like
feeling sated. A Quantity = Quality person might use a utility function that
tries to maximize this feeling while minimizing cost. In other words, the more a
Quantity = Quality person gets for the amount they spend, the higher their
satisfaction. Thus this category of eaters will rate restaurants that seem to
give you more for your money higher than restaurants that give you a
"correct" amount for what you paid. To be fair, I like a restaurant
that also gives you a good portion in addition to good quality. I just don't
believe that quantity should be the first criteria used in judging a restaurant.
The other group that confounds surveys are the second range of eaters that use a
Cost = Quality rule under the logic that the more expensive the dish, the better
the food. This perception has led to some interesting evolutions in both eating
habits and has arguably had profound effects on cultural eating habits. Now the
Cost = Quality people are not completely off-base. Economically speaking, you
can make arguments that things that are scarce and/or hard to obtain tend to be
valued more than things that are common or easily obtained. Thus, some good
tasting but rare items like
lobster, shark's fin, truffles, wines, and so on are appropriately weighted
higher than, say, chicken, hot dogs, or water. However, some items have an
inflated or deflated "perceived" value depending on the dispositions
of a particular generation and may not have as high a "quality" as its
cost implies. A great example of this is bread. An article on NPR talked about
the shift in consumer preference for white bread to coarse grain breads as a
function of economics and changes in dietary attitudes. Apparently in pre-1920's
America, white bread was eaten by the affluent and coarse grained bread by
everyone else. Thanks to better mass manufacturing techniques, marketing, and
agriculture, white bread could be produced in larger quantities and sold to the
Average Joe striving to achieve the illusion of success (not coincidentally a
constantly moving target) while ironically lowering the quality of their diet,
and subsequently their health, in the process. The early 90's saw a shift in
bread demand, partly driven by the ultra-fit Yuppie Health Nazis of the Left
Coast, back towards the "exotic", "old-style" breads that
used whole grains and traditional baking methods. Designer bakeries began
springing up all over the U.S. and now, for about triple the cost of a
comparable product in a Spanish or French city, you can get a loaf of
"traditional" bread. Anyhow, the problem with Cost = Quality people is
that they use their Cost = Quality metric as a self-proving statement. Their
logic is that if a meal costs a large amount per person then it must have been
good. Conversely, if a meal wasn't expensive then it couldn't have been good.
Even if the food itself doesn't seem to rate the cost, these people will factor
all sorts of silly things like ambience and service into the equation to make it
work. But there's no question that this group has economic power and influence
and through their eating habits have influenced the restaurant industry to some
extent. I have a theory based on this idea that I've been testing out while
exercising my Jedi Menu-Fu. It's called the Surf and Turf Theory. The Surf and
Turf Theory states that no matter the genre or style of cuisine that a
restaurant claims to serve, there will be at least one dish that's ridiculously
priced and consists of some cut of an expensive land animal (e.g. Steak) and/or
some type of exotic seafood item (e.g. Lobster) that does not necessarily fit in
that restaurant's overall scheme, requires no real skill or preparation, and
mainly exists to give People With Money an item to order to impress their
potential clients or to score points with their current Significant Other or
Potential Significant Other. I've seen more than a few restaurants, rated
favorably in a number of polls that were more style than substance and blame the
Cost=Quality people for that.
Now, I don't mind ambience when it's imaginative and not faux-yuppie. I'm
not fond of staring at an empty water glass for an hour. But ultimately, if the
food doesn't fall on or under that x=y line, I won't actually care that they
used marble and titanium on the floors and that the waiter to customer ratio is
1.2:1. I grew up visiting all sorts of Chinese restaurants with questionable
standards of hygiene that served great food up to the day that they were shut
down by City Health Inspectors. I was also brought up on chores like cleaning
the tables, washing dishes, and so on so I still find it uncomfortable to be
waited upon. My quality metric measures the actual food itself because eating
food is usually the primary reason for my being anywhere near a restaurant.
While eating, I ask myself questions like: "Were the basic ingredients of
good quality?", "Did they prepare it properly (i.e. no overcooking,
cut well, etc.)?", and "Did the chef use imagination and skill in
preparing the dish?" But sometimes none of these questions really apply
because the quality of the food is beyond rational analysis. Home cooking falls
into this category (assuming a low to moderate level of cooking skill on the
part of the parents). It's difficult to qualify why you like home cooking but
I'd like to think that the experience of eating at home is similar to listening
to good Blues and bad Blues. Good Blues have an authenticity and depth to them
that speak of experience. Bad Blues hits the right chords, verses, and rhythms
but has a plasticity about it that makes you believe that the musician is just
going through the motions. A good Blues Musician tends to have been there and
suffered and this is what comes through in their performance. There are some
dishes at some restaurants that have an Authenticity to them that speaks of a
deep history and tradition, the overall attention to the art of cooking,
and, most importantly, whether the cooks gave a damn when they were preparing it. You
probably won't find Authenticity at a TGIF's, a Cheescake Factory, or any fast
food chain but you will probably find it at Home because the person preparing
the food cares about the people who will be eating it.
To summarize that long digression, we really appreciate x=y and Authenticity. We
had decided earlier that if the Creative Loafing survey showed significant signs
that the reviewers didn't appreciate these two qualities then we were prepared
to bail out of the list and go do something more fun.
Back to the caravan...
Our next stop required at least one unplanned U-turn that was annotated with a
disparaging editorial by the driver of the Last Car. Foodz 2 Go, located across
Atlanta's small but highly specialized excuse for a zoo, is home of Best
Sandwiches. There we split two delicious Cuban sandwiches that also had
marinated tomatoes. Foodz 2 Go also seemed like a nice place to hang out and
chat with friends. Some of the zoo goers made a note to make a return visit and
we were off again. Another U-turn later and we found our way to a gas station
adjacent to the Next Street to find The Earl. The Earl was picked as having the
Best Onion Rings and at $1.50 for a large basket of good beer-battered onion
rings (x=y), we couldn't disagree. We only split one basket of rings (remember
that we've only eaten at 3 places and needed to save room) but we did tip 66%.
Chilling Out at Foodz 2 Go
Our next stop was Ann's Snack Bar for Best Hamburger. Ann's Snack Bar elevated
our estimation of the Creative Loafing people immeasurably. Located on
Memorial Highway, smack in the middle of a rather poor neighborhood, is a small
building that might have been a shack back in the day but had a number of
improvements added to it over the years, including a nice overhanging roof that
shades an area larger than the actual Snack Bar itself. You wouldn't think to
stop here randomly. A sign in the kitchen proclaims that Ann has been running the place for 27 years. Another has a list
of rules of conduct, including something like "Kids are not permitted to
stand on the counters." Her burgers are not the wimpy 1/4 pound, soy-laden
wannabes that you find all over the country but these 1/2 to 3/4 ("You say
you're splitting these two burgers? I'll add more.") pound monsters.
Vernard said that Ann made them "like your grandmother would have."
And these weren't even the Ghetto Burgers - humongous burgers with two patties,
onions, bacon, and cheese for $4.50. We made plans to return and sample the
Ghetto burgers for another day.
Ann's Snack Bar - (That's all there is! Really!)
After one "Lead Car Running A Yellow Light" boo-boo, we were on our
way to Decatur. Right around the corner from Agnes Scott College is a little
joint called, well, the Universal Joint. The Universal Joint had a wall of other
awards including Best Bartender, Best Neighborhood Bar, and so on. We were here
for Best Pub Food but since we'd just had Onion Rings and a not-quite-Ghetto
Burger, we weren't in the mood for Pub Food. Joel had a Guinness and Kim had a
Jack Daniels with a splash of Coke and we moved on. In Decatur we ran by Sage, our favorite restaurant
in Atlanta - a kind of European / Southwestern fusion with good and Authentic
food at very nice prices. We also stopped by and took pictures of Crescent Moon,
Best Diner, then ate Best Hot Wings (which weren't) at a Taco Mac while watching
part of the Georgia Tech-Wake Forest game. Afterwards, we took a short walk down
to Watershed just to see where Best Fried Chicken was but didn't eat anything
there because it wasn't Tuesday and they weren't serving Fried Chicken.
We left Decatur and headed back towards Midtown. I left in Car 2 with Vernard
and Kim and we split off from the caravan to pick up Avinash from his family's
house off of one of the cross-streets. After Car 2 accomplished this mission, we
headed south on North Highland Ave., passing Best Greasy Spoon (The Majestic),
Best Veggie Burger (The Righteous Room), Best Brunch (Babette's Cafe), and Best
Italian (Sotto Sotto) until we reached Fritti (Best Appetizers). In my absence,
there had been a general mutiny from the rest of the caravan. They had
democratically decided that from that point on we'd only stop at places where we
intended to buy food. This was a good idea as we were starting to get
tired. Now, even after this decision, we would have included Fritti because
appetizers are easy to split - except that they didn't open til 5 and it was
only 4.
We headed back up North Highland Ave. on our way to Best Ice Cream. After
passing the street number where it was supposed to be located, it was discovered
that there was a Highland Ave in addition to a N. Highland Ave. and that the
streets were disconnected from one another. So we detoured down Amsterdam Ave.
to Best Bakery (The Bread Garden) and split a bunch of very delicious pastries -
an oatmeal cookie, a lime tart, and something chocolate. We also met a kind
woman who, after hearing about what we were doing and where we were trying to
go, gave us directions to Highland Ave. and Jake's Ice Cream.
Jake's Ice Cream is the kind of place that really belongs within a block of a
university or college but, instead, is kind of on the edge of urban nowhere.
(Here, I could rant about the lack of student-oriented social and eating
businesses surrounding Georgia Tech but having spent all my digression credit
will refrain.) Jake's occupies the end of a very charming block of buildings and
has a kind of non-Starbuck's (thank goodness), old-style, coffeehouse feel to it
that made it a nice place to visit. In addition to the pleasant and welcoming
couches and bookshelves, Jake's makes and serves very cool and original flavors
such as Root Beer Float, Coconut Custard, and Chocolate Slap Yo' Mama. We sat
around the fireplace in the back room, next to the neat outdoors dining area and
chatted a bit about this and that while eating some very good ice cream.
Jake's Ice Cream
Earlier, at a certain point in the city, my directions said "Best Italian
Deli - if someone knows how the heck to get to Edgewood from here, say
something." At that time, no one did but now we had a second shot at it
because we crossed Edgewood to get to Highland. The Navigator and the Guy Who
Wrote the Directions were almost too busy talking to notice that we had just
passed the building with the street address claiming to house the Deli. This
required a U-turn correction. The second pass helped to confirm that we had the
address correct but could see no sign saying "Salumeria Taggiasca".
This required yet another U-turn. The third pass allowed the Navigator to spot
"Salumeria Taggiasca" painted in rather confusing colors on a larger
sign advertising the "Sweet Auburn Market". Our third U-turn was
required to find parking. Sweet Auburn Market was, surprisingly enough, a
Farmer's style market. Inside the covered structure was several grocer / deli
style stands, a bakery, a seafood shop, various souvenir shops, a restaurant or
two, and Salumeria Taggiasca, the Best Italian Deli. We shared some great olives and two sandwiches,
one with salami, the other with prosciutto cotto - all delicious.
At this point in the day, with the sun threatening to leave the sky, we had to
make some radical decisions about where we wanted to go for our last stop and
what to do for dinner. We finally settled on Best Fries which required heading
up on 75 to Fishmonger Seafood Grill. There we split three orders of fries ($3).
The fries were pretty darn good. The wait staff were a bit surprised at our
reason for being there. Apparently, Creative Loafing hadn't gotten around
to telling them that they had won the 2001 Award for Best Fries. They also
looked over our list and quibbled a bit over whether or not their competitor for
Best Seafood deserved the award or not. For dinner, we tried to go to Best
Outdoor Dining for no other reason except that it was close. A cell phone call
informed us that they had no reservations available til 9 pm. so it was off to
Best Southern - Horseradish Grill. We passed the OK Cafe (Best Family
Restaurant) on the way there and added it to the count.
Unfortunately, Horseradish Grill turned out to be a mediocre way to end what had
been a very fun day of tidbits. It's an upscale restaurant with valet parking
and serves what I describe as Nouveau Southern. I think that the correct use of
"Nouveau" in cuisine is any style of food that has a provincial or
classical foundation but gets some kind of spin on ingredients, presentation, or
preparation that causes it to get kicked up a couple notches in price without
guaranteeing a corresponding increase in quality. Unfortunately, in this case,
the "Nouveau" spin wasn't enough to make most of what we ordered (and
shared as most of us weren't very hungry by this time) stand out against similar
food that we'd eaten elsewhere in the city. For example, the fried chicken was
good but the sides of macaroni cheese and green beans that came with the dish
were not (we, ourselves, have cooked better quality mac and cheese in the past
so this should have been a no-brainer). There was also a duck breast slathered
under so much Southern BBQ sauce that it could have been lemming for all anyone
knew. Somebody said something nice about the soup and I was happy with what I
paid for the large BBQ pork side order that I got (I used Menu Fu!) but overall,
it was not a place we'd recommend to other people.
Finally, we returned to Tech. The entire day had taken about 11.5 hours. We had
managed to see 22 restaurants out of 60 and had eaten at 11 of them. I think we
each spent around $20-30, most of which was dinner. It's hard to get the
exact breakdown because, to save time, everyone took turns paying for the meal
at one place. I'm not sure if we all spent the same amounts on the group food
but with good friends you don't worry about that sort of thing because the money
usually evens out over the long haul in one form or another. As for not reaching
all the restaurants, I think that even with an optimized Traveling Salesman
solution (which would have taken forever to compute - ;-) ), I don't think we
would have been able to eat at all 60 in one day. For example, we couldn't do
Sunday Brunch on a Saturday and on Sunday a lot of these places open late. Dim
Sum (which has to be eaten in the early morning) and Best Breakfast were very
far apart). But what took the most time was service and cooking. The next time
we do this, we'll probably just target the places with the small tidbits that
can be split and try to end up at a nice place for lunch and dinner. All in all,
the Best Of Atlanta Caravan was a wacky idea that worked. I hope that you have a
chance to try it in your respective cities and that you also have as fun of a
day.
