I forgot to link up to my last By The Glass post on Creative Loafing’s website. This visit was to Miller-Union, one of my personal favorite wine lists in town.

I’m still trying to find my voice a bit, as I think I’m using too much stuffy wine jargon. It’s been a lot of fun though. Look for some new and better posts soon!

Check out the baked egg and Loire pairing from Miller-Union here!

After downing a few gin, tequila, and moonshine based cocktails, in my mind’s eye I was Federico Fellini with the camera, but I really didn’t get as many good photos (especially of food) as I thought. I shot some footage so I decided to slap this video together.

Hope everyone that attended had as great of a time as I did!

Many thanks to Georgia Organics, Ford Fry, JCT, Westside Provisions District, Melissa Libby & Associates, the Spazmatics, the volunteers, and of course the chefs and mixologists for putting on such a top notch event.

The photo above is from the Urban Spoon website as of this morning. #1, #2, and #6 are burger joints. #4 and #5 are great restaurants which both happen to have fantastic burgers. Maybe it’s playing it safe, but the people want burgers, price point, family friendly, blah blah blah.

So I went right when Yeah! Burger opened, because it’s close to home and I’ve been going burger crazy.

It was not a good experience. They messed up the order a few ways, and the burger wasn’t up to snuff. They earned plus one points for the copious amounts of gooey American cheese on the double stack, but minus ten for the “gray matter” beef. Can a brother get a Maillard reaction up in this piece?

My sister’s $1 worth of avocado….

Onions rings are stellar. Fries are good except they were served almost cold.

I waited to write this post until I could visit again. They were so new when I first visited, I can’t blame them for the order mishaps and I figured the burger execution could improve as well.

I ordered the exact same thing as last time, only they gave me the bacon jam I asked for on this visit. White bun, grass-fed burger, American cheese, grilled onions, bacon jam.

Sure does look pretty, doesn’t it?

The H&F bun is sweet, light, and the best part of the whole burger. The bacon jam is overcooked and acrid. The meat is still under seasoned and unseared.

With Bocado, Miller-Union, and FLIP within walking distance of Yeah! Burger, it may be a while before I give it another go. I had the Bocado burger six hours after my latest Yeah! visit, and it’s superior in every way. It cost $12, including fries, maybe a buck or two more than the same order at Yeah! Burger. Same goes for Miller-Union.

On the other hand, I’m a burger geek and a lot of people may love the hip area, full bar, and generous portion of cheese casting a shadow over the poorly treated protein.

I had breakfast at The Social House the other day while my car was getting worked on at Gordy Tire (highly recommended). It was my second visit for breakfast here. The first wasn’t very memorable, not awful, but just not good I enough that I desired to return.

This second visit was another matter.

I ordered the mother daughter reunion eggs “benny” (fried chicken, eggs, get it?) Right off the get-go, the two eggs were very unappealing looking and one egg yolk had already been punctured. The potatoes tasted reheated and the chicken had a strange day-old texture, such that I couldn’t bring my self to eat any of the bite sized pieces after the initial taste. The accompanying hash brown cake was mushy and bland. It all tasted a bit….sad.

The coffee was good and strong!

I don’t usually use this site as a platform for negative posts, but in this case, I really can’t recommend going here if other options are readily available.

This past Friday I made my third visit to Urban pL8, over on Huff Road between Howell Mill and S. Marietta Blvd. Urban pL8 is really just a stones throw from the heavily trafficked Westside Provisions District, but it feels a bit isolated and this location has been notoriously difficult. They seem to be hanging in there – they had a decent crowd in there for a late lunch. Some of the nearby apartments/townhomes are finally complete, and the new location of the Corner Tavern down the street has opened, so hopefully the continued development will result in an increase in traffic for all the businesses in that area.

Urban pL8 has changed since my last visit. The orders are no longer taken at the counter, it’s all table service. The lunch menu has also expanded to include a larger selection of salads, sandwiches, and entrees. I felt like a sandwich that day, but the only option besides one of the many variations of burgers (bison, veggie, nut, banh mi, regular) was either a chicken or pimiento sandwich. So of course I went with a burger.

Plump, tall, and literally oozing its juices, this well grill-marked burger was very satisfying. Toppings, bun, and the accompanying salad all deserve high marks. The only thing I’d change is the forming of the patty – the beef is packed too tight, which results in a tough and chewy texture, almost like a sausage. This may have been the reason the burger is so juicy (the firm texture locks in the liquid?), so it may be a trade-off that I’m judging based on personal preference.

I continue to hear great things about the nut burger. I think I’ll try that next time.

This past Friday night I did have a good time at the bar – it was slammed, the live music was great, and the patio weather is about as nice as it’s going to be all year. Also, this is random, but JCT probably has the best valet I’ve ever met. His name is Peter, he remembers everyone, and he has an insanely genuine and enthusiastic way of talking to people. It really affects my mood in a positive way when I’m getting ready to walk in the restaurant.

I don’t like bitching about restaurants on the internets (where I can hide behind my aesthetically awesome Wordpress template), but I think every poor experience could have been easily remedied. JCT is a neighborhood place to me; I desire for them to be successful, but I don’t get excited about going there lately. I think it has more to do with the poor experiences than the quality of the food, so I plan on giving dinner another shot some time soon to see how it goes. With that diatribe, here’s lunch.

Dude got the salmon sandwich and fries – $9.50. Tons of fries, which are still delicious. I didn’t try the sandwich. Maybe Dude will leave a comment with his thoughts. :)

I ordered the famous Spring mountain fried chicken, which I’d actually never had. I substituted grits for mac ‘n cheese because I’m writing a blurb about Atlanta grit destinations for the AirTran in-flight magazine. So I’ve been doing grit research around town. The ladies at Waffle House thought it was hilarious. And I think it’s hilarious that they asked me to do it. But hey, now I can eat buttery grits and call it research.

The chicken is solid. It was cooked to the right level of doneness, I like the small-ish size of the not-pumped-full-of-hormones chicken, and the dark meat is my favorite lately. In fact, chicken thighs are my jam. The exterior isn’t really my personal style, a bit too thick and crusty, but it’s nice and crunchy and well seasoned. It may look a little dark, but I’ve found that a crust that is just on the good side of burnt has the best flavor.

The red mule grits are not for the faint of heart. They are fairly soupy, with probably a quarter stick of melted butter in a single serving. They top it all off with a poached egg. I was a little guilt-ridden as I dipped torn pieces of the chicken crust into the gooey butter/egg/grit mixture. But that sentiment passed.

I don’t know if I’m more likely to go to JCT for fried chicken over Carver’s, but I did have an enjoyable lunch, especially sitting outside in the courtyard patio. Our service was great, though the restaurant was mostly empty when we got there. I can definitely recommend the lunch, I’ll report back later on dinner.

Would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts.

This past weekend I visited Toscano & Sons after I tried to hit up a BBQ/burger trailer that sits next to a dingy convenient store on Marietta St, not far from Carver’s, but it was closed. Anyone ever been to that shack?

It had been a while since my last visit to T&S, and it’s always interesting to see if my opinion changes over the span of a year.

I was instantly drawn to the porchetta sandwich. For four bucks, it’s a great deal – the bread was still soft, with a touch of crunch from being momentarily pressed, and the salty, fatty meat hit the spot. I spent roughly $13, purchasing the sandwich, chips, a soda, a great loaf of ciabatta, and some bucatini.

The sandwich wasn’t exactly what I had envisioned though. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed my lunch, and it was a heck of a deal, but all throughout 2009, I couldn’t go even a week without hearing about the sandwich at Porchetta in NYC. So when I saw the word on the Toscano menu, I had visions of grandeur. Grandeur being the photo below.

photo above via Serious Eats NY

FYI – flights to NYC in April are $250 as of this morning, or 32,000 Delta SkyMiles as of 7:30AM today.

I had a fantastic porchetta roast at the Antinori property at the top of Atlas Peak in Napa Valley this past summer. It’s pretty much seasoned pork roast, wrapped in a huge slab of pork belly. Could you imagine layered cross section slices of that sucker, piled high on a sandwich?

Need some porchetta recipes?

This past Thursday through Sunday I had a jammed full schedule, including an insane amount of guilty pleasure eating. Luckily my weekend included a total of twenty miles of running; my fancy GPS watch said I burned 3,070 calories. Somehow I still think my appetite managed to beat out my metabolism.

Thursday night a group of us met up at one of the back tables at Antico for pizza and wine. The quattro stagioni was our first pie, and probably my favorite pie of the night. The toppings are my favorite part of Antico, second only to the ambience. The peppers on the san gennaro, the Italian sausage, the spicy calabrese peppers, and the copious amounts of sauce are all great. But the crust is a bit doughy for me. It’s often too dense, too gummy. The quattro stagioni we were served had the crispiest and lightest crust of the bunch, and perhaps not coincidentally, it appeared to have been cooked the longest. I really think their pies could go for just a few seconds longer in the oven, but that’s just me.

I loved this bottle of Morgon we had with the pies, it is head and shoulders better than most $20 Pinot based Burgundy you will find. The sparkling vouvray wasn’t a bad deal for $15 either. Both are available at Tower.

For lunch Friday I made my way downtown to Grindhouse. This was my second visit, and my first opportunity to try the apache burger, as they were out of the green chiles on my first visit. It wasn’t as spicy as I would have guessed, but this was one of the best burgers I’ve had in a while. The two meat patties were thin, soft, not overcooked, and had the most delicious griddle crust I’ve ever seen. Add to that a perfect bun, and crispy hot, salty seasoned krinkle fries, and I was a happy fat man for the rest of the day.

Later that night I went to the circus, which I haven’t attended in probably fifteen years. I forgot how amazingly well trained (abused?) the animals are. And forgot that popcorn costs $7. ZING ZANG ZOOM!

After the show I hit up La Fonda Latina where Slice used to be on Howell Mill. I had two chicken tacos, which were surprisingly decent. They were filled with large chunks of char-grilled chicken. The salsa was poor though, it tasted like they add tomato juice to it.

On Saturday my parents visited for my Mom’s birthday, and we took her on an eating tour of ATL. As they were staying in Buckhead, we started on the Westside and worked our way back towards their hotel. The first stop was the bar at Abattoir. The four of us sampled the duck meatballs, pickled shrimp, fried chicken livers, ceci peas, pommes frite, and celery soup. The celery soup was creamy and sinfully nourishing, and I loved the meatballs, particularly due to their super soft texture. The pommes frite seemed different than the last time I had them, I’m not sure if they’ve changed the style of if my memory isn’t serving me correctly, but I recalled liking them more in the past. Anyone know if they’ve changed?

After Abattoir we made our way over to Tuk Tuk, which was my first visit there. We easily sat at the bar, though at 7:30PM there were no open tables in their main dining area, a good sign for them. The spinach wraps pictured below were great, though the jerky in the background was probably my favorite dish. Flavorful, not overly leathery, and a fairly large portion, considering it’s jerky.

For “dessert” we went to Varasano’s. I don’t visit Varasano’s as much as I should, especially considering how much I love pizza. The pies on Saturday night were as good as I’ve had there, the sour dough crust is perfectly epic when it’s on point – light, full of sour flavor, crisp & chewy at the same time, and not “dough blow” inducing. Being a crust lover, I don’t think there’s better pizza in ATL.

You know what my dream is? I would love for Varasano’s to start offering some pasta entrees or small plates, similar to the menu at Flour+Water. If I could get the celery root tortelloni I had there, or “garganelli with fennel pollen sausage, chard, and fresh horseradish” they are currently offering, in addition to killer pie, you wouldn’t be able to drag me out of there. For now, eating at the bar at La Pietra, then heading on over to Varasano’s will have to suffice.

Finally on Sunday, I completed the first steps towards assembling my new sous vide immersion cooker. We’ll see if this sucker works. My past “handy” accomplishments include hanging a towel rack.

The Neapolitan (or tongue twisting Neo-Neapolitan) is my true pizza love, but something about the buttery, flaky crust, stuffed full of cheese and toppings, quite literally a “pie”, was calling my name.

I Googled a recipe for Gino’s East (a pizzeria in Chicago I’ve heard of, not sure where) and of course found a website and video detailing how to replicate it. Later I found another version, with a great picture. I followed the recipe for the most part, with a few variations due to lack of ingredients and overall forgetfulness.

I mixed the dough as described, though I didn’t have yellow food coloring. I also forgot the cornmeal. My dough was probably too sticky – it should almost be wet, but not sticky, due to the high amount of cornmeal and oil. I let it rise in my oven from about 8AM until that evening when I cooked the pizza.

The dough will quickly rise and the texture will get very puffy. I punched it down once around lunch time, and let it rise again.

My quick, standby pizza sauce is very easy. It’s an uncooked tomato sauce, which will work just fine on normal pizzas, especially if cooking with high heat. With a Chicago pizza, which will cook for a long time, I think the raw sauce works even better.

It’s simply a can of pureed/crushed Roma tomatoes (you can crush whole tomatoes if you want), with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, red pepper, and sometimes I use a microplane to add just a tablespoon of good parmesan cheese. Don’t store your sauce in the fridge, or if making it earlier, take it out about an hour before cooking to let it come up to room temperature.

For the toppings, I purchased some Tuscan sausage from Star Provisions. I sliced them in an obvious phallic nature, then cooked them a few minutes each side.

I used Sargento cheese for this pizza. I think you’re going to get better results with mozzarella like this, versus fresh mozzarella in water. The high moisture content of real deal mozzarella will cause the cheese to break down, and the pizza will be too wet for the slices to hold together.

I also purchased pepperoni from Star Provisions. It was just a few bucks for these 10 slices, so worth it.

When I was ready to cook, I greased my cast iron skillet heavily with butter. I rolled out my dough, did my best to throw it evenly into the pan, then trimmed the sides. Start the layering process with the cheese. I did an even layer of Sargento, then used some shredded mozzarella to ensure an even cheese layer.

After the cheese I added the meat, then a healthy dose of sauce. The pizza cooked on the lower rack for roughly 40 minutes. I started at 350 as instructed, but it didn’t seem to be cooking fast enough so I bumped it up to 400. I also broiled it for a minute before taking it out and letting it rest for a solid fifteen to twenty minutes.

You can see the sides pulled away, making it very easy to cut.

The pizza was very gloppy, even after 20 minutes rest.

A few notes on this pizza:

• I could have used more oil in the dough, more cornmeal, and I could have added more oil to the pan. Oil is your friend when it comes to this type of crust.
• I probably could have used just a bit less sauce, but the cooked sauce was delicious
• It was agreed that the high quality pepperoni and sausage was the tipping point for this pizza – the quality was apparent and everyone loved it
• Cooking at 350 is probably too low, next time I’ll try a bit higher the whole time
• Man this was delicious, everything I had hoped it would be, a true pizza gut bomb

So of course, after that pizza, we ate some Ad Hoc Fried Chicken. Awesome. The poulet rouge chickens are about $8-10 each at Whole Foods, and they are so worth it. Chickens aren’t supposed to be fifteen pounds. And as Keller mentions, a smaller chicken is better for fried chicken due to the better meat to crust ratio.

Last night I had every intention of getting appetizers at Bacchanalia, then moving on to Miller-Union to do the same thing, but the Bacchanalia portions were very substantial and we ended up full after just two appetizers and a salad.

Bacchanalia is generally a $75 prix fixe menu, but if you sit at the bar you can order ala carte. The restaurant was jammed full, but the bar was mostly empty, save for a 15 minute stretch where it was slammed with diners waiting for their tables. We easily found somewhere to sit, perused the drink menu, and asked the bartender, Seth, for a half bottle of Ployez-Jacquemart Champagne. It wasn’t stunning, but decent bubbles for under $50 is always a fun start to a meal. But we actually stretched this half bottle out through the whole meal, which ended up taking almost two hours.

Considering we were sitting at the bar and only ordering appetizers, I didn’t expect that they would offer us the whole routine afforded to those in the dining room. But immediately after we ordered, the bread arrived, then the warm gougères, followed by the cauliflower soup amuse. Shortly after, our appetizers arrived.

I had the butter poached lobster in risotto for $16. At first I thought the only lobster in the dish was the claw meat on top, and I wasn’t too shocked at that fact considering the locale and the price, but in fact there were five large bite sized pieces underneath the risotto, a pleasant surprise. The dish was probably too buttery (note the slightly coagulated butter ring around the risotto), but the risotto was cooked perfectly al dente, the lobster was wonderful, and the dish was filling and satisfying.

Katie got the Yukon gold gnocchi with royal trumpet mushrooms and shaved parmesan, also $16. My photo is poor, but we liked how the dish was presented in the small country style pot. The gnocchi were very tender, soft and giving to the touch, without being mushy. I really liked the crunchy mushrooms in this dish too. This was also a hearty dish, and a very large portion for an appetizer. Someone was a little heavy handed with the salt, but not to the point were it was a major turn-off.

After the appetizers, our salad arrived. It was roasted beets with beet sorbet and amazing goat cheese. I had this dish the first time I came to Bacchanalia a few years ago, so it must be a mainstay on the menu, and for good reason. The beet sorbet is unexpectedly refreshing, the goat cheese is fantastic, and I love how it all mixes up together to create a cold, blood stained cheese and roasted beet mixture. Again, I was surprised at the size of the portion for $12.

For dessert we ordered the apple buckle with cardamom ice cream. Though before this arrived, we were served yet another amuse from the kitchen – a candied lemon fizz drink, which was superb.

But our dessert was definitely the right choice, I only wish there had been more of the cardamom ice cream. I first had cardamom ice cream at Dynamic Dish, and it blew me away. I’m surprised I don’t see this combination more often.

At this point we were thoroughly stuffed, but the kitchen kept sending us out “gifts”. First came the macaroons, chocolates, and short breads, followed by the warm, puffy madeleines (not pictured). The madeleines pushed me over the top, from full to, OK now we waddle out to the car. But in a great way.

I wouldn’t go so far as to call this meal cheap, but it was a hell of a value. For two people I spent about $140 with tax and tip, which is less than what I spent for one person on my last visit to Bacchanalia, and I could have easily spent less on alcohol. I also had more fun on this visit – it was less up tight, I got to watch the dining room, chat with Seth, and view the kitchen staff working fervently; I highly recommend visiting this way. And if it’s not your thing, just get your check and hit up the next place on the Westside, there’s definitely a lot of options these days.

Notable: Bacchanalia now has a published vegetarian tasting menu, also $75. I believe they have been able to do this for quite a while, but a few years ago I know they didn’t have one published on their website. Also, shout out to RowdyFood.com, who gave me the idea for hitting up the bar at Bacchanalia.