therese

Agree with both points re Atlanta magazine. I've never seen Lauterbach in person, but would recognize her the minute she opened her mouth, as she's got a very distinctive voice and accent, and she's not infrequently on the radio. So no possibility of an anonymous review unless she pretends to be mute. Agree here as well. The Loaf's always had very good restaurant reviewers, IMO, and the rest of the paper's got very good stuff as well. Best source for nightlife info. Just had a meal that wavered between okay and not very good at Tasty China, in the company of Chinese friends, no less. They were mortified.

How much time, exactly?

Assuming you're willing to head downtown (and there's no reason not to, either by cab or subway if you really want to display your fiscally conservative streak to your boss), consider Blaue Gans (which is Austrian, with excellent food and nice ambience) and 'inoteca (Italian, very good). Both very reasonably priced.

Zing! The OTP'ers felt that one. ← Well, not really meant to be a zing, but it does speak to just how very large the Atlanta metro area is, and how that shapes our dining habits. Plenty of food for everybody.

Mostly me. Husband will throw something together if I'm not there, and the kids are both competent if need be. Pizza for the kids if my husband and I are going out for dinner on the weekend. Indian's our usual if we're doing takeaway (maybe once or twice a month), grocery store sushi if I'm shopping late. We eat out as a family about once a week. Hmm, depends on your definition of "from-scratch." I don't, for instance, routinely make my own pasta or bread, and I don't can my own tomatoes or make my own pickles or put up my own jelly and jam. On the other hand I buy almost nothing from the "middle" of the supermarket. Married. Two teenagers (one 13, one 16) Professional, full-time, not food-related. Yes. Food's important to me, so I make the time. About the same. My mother didn't work outside the home, and we didn't go out to eat as much as a family, but I did go out with her pretty often when shopping on the weekend (as she shares my interest in food). Family dinner with everybody around the table every night, just the way we do it now. She used more frozen vegetables, but was (is, in fact) an excellent cook.

These were best new restaurants, not best restaurants in town. And precisely how she (I'm assuming this was Lauterbach) settled on which ones were new and which ones weren't I can't tell. Ecco, for instance, might not have qualified because it hadn't been open long enough for her to vist more than once or twice. Saga, Shaun's, and Trois similarly all too new. The list includes a number of restaurants that are too far away for me to even consider visiting (or at least not more than once or twice a year), but I have been to a number of them: East Pearl: haven't been, haven't heard of it Enoteca: if this is Enoteca Carbonari, same owners as Baraonda down by the Fox, then I have been and will not be returning; underwhelming food, crappy service on my single visit. If it's not Enoteca Carbonari then I haven't been. Feast: nice enough neighborhood sort of place in Decatur near the old train depot; we've been about six times, my parents also liked it. Krog Bar: excellent, located next to sister restaurant Rathbun's; great wine list, great ambience (though it's small), great small plates designed to go with wine. Lobby at 12: Haven't been, but it's on our list. Part of the Concentrics group. Nam Chung Hong: lots of local buzz, but we haven't been yet. Paul's: Haven't been, and probably won't go as it's a bit far for us considering the type of food (of which there's plenty in our neck of the woods). Piebar: very cool space, also part of Concentrics, that had very cool food when it first opened (menu largely the work of Richard Blais who was at One Midtown Kitchen at the time, also in that group, though he didn't get credit on the menu), has progressively been dumbed down. Not bad, but not nearly as good as it was. Pure Taqueria: if I'm going to drive that far for Mexican I'll just drive all the way to Mexico. Quinones: Waiting for a good reason to drop huge amounts of money. It will be fantastic. Repast: I've heard some mixed reviews, and we haven't been yet. Rosa Mexicano: Um, it's a chain. A chain from New York, no less. I spend my money on local restaurants, thank you very much. Shorty's: haven't heard of it. Table 1280: great under Shaun Doty, not quite as great under the new guy on our one visit since he started. Great space there, and very convenient for a concert or show at the Arts Center. Taurus: was supposed to go to work dinner there last week but managed to get out of it (not because of the food, but because of the company). Husband has been, wasn't impressed enough to take me back. Tomo: good local buzz, haven't been. The restaurant that she liked best, The Globe, is one of our favorites: cool location and space (convenient to concerts on the Georgia Tech campus), food very good to excellent, particularly great desserts IMO.

I've received potato salad as part of banchan/panchan here in Atlanta on several occasions, but have never thought of it as being particularly American. It is creamy, and tastes like it contains mayonnaise, but not much else like celery or onions typical of what you would find in a western version. Much smaller pieces, softer consistency.

Oh, and if you'd care to list Atlanta magazine's top restaurants (since I haven't seen this edition) I can comment on them.

You've only seen a small handful of the restaurants listed in Atlanta magazine here on eG because so few Atlantans participate on eG. The primary (as far as I can tell) reason that so few Atlantans participate on eG is that Atlanta has a local version of something very like eG that's very, very active, so there's not much need to spend time on eG. Apart from micropundit's weekly list of what's happening you'll notice that virtually all of the Atlanta information on eG is either somebody who is visiting (usually for work) and needs to know where to eat in the downtown area, or somebody who has visited and gives feedback on their experience. I don't bother to post on my Atlanta restaurant experiences because there's not much audience for them. I do respond to specific queries, even when the thought of answering yet another question about bbq or down-home kuntry kookin' fills me with despair. Chowhound is similarly short on Atlanta posts, by the way, and for exactly the same reason. The restaurant critic for Atlanta magazine is Christiane Lauterbach, and she's very well-respected in the community, and also a very good writer. Her recommendations are generally spot on, and the magazine does a good job of reviewing restaurants in various neighborhoods. Lauterbach also writes a print publication called Knife & Fork (not available on line so far as I know), and she seems to be a bit more rigorous in her reviews there (as of course Atlanta magazine depends on advertising revenue from those very same restaurants). So, to answer your query, no, I don't subscribe to Atlanta magazine, but I probably would were it not for the fact that I read it pretty much cover to cover when I visit the hairdresser's. So were I a newcomer to Atlanta I might well subscribe. You should also subscribe, if you haven't already, to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I am not particularly enamored of the present primary restaurant reviewer for the AJC, but they do have a lot of very good food journalism on the whole.

The restaurant is called Au Pied de Cochon, and it's part of a Paris-based group of brasseries/bistros that includes Le Procope. Raw bar prominently featured, as well as standard French takes on steak and potatoes sorts of things. Not cheap. Decor very rococco: gigantic paintings of pigs, velvet curtains, chandeliers of glass fruit. I've not been back since our first disastrous visit soon after they'd opened, so I can only hope it's improved. The catering at the Intercontinental is top-notch (I schedule meetings there), so clearly somebody has his act together. And note that the Intercontinental is in Buckhead, not downtown (as the title of this thread might lead one to believe).

There's more than one sort of mimosa plant, and several different colored flowers associated with them (includng the pink version in the U.S. and orange or yellow versions in other parts of the world). Mimosa plants aren't necessarily related to each other, they just happen to share a marked sensitivity (explaining the name) to touch, temperature change, or other stimuli.

I've never thought about it one way or the other, as I pretty much always use the whole onion.

Most people aren't serious about food, whether they're from Atlanta or elsewhere.

Mike, I'll point out that your experience may be skewed by your location.

Unless Food Studio has gotten way better recently I'd recommend Rathbun's. Food requirements no problem whatsoever. I'd personally go a little dressier than jeans at Rathbun's, but some would disagree.

My single serious gripe with the lightweight disposable (except that I use them again and again and again, literally for years) containers is that they flip over easily in the dishwasher. I get around this by laying something on top of them, like cooking rack or pan lid, to keep them from flipping during the wash. I don't worry too much about whether or not I've got the same numbers of tops as bottoms, as I've got more than enough of both, and because they nest I don't worry about the storage issue.

Similar experience here with liquids, though only if it's a lot of liquid, like a soup or stew: items like salads with dressing or fruit that gives off a fair amount of juice have not been a problem under pretty stressful conditions (joggling them every which way in my lunch pail on a 20 minute walk to work). No problem with routine kitchen use.

The disposable types such as Gladware (though there are other vendors) fulfill all your criteria. I no longer use Tupperware of any sort. The Gladware items stack by nesting (both bottoms and tops) and work well in both the freezer and microwave. Lots of different sizes, and I've found them to be very sturdy.

Yep, Son's Place is still open, and in fact was recently featured on Chris Cognac's "Hungry Detective" show. Son's place is right around the corner from Shaun's, right at Dekalb Ave. Edited to point out that I indicated the wrong MARTA station in my post above: it's the Inman Park/Reynoldstown Station that you want, not Candler Park. The station's at Dekalb Ave and Hurt St, so you'd backtrack one block west to Elizabeth. You'll see Son's Place at that intersection. Turn right onto Elizabeth and Shaun's is at the first insection (with Edgewood Ave).

Oh, and a heads up re Silk, where I was obliged to dine recently for a business dinner: um, not good. So not good as to verge on very bad.

I've been to Shaun's once so far, and we're looking forward to going back. Very appealing space (the old Deacon Burton's place), and though the food was a bit uneven on our visit last month I expect that to smooth out pretty quickly. It's actually located in Candler Park, very close to the Candler Park MARTA station, so you could easily use public transit to get there. Another option that I use when entertaining guests who are staying downtown is Pura Vida. It's not downtown, but because it's very close to Freedom Parkway it's a very quick ride via cab (but remember, look it up ahead of time). Pura Vida serves tapas, so it's great for a group, and the food is way cooler than the word "tapas" suggests (unless "tapas" calls to mind foie gras for you). It's very popular, so definitely reserve unless you're going very early.

Yes, also a staple for us, on my grandmother's farm in southwest Virginia (so the edge of Appalachia. Canned salmon (laboriously picked over to remove skin and bones, and one guess as to whose job this was), egg, cracker crumbs, and probably onion and celery (though I'm not sure about this---my mother may have added them later on). Not much in the way of local fish apart from trout, so that may have been one of reasons it became popular, but in the end I think it was just a cheap, convenient source of protein. And one that didn't require rearing, slaughtering, and preserving (as does pork), or any sort of refrigeration (as does beef, except that we rarely ate beef), or any sort of last minute intense prep (as does chicken, at least the sort of chickens we ate).

Any new word on this restaurant, has it opened yet.. Finalized my plans.. I will be arriving this evening to my hotel in Buckhead.. I would love to go here if its open. I have made most of my plans for downtown, can anyone recommend a place like this in Buckhead.. Is LowCountry Barbecue Express any good? ← Specifically robata? The only robata place I've seen in Atlanta (assuming that the new Kinjo place isn't open) was at Sakan-ya, and recently closed. I've never heard of Low Country Barbecue Express, and Atlanta's not really about barbecue. Best Japanese presently available in Buckhead would be Taka (largely sushi).

Glad you enjoyed your visit. I was supposed to go to the Pot Likker Film Festival, but husband was out of town and by the time I got my act together to get tickets they were sold out. Oh well. Some comments on your comments... Yep, salmon croquettes. And I've always assumed that they got to be a staple because canned salmon is so inexpensive. I still remember having to pick through it to remove the bones and skin before my grandmother made the croquettes. Are you sure? Because Watershed pretty much invariably serves them with grits, not mashed potatoes. And you forgot the stewed tomatoes, essential to the flavor and color balance on that plate. Maybe they subbed the mashed potatoes because you'd shrimp and grits to start. I like this dish so much I have difficulty ordering anything else at Watershed. Rest assured that you're not the only party that's ever been treated to this spiel. I'm not sure why the staff seems to think it's necessary---presumably they see a need for it. They also seem to feel the need to set land speed records for service---I've seen tables get through five courses at Bacchanalia in the time it takes me finish a cocktail. Yeah, very old school. A good stop on your way home from the Clermont, in case you made it to the Clermont (and if you didn't you can go next time you're in town).

Soto