Food in Atlanta

[Gifted Gourmet]

Melissa, the website for IKEA Atlanta shows the location of the store in relation to the rest of downtown. It is not far at all really and, if I were you, I'd opt for the short cab ride.

Because it is a brand-new store, I imagine that everything is state of the art ...

[therese]

Can I get to IKEA by public transportation? Or should I just keep telling myself that no matter how ridiculous cab fare is, it's still cheaper than a mad dash weekend trip somewhere?

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Yes, you can get to IKEA using public transit if you don't mind the walk at the end.

Take MARTA to the Arts Center Station (N5). Walk north on Peachtree to 17th St and turn left, taking the 17th St bridge over the freeway; you can't cross at 16th St, the official street address for IKEA, because there's no bridge there.

You could also walk south to 14th St and cross there.

You might want to take MARTA to IKEA and then take cab back if you've given in to the temptation to buy something bulky or heavy. Do note, though, that it can be extremely difficult to get a cab in Atlanta. No problem catching one at the downtown hotels, but getting one to come to another location can be very time-consuming, and hailing one on the street anywhere but downtown nearly impossible. The customer service desk at IKEA can probably call you a cab, but give yourself plenty of time.

The store itself is pretty much the usual IKEA experience.

[MelissaH]

Thanks for answering one of my other question, therese: cab availability. I like that our national meetings move around through many different cities, but sometimes I wish that some of these places were more in tune with what visitors might be looking for.

As for carrying things back: anything I get's going to need to fly home with me, and I'm allergic to checking luggage under most circumstances. So I'll probably limit myself, and only get little stuff that isn't fragile. Maybe cutting boards, since we can always use more of those and IKEA has nice but inexpensive ones. The real reason for the trip is to get answers to some of our questions, particularly the one about how much it would cost to get the lot of cabinets shipped to us, since that's not so easy to do without being at a store.

Maybe dinner on Monday night will wind up being Swedish meatballs.

MelissaH

[Voodoo]

Can I get to IKEA by public transportation? Or should I just keep telling myself that no matter how ridiculous cab fare is, it's still cheaper than a mad dash weekend trip somewhere?

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Yes, you can get to IKEA using public transit if you don't mind the walk at the end.

Take MARTA to the Arts Center Station (N5). Walk north on Peachtree to 17th St and turn left, taking the 17th St bridge over the freeway; you can't cross at 16th St, the official street address for IKEA, because there's no bridge there.

You could also walk south to 14th St and cross there.

You might want to take MARTA to IKEA and then take cab back if you've given in to the temptation to buy something bulky or heavy. Do note, though, that it can be extremely difficult to get a cab in Atlanta. No problem catching one at the downtown hotels, but getting one to come to another location can be very time-consuming, and hailing one on the street anywhere but downtown nearly impossible. The customer service desk at IKEA can probably call you a cab, but give yourself plenty of time.

The store itself is pretty much the usual IKEA experience.

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There is a shuttle from the Arts Center MARTA station in Midtown to Atlantic Station (where IKEA is located), so need need to walk.

[therese]

There is a shuttle from the Arts Center MARTA station in Midtown to Atlantic Station (where IKEA is located), so need need to walk.

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Great information, Voodoo. Thanks for the heads up.

[Milt]

IKEA's Swedish meatballs are certainly the way to go if dining at IKEA - for lunch or in the evening. Great value, rather than great food. The small order of meatballs has been enough for me. It allows me to order something else if I am very hungry. It is enough to fill me satisfactorily, if I am not.

[MelissaH]

Has anyone done a kitchen with the Atlanta IKEA store? Do you have a person to recommend, when I call to make an appointment (so I can find out how much shipping our cabinet order to NY would cost) later this week?

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

So, I finally got my meeting agenda book, which tells me where they're taking us all for the group dinner.

What can you tell me about a restaurant called Azio? I found their Web site. I'm guessing we'll be getting something like their

PRIX FIXE SAMPLE MENU 1

{ INSALATE / salads }

Insalata della Casa

Insalata Cesare

{ SECONDI / entrees }

Fettuccine Primavera

Chicken Marsala

Ravioli Florentine

Penne Telefono

Veal Piccata

{ DOLCE / dessert }

Chef's Choice Dessert Platters.

Anything I should be sure to ask about if it's not on the menu? Anything to avoid? Are their wines adequate? Or should I go with the group to be sociable but plan to eat somewhere on my own, either before or after?

MelissaH

[Gifted Gourmet]

The ambiance is rather avant garde, and there is an excellent wine list! Azio has some excellent dishes including their spinach and walnut ravioli with asparagus. The portion sizes are quite ample really and you'll find that their prices won't break the bank. Enjoy yourself on this visit!

[Voodoo]

So, I finally got my meeting agenda book, which tells me where they're taking us all for the group dinner.

What can you tell me about a restaurant called Azio? I found their Web site. I'm guessing we'll be getting something like their

PRIX FIXE SAMPLE MENU 1

{ INSALATE / salads }

Insalata della Casa

Insalata Cesare

{ SECONDI / entrees }

Fettuccine Primavera

Chicken Marsala

Ravioli Florentine

Penne Telefono

Veal Piccata

{ DOLCE / dessert }

Chef's Choice Dessert Platters.

Anything I should be sure to ask about if it's not on the menu? Anything to avoid? Are their wines adequate? Or should I go with the group to be sociable but plan to eat somewhere on my own, either before or after?

MelissaH

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I've been once for lunch, and I thought the food was just okay, nothing special. Don't remember what I got, don't remember what's good. It probably isn't worth your time to skip the meal altogether unless you are really serious about going to a good place for every meal. It's certainly not bad. I'd say it's a slight step up from Olive Garden.

Edited March 22, 2006 by Voodoo (log)

[therese]

Anything I should be sure to ask about if it's not on the menu? Anything to avoid? Are their wines adequate? Or should I go with the group to be sociable but plan to eat somewhere on my own, either before or after?

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I've never been (which might tell you something right there) but at least it doesn't have "hellish tourist/conventioneer trap"written all over it and should be reasonable. The company's opening one of their smaller operations in downtown Decatur, so I may try it.

I'd eat with the group. You won't find anything all that much better downtown.

[MelissaH]

OK, so there's hope for the group dinner. I know at least that it won't be any worse than what we did for the NYC meeting: Mars 2112, which has since been noticed by Frank Bruni in his Diner's Journal blog.

On another and final note: can I get to Dekalb Farmer's Market by public transit? Their Web site's been down since before this thread started, and the MARTA Web site is next to useless for figuring out how to get somewhere, if you don't already know where you need to go.

Thanks, and I'll be there tomorrow night!

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

I'm back. And most of the food I ate was provided by the Marriott Marquis, where the bulk of my activities took place.

Friday night's dinner was eaten on the airplane, courtesy of Wegman's deli. Much better than the crackers offered by the flight attendants.

Saturday morning started with EGGS and BACON! Mounds and mounds of bacon, cooked crisp and ungreasy and salty and delicious. Those of us who eat pig ate an absolutely obscene amount of bacon. The eggs were scrambled, and between them and the bacon we got the protein that we'd been asking for the last few meetings. No grits, though, or sausage gravy, or biscuits: we were a little disappointed. The pineapple slices were also killer. And they had chocolate milk in boxes and hot chocolate, which made my day.

Saturday lunch was stuff at the hotel again: roasted veggies with vinaigrette, green salad, bread and cheese and meat and condiments to build your own sandwich, some kind of soup that I wasn't hungry for, and brownies that looked more chocolaty than they tasted. The roasted veggies were the lunch highlight for me.

Saturday dinner at Azio wadn't bad. It was a quick walk from the hotel, which is always a plus after some of the death marches we've been led to dinner on. The food was OK, nothing special. Choice of house or caesar salad, five choices of entree (3 pastas, veal milanaise, and chicken something-or-other), and dessert. Half my table, including me, had the caesar salad and the ravioli florentine. The salad was nicely green and the dressing inoffensive. The ravioli, which was stuffed with walnuts, spinach, and romano, was fine. The sauce on the ravioli (mushrooms, asparagus, and sun-dried tomatoes in butter) was also fine. But a few of us agreed that the sauce didn't really seem to go well with the pasta. And dessert wasn't bad either: it was trays of bite-sized pieces of cheesecake, brownie, lemon meringue pie, and a few other things, with blackberries and strawberry halves. But I got the distinct feeling that the dessert bites were the sort of thing that could have easily come from a warehouse club and been plated on the big silver tray to look fancy. People said the sushi place nearby was good, but I didn't go there myself.

Sunday breakfast was a repeat of Saturday. Sunday lunch was unremarkable (Champions, the sports bar in the hotel) and Sunday dinner was grazed from various receptions.

The highlight of Monday was a trip to Decatur for lunch at Watershed. But that will need to wait for another post, as I have a student waiting for my help right now.

MelissaH

[MelissaH]

Monday was a good eating day in Atlanta.

I had brought along a Cara Cara navel orange, and that served me well for breakfast. I was up fairly early, so I could meet a friend at the aquarium doors at 8:30. We waited on line for half an hour until the doors opened, and spent a couple of hours looking at beautiful things that could potentially be food. If you go, don't miss the whale slide. And if you go down first, you can take photos of your friends as they come down. The slide even has baleen in the mouth, just like a real whale! (Teeth are food-related, right?)

My next food-related stop was back at the hotel to grab my friend Sam. We hopped Metra to Decatur, and lunched at Watershed. We had no trouble finding the restaurant, arriving there at a little after 1. We shared a platter of artisanal cheeses,

which came with a small pile of pecans drizzled with honey from North Georgia, and toasted thin slices of bread. I can't remember what these are anymore, but I do remember that the soft white one was a goat cheese coated with a vegetable ash, because that was my favorite of the three. One of the others reminded me of a mild swiss-type cheese, but the flavor was pretty well lost on me. The other was something like a cheddar, but it didn't light up my taste buds quite the way the goat cheese did.

Next was the main courses. I got the roast pork sandwich with fig conserve, fresh cheese, and dijon mustard.

Sam got the white truffle chicken salad sandwich, which he declined to share. We each got a side of the new potato salad with bacon and sour cream dressing.

From the moans that Sam emitted, I deduced that he enjoyed his sandwich. My sandwich was also quite good, but the pork didn't seem to have much flavor to me, and I didn't taste much of the cheese either. What I did taste, though, was the bread, the sweet fig conserve, and the potent pungent mustard. And that combination was tremendously enjoyable. I wonder if the sandwich would work any better with thinly sliced smoked turkey breast in place of the roast pork, or possibly even a smoked pork in some form. (Bacon, anyone?) I think I'd probably leave any cheese out, because the butter on the bread did the trick to mellow the mustard just a touch. Might have to experiment with this one, if I can ever find figs or fig conserve.

The potato salad was a winner. I'll need to look for that recipe; a reasonable place to start would be in The Gift of Southern Cooking. Or if anyone else has a recipe, please share!

For dessert, Sam had to do the carrot cake. I had to do the apple cake.

I only ate about half the whipped cream. Sacrilege, I know, but I didn't feel like it needed any additional gilding beyond the caramel sauce.

And thus ended the notable eating on the Atlanta portion of the trip. I discovered that a MARTA Breeze card can apparently nuke a hotel key card's magnetic strip. I found that the usual spots for good grazing were generally good spots for good grazing in Atlanta. And I discovered that the Perimeter REI store is reasonably easy to get to by MARTA also.

Never did get to IKEA, since the choice was between that and REI, and REI was more urgent (but not at all food-related). We've decided to do IKEA over the Easter weekend, which is a long weekend for us.

Thanks again for all your help, everyone. You made my wanderings through Atlanta much easier and less stressful than they might have been otherwise. I'd actually look forward to returning, should the need arise!

MelissaH

[therese]

Glad you enjoyed your visit, Melissa, though it's too bad that you had to eat so much food downtown, at both the Marriott and Azio. I'm not surprised that your hotel breakfast didn't include grits, as of course almost everybody eating those breakfasts will come from someplace other than the southeast and pretty much nobody will touch grits. Sausage gravy not a local thing so far as I know.

The white truffle chicken salad sandwich at Watershed is indeed excellent. Seems like the sandwich with fig conserve used to be lamb, though it's been so long since I had anything other than the salmon croquettes or one of the vegetable plates that I can recall for sure.

And you didn't get to Dekalb Farmers Market, did you?

[MelissaH]

Glad you enjoyed your visit, Melissa, though it's too bad that you had to eat so much food downtown, at both the Marriott and Azio. I'm not surprised that your hotel breakfast didn't include grits, as of course almost everybody eating those breakfasts will come from someplace other than the southeast and pretty much nobody will touch grits. Sausage gravy not a local thing so far as I know.

And we had people commenting that they missed NOT having grits!

Azio wasn't horrendous, but the service left a lot to be desired. It looked like they had a number of parties other than ours, judging by the large tables in curtained-off areas. The basketball game that night probably didn't help much. But I asked for a Coke to drink, and it never came. Furthermore, at about 10:00, the staff came by and loudly started to dismantle the curtains around us. And then they pretty much threw the check in the face of the person who was paying. It was like they couldn't wait to throw us out...although do people really dine out after 10 PM in downtown? None of us was happy about that!

The white truffle chicken salad sandwich at Watershed is indeed excellent. Seems like the sandwich with fig conserve used to be lamb, though it's been so long since I had anything other than the salmon croquettes or one of the vegetable plates that I can recall for sure.

And you didn't get to Dekalb Farmers Market, did you?

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I think lamb would probably have worked better in the sandwich. It needed something a little more gutsy than pig. It wasn't bad, but the pork might as well have not been there, for all I could taste it.

And no, I didn't get to Dekalb Farmers Market. I wound up with only a small opening in my schedule on Tuesday morning after my focus group, and with a car I might have been able to squeeze it in. Oh well, gives me something to look forward to next time.

MelissaH