The Schoolyear of Scott

I have a lot of free time on my hands.  There really isn’t much to do during the day, while everyone is at either work or school, other than go to the gym and do the occasional errand, like go to the dry cleaners or post office.  Being that my days in Atlanta are numbered, I recently decided that I should be going to all of the restaurants that I haven’t had the chance to go to in my nearly seven years living here.  I figured here is as good of a place as any to provide you, my faithful reader, with some reviews.

FLIP BURGER BOUTIQUE (www.flipburgerboutique.com)

I went here last week with my friends Nitya, Cyrus and his lady Rebecca.  This is the new restaurant by former Top Chef competitor Richard Blais.  He’s the guy who shot liquid nitrogen into his hair to make it stand up in a Faux-Hawk all the time.  Or something like that.

Anyway, this place was really good.  I had a Philly Burger “wit wiz”, which for those you haven’t actually had a cheesesteak in Philadelphia, means with onions, peppers and cheese wiz and a Smoked Caesar Salad topped with Tempura Anchovies.  It was downright delightful.  Cyrus had a lamb burger (because he’s from the Middle East, I would suspect) with Raisin Ketchup, which he raved about, and a Burned Marshmellow Milk Shake, topped with, you guessed it, Burned Marshmellows.  There is also a Krispy Kreme Milk Shake on the menu, which I am quite curious to try.

Scott’s Rating: Medium to Medium Rare (Medium Rare being the best way to prepare a burger)

CHATEAU DE SAIGON (www.chateaudesaigon.com)

Also last week, my friend Aaron and I decided to go for a drive down Buford Highway and stop in at a random restaurant (which, for those of you who aren’t in Atlanta, 95% of Buford Highway is random.  It’s basically Epcot’s World of Nations in a highway format, with a little Frogger thrown in for good measure.  If you drove down it, that all would make sense to you).  We stopped in at Chateau de Saigon, mostly because after driving for 10 minutes, it was the first place we found that looked like it had running water.

The food was excellent.  I had the Combination Pho (a noodle soup), which had every meat you could imagine, including Tripe, which I learned was the inside lining of a Cow’s Stomach (reading the Shameless Carnivore has given me courage).  I threw in some diced habenerio peppers and mixed in some herbs and some of the sauces provided and it was delicious.  Aaron had some steak dish with vegetables and fried rice and it was, no kidding, some of the best tasting steak I’ve ever had.  We also had some tofu covered fried shrimp (or some combination of the two) and pork spring rolls which were pretty good as well.  If you can find this place on Buford Hwy, I would recommend stopping in.

Scott’s Rating: 2 out of 2 chopsticks

DANTANNA’S (www.dantannas.com)

This isn’t really going to be a review, since everyone who has lived in Atlanta for sometime has gone to Dantanna’s, but I thought I would share this funny story.  Last night I went there with my friends Kramer and Hayley and Kramer’s mom (part of the group that I went on the cruise with).  The three of them had never been before and so questions about the portion size and whether or not to get an appetizer came up.  Hayley, who was starving, made the decision that if the restaurant served bread on the table she would just get a main course, but if not, she would get a side salad along with her Salmon.

We broached this situation with our waitress, who gave us a very unique response to our inquiry.  “We do have bread for the table but I don’t serve it to my customers…it is TERRIBLE”.  The four of us were very puzzled, questioned just how bad could it be?  The waitress assured us it was bad and even with us prodding that we still wanted to try the bread, she wouldn’t budge on her stance to serve us the bread.  She then walked away and we began to wonder if this bread even existed.  There were numerous sandwhiches on the menu, so how could it be possible that a restaurant known for great food have bad bread?  Well we soon found out.

Our waitress came out with a slice of the bread for the four of us to try.  It was cold and slightly soggy with a slight hint of flavor but not enough to get any of us to even finish the slice.  It was bad!  Everything else we had last night was great, especially the Red Velvet Cheesecake, but the bread was horrible.

Moral of the Story – Listen to your waitress at restaurants and don’t eat the bread at Dantanna’s!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 17th, 2009 at 10:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.