Atlanta: The City and The Food

I have to admit, Atlanta wasn't really what I had expected it to be. I had this Gone With the Wind impression: slow pace, heavy accents, southern charm. What I got was really just another city: high buildings, traffic, and homeless people.

However, I do want to make it clear that I really like Atlanta. I'd live there. I didn't feel unsafe at any point. There were interesting sculptures on nearly every street corner. The buildings were high, but not so high that you get dizzy looking up at them like in New York. And there was lots of green space. The above picture was taken from between the aquarium and the Coke building. Face the opposite direction, and you'd see Centennial Olympic Park, with its Olympic Ring fountain and lots more lawn to enjoy.

I appreciate that Atlanta has a really good mass transit system. There's buses and trains to take you anywhere you need to go. It seems cars are a much bigger luxury there, and that people who bother with cars really only have nice ones. Scott saw his first non-Bond-movie Aston Martin, and we saw more Mercedes, BMWs and Bentleys per capita than anywhere else I've ever been. I don't even think I saw a single Hyundai!

Since we didn't really do anything or go anywhere that wasn't at least a little touristy, I can't say for sure that the people were friendly as a whole. But the people in the service industry certainly were.

The food, I must admit, was pretty disappointing. Perhaps we planned poorly. The first night, we found ourselves at a total tourist trap (one that apparently I had visited in my childhood and promptly forgot): Pitty Pat's Porch. The food was o-o-overpriced, the service was slo-o-ow, and we were underwhelmed by the food. Actually, I took a risk and had some curried pork dish that was really good. Scott got fried chicken and ribs and didn't really care for either. The most amusing portion of the meal was the "sideboard" of vegetables that came with it. Salad bar? We wished! There were 6 bowls up there: one with a green salad, one with some sort of cucumber salad, one with pickled rinds of some sort, and three with mystery mayonnaise-based salads. No labels - just guessing. It was like Fear Factor Atlanta!

Other dud meals were experienced at the Golden Budda (for lunch - barely edible), the food court at the aquarium (though it's possible we just made bad choices there), and the Landmark Diner (which wasn't really a dud... just a diner).

Our "big dinner" was at a seafood restaurant remarkably near CNN that shall remain nameless. The service there was really good. And I made a bad choice and ordered salmon for dinner. Just because a fish I don't usually like is stuffed with crab, shrimp and brie, that doesn't mean I'm going to like it! The reason for not disclosing the name? Well, after an iced tea refill, I took a drink and sucked up what I assumed was a lemon seed. I spit it into my hand and dropped it on my bread plate and heard a plink that didn't sound at all like a lemon seed. Turns out there was a small glass chip in there!

As soon as we told the server, he left and returned with the manager less than a minute later. They whisked my glass away and he kept asking me if I was ok. I'm sure he was trying to decide whether I looked litigious. I told him I was fine, just really freaked out. They replaced my tea, he told me he'd take care of my dinner, and Scott and I went back to eating. Scott kept shooting me nervous looks like he expected me to have perforated something and drop dead any second. Frankly, I would have known if there was anything else solid in my tea. I'm sure of it. It turns out the manager comped our entire dinner, so we gave the server the $20 that Scott happened to have in his wallet and we left.

The free dinner wasn't actually our best dinner. Our best dinner was at Max Lager's, a grill/brewery that Scott picked off the AAA website. When we got there, we were seated in a section without a server. Oops! We were exhausted from the long walk, and barely noticed that we hadn't been helped. They ended up throwing in free dessert to make up for it. We both got the ahi tuna with "spicy vegetables" for dinner. The vegetables? OMG... they were spicy! And the tuna... was perfect! Of course, the deep-fried cheesecake for dessert was the most divine thing I've ever eaten! It's more like a deep-fried crepe with cheesecake filling... soooo tasty!

Scott told me that I wouldn't be able to get un-sweet tea in Atlanta. He was partly wrong. I always got it, but it was an adventure. Pitty Pat's brought me un-sweet for my first glass, and then all of my refills were sweet. At the brewery, I ordered un-sweet, and the waitress apologized when she brought it out to me - "the sweet tea hasn't been brewed yet." The seafood place got the drink right... but were apparently trying to weed out the un-sweet drinkers of the world! And as you can imagine, we didn't see Pepsi in any dining establishment!

One other thing I wanted to mention: the broken windows! Atlanta got hit by a pretty bad tornado last month, and all of the skyscrapers seemed to have a lot of damage. It took me a while to realize that's what I was looking at. Boards, tape, and plastic could be seen on almost every building. Our second night, wicked storms passed to the north of the city, and the local weather man was pooing a brick. I understand that!

Scott and I both enjoyed Atlanta. I bet we'll go back there some day. And if we win the lottery, I promised him we'd get a cheap condo downtown and annual passes to the aquarium.