Lee Garden – Atlanta Restaurant Review – Chinese

CHICKEN WINGS ARE GREAT for throwing. Sitting next to a large table with an entire family, I felt a chicken wing thunk against my head. I was deep in a plate of beef stew over rice when a fried chicken wing took flight and made me notice a little 3 year old chinese boy staring at me, laughing.

Immediately his grand mother, sitting closest to me, started apologizing profusely in mandarin before the mother and grandfather joined in. ‘Ni hao’ I said to the boy, waving at him and showing everyone that I was okay. Much to the boy’s sadness, the chicken wing had caused no brain damage.

The grandfather started asking me questions in mandarin and I was completely lost. Once again I recited my basic Pimsleur and once again the game was up.

Note to self: STOP PRETENDING LIKE YOU KNOW CHINESE.

Pointing at my food the grandfather tells me that he never sees anyone except chinese eating what I ordered for lunch that day. This is because it’s from the chinese menu and not the regular menu printed in english.

Yes I know, I surprised myself and ordered from the chinese menu. Not intimidated by the hanzii and unknown characters. Not afraid to order blind, to order food that might not be to my liking. I was fearless! I charted uncharted territory! I am not like everyone else in Alpharetta! I’m in the know, I’m cool, I’m just an all around great guy!

Well, except for the fact that while they have a separate chinese menu, it was translated a while ago and now you can order from both without being able to read chinese (if you can actually find it). But most people never order from the chinese menu due to the unexciting translated names such as ‘beef stew over rice’, ‘pork hock soup’, etc. These names are always poor indicators of how good your food is going to be. My food that day was better than any of the ‘regular’ food, better than sweet and sour, better than kung pao everything.

Having apprenticed in Shanghai, ‘Lee’ moved to Georgia and started cooking offerings that appeal to suburbia while throwing in some dishes from home. Unlike many of the competitors nearby, seafood is an option worth trying here.

Looking at what the family ordered, I saw big bowls full of steaming hot soups and stews. The broth fogging up glasses and warming everyone’s face. The little boy happily made attempts at eating his rice, eventually needing help every now then. I arrived at the end of the lunch rush and now the restaurant was near empty except for me and this family. I told them about my planned month in China during April and they told me how much they missed living there.

Leaving Hubei, the grandparents came to America wanting something different for their son. Like many immigrants, they left with almost nothing and worked hard the second they arrived, moving from place to place until eventually settling here in Atlanta where their son grew up and married a woman also from China. Eventually they had a child and one day he threw a chicken wing at my head.

Tags: Lee. Garden. Alpharetta. Chinese. Authentic. Atlanta. Restaurant. Review.

Lee Garden
11770 Haynes Bridge Rd
Alpharetta, GA 30004
(770) 740-1698

Green Sprout – Atlanta Restaurant Review – Vegetarian – Chinese

I eat dead animals for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between. I eat them awake, asleep, while driving – I’d eat them in the shower if I could get away with it. Few things are better than having your food look back at you, the entire head, roasted with a frozen grin; while someone saws off a slice of cheek and passes it around the table.

Once I went vegetarian for six months straight. You know what I ate? French fries, cake, bread, cheese pizza – everything that was neither meat, nor vegetable. Without that muscle, that fat, and sometimes the crunching bones, legumes just didn’t give me what I needed, what I craved. Vegetables don’t properly get stuck in my teeth. Muscle fibers hang on for dear life, wedging themselves between molars to avoid that final acid digestion. Sure I can fill my stomach with plants but I won’t be satisfied. I’m a freakin samurai and something needs to die in order for me to feel content. (Well… only when I lose my Zen.)

Green Sprout does not serve meat.

Sure, their menu ’says’ beef, or chicken, or fish – but no. Green Sprout does not serve meat. So go ahead, order your orange chicken. Order your sesame beef. Order as if they actually do serve meat. Pretend like the fake tofu is going to give you that feeling of dead animal. Pretend like the texture is going to come close, as if tofu could ever mimic meat from the best rice fed cows drunk on saki.

Give up. Make your vegetarian girlfriend happy for once and actually go to a ‘vegetarian’ restaurant. Oh, when the food arrives after a short wait, take that bite. Push the vegetables aside and go for that fake meat. Come on, it can’t touch the real stuff, why even pretend? Just get it over with. Pop one of those chik-pattie wannabes into your mouth and move on.

Okay, I’ll admit it, the fake meat is pretty good here. It’s so good that it doesn’t even taste like meat. In fact, considering that many vegetarians are vegetarian not for ethical reasons, but because they just don’t like the taste and texture of meat, this is perfect – for them. Sure it’s not kobe beef, or free range fowl, or Alaskan wild salmon, but that’s okay. We’re giving the wildlife a break today.

Come here often enough and they’ll remember you. Something Green Sprout has over Top Spice and Ru-Sans (the other two restaurants above and next door) is that the people here will get to know you if give them a chance, if you want to know them. Overhearing the server talk to the other tables, half of the menu should be off limits. Stick with the basics. Stick with stuff you’ll find at nearly every other regular chinese restaurant. The fake meat here is made up of different types of tofu, prepared in several ways using simple tricks such as freezing, and drying and switching with pork (in my dreams). Giving it less of a tofu texture and more of a… meat substitute texture.

Green Sprout is an odd restaurant to me. I understand what they’re doing, but why do it? I just don’t get it. But don’t get me wrong, the food here is good, I just wish it had been something that could fight back. Pigs can fight back right? Chickens? Salmon? Sure they can. Um. Nevermind.

Review Summary: 4.2 out of 5

Tags: Green. Sprout. Atlanta. Restaurant. Review. Chinese. Vegetarian. Best.

Green Sprout
1529 Piedmont Ave
Atlanta, GA, 30324
(404) 874-7373

Frank Ma’s – Da San Yuan – Atlanta Restaurant Review – Chinese

Frank Ma’s.

I USED TO LOVE THE LANGUAGE BARRIER. It kept everything foreign, different, making each meal at a chinese restaurant more chinese simply because I couldn’t understand anything. I didn’t need to understand, back then I just wanted good food. Of course I also used to order general tso’s chicken thinking it was authentic cuisine straight from Zhongguo.

It’s the details that make everything great at Frank Ma’s. The way Amy Ma welcomes you when you first enter; how the server smiles, surprised when your Caucasian dinner-mate actually orders her food in Mandarin. The way the food comes out with the wok-essence infused, visibly floating upward, intertwined with the rising steam. Dumplings cooked to perfection, balancing the pan fried outer texture with the heavenly ingredients within. Entrees prepared with copious amounts of oil, leaving residual spoonfuls only adding to the flavor, multiplying the desired effects. Your meal will definitely make you happy.

On this sunday afternoon with the restaurant near empty, it’s just my girlfriend and me. Frank Ma stops by our table and ask how is everything. “Hen hao chi” she says and a surprised smile registers on Frank’s face. I sit there quietly eating my gloriously roasted Beijing duck, trying to avoid letting on that the only Mandarin I know is from lesson one of Pimsleur.  She tells him of her time studying in Beijing and his eyes light up. Question after question he asks while I reach across the table with my chopsticks, snap at some perfectly braised eggplant and fill my mouth repeatedly while they talk back and forth.

Hongshao qiezi is one of the few vegetarian dishes I can always count on. Every restaurant has a slight recipe variation but all of them satisfy completely. If you’re vegetarian and you’re tired of eating fried rice with steamed vegetables or any number of tofu substitutions, try this Chinese eggplant dish. Even if it’s not on the menu, ask for it and nine times out of ten they’ll prepare it for you. The stuff at Frank Ma’s is on par with the best.

I sit facing a wall of mirrors. The air outside is crisp and a thin layer of snow still covers the ground. I watch reflections as person after person comes in from the cold and is greeted by Amy Ma before walking to the back where a meeting is beginning. I eavesdrop, trying to identify the handful of words I understand, listening for tones, attempting to gain a language immersion lesson for free – all of it lost on me as I get distracted by the arrival of more food. Sliced fish in hot oil is so much more than the title suggests and insanely fulfilling as my rice catches every flavor. If I could lick my plate without being seen, I’d do it in a heartbeat. And no matter how incorrect the sentence; this food tastes beautiful.

Frank Ma is looking at me, expecting me not to be rude and finally say something. He speaks perfect English, but instead I meekly respond Wo hui shuo yidianr putonghua with a Beijing accent sounding a bit like a pirate. I add Wo shi Feilubinren explaining that I’m Filipino. He grins and says in English, “Keep working on it”. Just then a crash of dropped metal clangs from the kitchen and he abruptly walks away.

I look at our empty plates. The table top is covered with evidence of an excellent meal, meaning not a single morsel of food is left. Mandarin being spoken in the kitchen carries out and fills the dining area mingling with the noise from the meeting in back. Laughter mixes in with exclamations while the big screen television shows a celebration taking place somewhere in Taiwan. Reaching across the table my girlfriend holds my hand and tells me wo ai ni.  I don’t know this term but like the food at Frank Ma’s, translation is not needed – everything here taste beautiful.

Tags: Frank. Ma’s. Atlanta. Restaurant. Review. Chinese. Best. Buford. Highway. Authentic.

Frank Ma’s
Da San Yuan
5389 New Peachtree Rd.
Chamblee, GA 30341
(770) 234-4885

Solstice Cafe – Atlanta Restaurant Review – Breakfast Brunch

Solstice Cafe and I think of Sunday mornings.

I love Sunday mornings. Before the dread and realization that monday happens overnight, you have a few hours to move slow, eat a good breakfast, and realize how great life be when you finally get a chance to stop thinking about things that matter to everyone else except us – specifically anything having to do with work.

We wake up from a dead sleep caused by a Saturday night of too much everything, settle into the car, and tune the radio to one of the acoustic sunrise stations and drive while Radiohead carries us to Solstice Cafe in Grant Park. There it is at the north end of a strip mall, next door to an vacant space, a dirty, old, rundown laundrymat, and a small mexican food market with a ceiling lined with pinatas, Solstice Cafe is a quaint, bohemian food spot easily below the foodie radar.

Simple metal tables painted over with an amateur painter’s touch, walls lined with paintings in various media and a bar serving both omlettes and alcohol, this is yet another secret spot unvisited by the hoardes of breakfast feeders searching for another order of biscuits, grits, and pancakes.

Solstice Cafe is what would happen if you turned an excellent bohemian coffee shop into a breakfast and lunch spot and then gave it a liquor license. The staff is friendly and on this particular Sunday morning, everyone seems to be gripping the hours before tomorrow as they sip their coffees and enjoy Sinantra crooning over the speakers.

The menu is lite, mostly consisting of eggs, sandwiches, potatoes and other simple fare. No pancakes, no super size servings. Just a quiet space away from the lines at the Flying Biscuit, Thumbs Up, and Crescent Moon – all with a huge painting of Elvis behind the bar.

Review Summary: 4.3 out of 5

Tags: Solstice. Cafe. Atlanta. Restaurant. Review. Grant. Park. Breakfast. Brunch. Best.

Solstice Cafe
562 Boulevard SE
Atlanta, GA, 30312
(404) 622-1976

Tech. Money.

Wan Lai – Atlanta Restaurant Review – Chinese

When food comes out fire hot and the steam rises from the plate as if to say I’m alive, I have soul, devour me; a certain response is required, a certain affection towards the restaurant, the cook, and the experience. Whether this happens in a restaurant or your mother’s kitchen, it’s always welcomed and appreciated.

It’s difficult to try the stripmall chinese restaurant these days. There’s a chance you’ll get simple americanized food that’s as interesting as eating at Panda Express. It becomes even more difficult when the popular malaysian restaurant Penang sits at one end, and then next door a lies a vietnamese spot full of diners – while Wan Lai the chinese restaurant sits nearly empty. Do you really want to risk it? After so many uniquely great experiences in a row without a single miss, why take the chance? Why try something new that might be just like everything else? The signs don’t look good.

I would comment on the decor (no comment) but I stopped focusing on such things a while back in favor of the food – always the food now.

Feed me. Feed me at the side of the street. Feed me out of the trunk of your car. Just make sure it’s really good. Wan Lai isn’t on anyone’s radar and it probably won’t ever appear on anyone’s radar – I almost prefer it that way.

Generally avoiding anything I can get at P.F. Chang’s these days, I ordered chow fen si (basically beef strips cooked with onions and thin rice noodles) while my girlfriend asked for Yu-xiang qie-zi (chinese eggplant cooked in one of several main sauces from Sichuan.) After a few moments, both orders arrived extremely hot, with the steam rising from the food as if the essence from the fire wok had been flash infused.

Maybe it was the fact that we didn’t order general tso’s chicken. Maybe not ordering orange beef and kung pao anything was appreciated. Who knows, but on this particular day the food was special. Perhaps the cook felt like flexing a bit and fired all burners, adding some heart to our meals. There is always an unidentifiable quality within food that soars. Beyond simple flavors derived from obvious spices, beyond any attempts at being impressive and actually delivering fulfillment.

Wan Lai is a hole in the wall and no one knows it. If the food is always this good, I hope it stays that way. It’s a comfortable spot to stray away from the regular menu and search for some excellent surprises.

Review Summary: 4.6 out of 5

tags: Wan, Lai, Atlanta, Restaurant, Review, Chinese, Best, Buford, Highway, Food,

Wan Lai
4897 Buford Hwy
Suite 104
Atlanta, GA 30341
(770) 216-8587

Daddy D’z BBQ Barbecue Joint – Atlanta Restaurant Review

A sweet, blood red splatter dot the size of a pinhead gave it all away. Standing there, I tried my hardest to beat back the smile creeping across my face. I didn’t stay home – I couldn’t, not tonight – nothing drives me away from my laptop like an essay paper due the next morning.

When the jamaican waitress with a sugary sweet accent asked for my order on this particular sunday evening, ‘the sampler plate’ spilled out of my mouth with giddy excitement. Daddy D’z BBQ joint located south of the MARTA tracks and just off the King/Memorial station is clearly not in the middle of a suburban planned community. A soccer mom and her son sit happily in the corner, pacing themselves through the meal and laughing in between bits of meat and spoonfuls of their top shelf sweet potato sides, clearly they know a good thing when they find it. No longer a secret, and to the point of being cliche, the food at Daddy D’z is good – sickeningly great in fact.

Barbecue shacks in the deep south are as abundant as Filiberto shacks in the south west. Heavy debates over which is better, over which is the best, over which sauce lathered on the most tender meat will cause you to curse the day you decided to become vegetarian and regret all the lost time that could have been spent devouring red covered animal parts. A grinning smile I once fought back, stretches across my face right now just thinking about the beef, the pork, and the sides.

The building creeks under the weight of the big Daddy D’z sign when you walk through the gravel parking lot towards the door barely hanging on its hinges. After your food arrives, you sit there with one plate full of meat and another plate sitting empty, waiting for the bones beneath the hunks of smokey flesh to be uncovered and discarded.

Thinking back, some of my absolute best meals have been eaten from styrofoam plates, using plastic silverware – Daddy D’z is no different. Recently, on the rare night when my vegetarian girlfriend is out and I’m left to my own devices, I’ve been heading directly for the next barbecue spot, the next great place that everyone raves about, the spot that everyone says you must try – and then I remember how reviews tend to mathematically compare each spot as if it’s an equation – a poor comparison of souls. While sitting there at my dingy, uneven table, surrounded by walls that have obviously soaked in their share of pork and beef fat molecules, I have no idea how anything anywhere else could possibly be better than this.

Daddy D’z is everything it wants to be and on that tired Sunday night the only diners in the restaurant were people seemingly not there for anything other than what they know – that this place delivers the goods and it doesn’t matter who you are. Whether you’re the hipster twenty-something woman with thick rimmed glasses in the corner, the father and his two sons trying to watch the football game on the big screen, or me – some guy desperately trying to avoid writing his paper that’s due the next morning.

So when my girlfriend came home later that evening and asked me how the paper was coming along, before I could utter any sort of simple lie, she noticed the blood red splatter dot on my shirt and immediately knew how I had spent my evening. Daddy D’z is my new favorite barbecue joint and it was absolutely worth it.

Review Summary: 4.8 out of 5

tags: Daddy. D’z. BBQ. Barbecue. Joint. Atlanta. Restaurant. Reviews. Best. Grant. Park. Pork. Beef.

Daddy D’z BBQ Joint
264 Memorial Dr SE
Atlanta, GA 30312
(404) 222-0206