I had almost forgotten about writing this post until I clicked through some photo albums on my computer and saw the pictures from the meal. It would have been a real travesty if I hadn’t caught it, because I enjoyed my meal at Serpas True Food so much.

Serpas Restaurant

Serpas is located in the Old Fourth Ward and is situated midway between Lotta Frutta and the Irwin St. Market. The head chef, Scott Serpas, hails from South Louisiana (instant check-plus for that) and worked in restaurants from Texas to The A before opening his own in 2008. Mario and I stopped by for dinner on a weekday evening. We immediately loved the wide open space of the restaurant, which has probably 15′ ceilings (don’t take my word for that, I’m terrible at estimating measurements) and is dominated by a wall of windows on one side. First off, I have to comment on our AWESOME service. Our waiter was one of the most enthusiastic I’ve ever had and clearly enjoyed the food at Serpas. He deftly fielded our questions, made recommendations, and gave insightful comments on what dishes were his favorites and why. Unfortunately, I don’t remember his name, but if all the servers at Serpas are as passionate as he is, you’re in for a nice night.

Now then, the food. We had a My Daily Thread coupon (like a Groupon) to spend, so we did our version of a “splurge” and ordered an app, entrees, AND dessert. To start, I ordered the flash fried oysters (pickled chilies, mirliton) and actually got picky eater Mario to try one!
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Before I start on Restaurant Week, if you haven’t noticed, I’ve had a snazzy new icon up on my “social media bar” at the top right of this page for a few weeks. That ubiquitous “F” will take you right to First Bite’s Facebook Page. If you have noticed, then why don’t you “like” it yet?!

Now, I know I just gushed about Inman Park and their Restaurant Week 2 posts back, but now the announcement has been made for my for-real favorite Restaurant Week–Midtown!

Image via atlrestaurantweek.com

Midtown Restaurant Week will run from Sept. 4 – Sept. 12. Just like the previously mentioned restaurant week, restos participating in Midtown Restaurant Week offer 3-course $25 prix fixe menus. I’m personally pretty excited about 4th & Swift and Serpas True Food participating this year (and the latter has an overdue blog post in my queue). As an added bonus, some of the participants are also offering $15 3-course lunch menus. I won’t go through the 5-W’s this time, as the workings of a restaurant week are pretty standard, so you can check out the participating restaurants and menus here. Make those reservations soon!

A few weeks ago I went out to lunch with my favorite former boss. We were both looking forward to this trip and had actually planned our outing even before I left for my internship in Dayton, because we had both heard great things about the Buford Hwy seafood spot Crawfish Shack.

Crawfish Shack

In my mind, Crawfish Shack is working to emulate the coastal eateries I grew up around in Louisiana. The interior consisted of a very simple ordering counter, picnic-style tables, and cheesy plastic seafood decor on the walls. Menu items include mixed seafood platters containing mostly fried items (as it should be) and po’boys. I’m usually VERY wary of restaurants outside of Louisiana trying to do the Cajun thing, but the good news is, Crawfish Shack does it VERY well.
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Image via inmanparkrestaurantweek.com

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I don’t typically post much ATL food-related news on this blog (mostly because there are a few others who already do a great job at it) but because I love restaurant weeks and I think Inman Park is a cool ‘hood, here’s the lowdown on Inman Park’s upcoming (next month) restaurant week. Let’s do this 5-W’s style:

Who: Fritti, Pure Taqueria, The Albert, North Highland Pub, Wisteria, Parish, Park’s Edge, Rathbun’s, Sauced, Shaun’s, Sotto Sotto, Kevin Rathbun Steak
What: 3-course prix fixe menus at $15, $25, and $35 price points
When: September 20-26, 2010
Where: Inman Park!
Why: To allow you to sample some great restaurants at a great price!!

Check their website to see menus for all of the participating restaurants: www.inmanparkrestaurantweek.com

A few of my labmates have been feeling adventurous in their new city and started a dinner club of sorts by choosing a new restaurant to visit every week. For my first outing with the group, I joined in for a visit to Seasons 52 in Buckhead. What sets Seasons 52 apart is not only its seasonally (and even weekly, for some items) rotating menu, but the fact that everything on the menu is under 475 calories. No, that is not a typo. If nothing else, a visit to Seasons 52 is a good opportunity to see that low-cal food can actually have flavor, and to find out what an actual portion size should look like. We were happy to find that our dishes were not just an experiment in bland diet food, but were actually pretty good.

We started out with one of their famous flatbreads (Grilled steak and cremini mushroom with fresh spinach and Wisconsin blue cheese) and edamame with green tea salt (no picture) to share:

Steak & Mushroom Flatbread

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For my birthday last month (I turned 21 for the 3rd time, but also made the decision to allow myself to age next year), my lovely fiancé took me on a long drive up GA-400 and treated me to dinner at Indigo in Roswell. I picked the place, mostly on memories of a positive review from Food Near Snellville and a number of thumbs up on Urbanspoon. The ride up to Roswell was fairly long, but I thought the meal was worth it.

Indigo

When we parked at Indigo, we were slightly concerned that it wasn’t even open. Ours was the only car in the lot. When we got to the door, there were indeed 2 people at the bar and a few servers milling about, though we remained the only other customers for a good 30 minutes. I understand that Indigo’s outdoor space is the place to be for Roswell’s Alive After 5 event, but on this Sunday evening, it was pretty dead.

I’m going to have to try and recreate dish names from memory since the menu on Indigo’s website is slightly different from what we saw, but we started out with chicken satays with chipotle buffalo sauce & herb-buttermilk dip, basically a fancy name for “fried chicken on a stick”:
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Last week I picked up a large bag of cherries at the farmers’ market. As much as I love to just stand over the sink and spit pits as I eat, I have managed to hold off on demolishing the bag (read: I only eat every third cherry while I’m pitting them) long enough to make this simple, delicious dessert.

Balsamic Cherries over Ice Cream

This is an adaptation of a healthy dessert idea from Ellie Krieger. Unfortunately, it does not include ice cream in its original form. To practice portion control, I use the small party cups of vanilla ice cream I used to eat at birthdays. The balsamic cherries lend a slightly sweet and tart topping, and making them is a snap.
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Although it hasn’t been THAT long since my last post, I feel as though I may be falling into a summer slump. Atlanta heat lends itself more to blending up smoothies and lounging than pecking away on a laptop, but I’m working to integrate the two to keep the posts flowing On my new fiancé’s (yep, I’m engaged!!) last short stint in Atlanta, we decided to check out Lunacy Black Market for lunch. I’ve been hearing good things about the place, and especially about the price, so we wound our way through downtown to find the storefront on a fairly quiet street off MLK. When we walked into the restaurant, Mario actually looked around and turned to walk out. “Is this the right place? It looks like a furniture store.” And indeed it does, with random collections of tables and chairs, couches, and bookshelves set up around the room.

Lunacy Interior

We quickly scanned the short menu and decided to order a few of the tapas-style dishes (which makes sense when you know that the chef/owner Paul Luna also runs founded Eclipse di Luna and Loca Luna). I was a little disappointed that they no longer have the slider-sized sandwiches on the menu that I’d heard about since their opening, but what we had to choose from was still a good selection. We probably could even have ordered the whole menu to sample–everything was under $4. You read that right, FOUR DOLLARS. To start, I decided to try the cabbage salad I’d read good things about on Eat it, Atlanta‘s blog:
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Another spot in Dayton I decided I needed to try was City Barbeque. I could always smell the smoke wafting out when I stopped by Chick-fil-A, and let’s not even mention the fact that it’s attached to a Graeter’s ice cream shop.

City Barbeque

Founded by a BBQ competition team in 1999, City Barbeque’s menu offerings cover many of the US’s barbeque styles. According to their website: “Our pork shoulder is reminiscent of the southeastern United States, the brisket and sausage take you to Texas, and the ribs exude a blend of Memphis and Kansas City.” When I floated into the restaurant on a wave of smoke à la an old Warner Brothers’ cartoon, I decided to keep it simple with a pulled pork sandwich (slider sized for lunch) and my first ever taste of fried pickles:

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Well, I’ve made it out of Ohio, took a quick trip home for the 4th of July, and now I’m back in Atlanta. I’ve only got a few posts from Ohio as most of the area around me was populated with casual dining chains. One chain that I found and loved, however, was Penn Station East Cost Subs.

Penn Station

Penn Station is a sandwich chain that started in Cincinnati, OH in 1985 and now has 200+ locations across 12 states. They’re known for their cheesesteak, and I tried one on more than one occasion, along with their vegetarian Grilled Artichoke sub (among other things. I visited a lot.):

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