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”:
Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, Buckhead Restaurant Week kicked off and offered 3-course meals for $25 at a number of swank Buckhead eateries. Coincidentally, Mario’s birthday weekend fell during the same time, so I decided to make a surprise reservation at Craftbar Atlanta. Craftbar is part of Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio’s (hm, he doesn’t have his own website) restaurant group, which includes Craft, Craftbar, Craftsteak and ‘wichcraft.

The Craftbar Restaurant Week menu was quite extensive, so it was tough to decide what to try. For starters, Mario settled on the sweet potato soup with mascarpone and bbq’d pecans, and I had the glazed pork belly with jalapeño grits:

Sweet Potato Soup

Pork Belly+grits

This is a long overdue post on an amazing dinner and wine tasting hosted by Mark Beringer of Artesa Vineyards and Winery at Bone’s Steakhouse. Mr. Beringer is the new VP of Production and Winemaking at Artesa and has been touring the country showing off some of the Spanish-owned company’s products. Bone’s is arguably the best steakhouse in Atlanta, so I was very excited to be treated to a meal there complete with wine pairings: an area I know little about but am interested in learning. I also had the opportunity to meet the ATL bloggers behind Atlanta Restaurant Blog, Amy on Food, and Atlanta Foodies, so you can check out their reviews of the event as well!

Our first course was Bone’s chilled seafood platter, which contained a number of beautifully presented crustaceans:

Chilled Seafood Platter

Artesa Chardonnays

Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend was full of graduation parties and holiday celebrations, but Mario and I wanted to sit down for a quick “real” dinner instead of filling up on hors d’oeuvres. We decided to try out Rosebud in the Virginia-Highland area.

Rosebud

Photo from Rosebud’s Facebook page

It was a cold, rainy evening, but Rosebud was nothing but warmth, from the host to the bar to the food.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was visiting Charlotte a few weekends ago and Mario took me out to Zink American Kitchen downtown. Food, not bad. Service, lacking. We went in and were quickly seated in the main dining room. Oddly, you only get a drink menu when you sit down and no food menu, so we couldn’t even see what they had to offer in the 15 minutes we were sitting there without even a glance from a waiter. A group of 5 was seated next to us not long after we arrived, and were brought water and menus within 5 minutes. After that, we decided it was time for us to leave.

I guess at the same time we decided our wait was unacceptable, the manager did too, because he caught us about halfway to the door, apologized profusely, and offered us a free appetizer for being ignored. Apparently the person normally assigned to our table was helping with a large party in another room and none of the other waiters in the area noticed. Mmhmm. Whatever, we were hungry. I ordered us the Streetside Tacos (beef shortribs, mango, red onion slaw, chipotle crema) as our on-the-house app:

Streetside Tacos

We had a birthday celebration at our Midtown Melting Pot this weekend. I’ve been wanting to try this place out for a while, but it’s definitely not your casual dining spot. The Melting Pot offers a couple of different dining options, and we opted for a full four-course meal (with coupon for free dessert).  To start, a cheddar cheese fondue served with bread cubes and vegetables:

Cheddar Cheese Fondue

The fondue was made with Aged, medium-sharp Cheddar and Emmenthaler Swiss cheeses, lager beer, garlic and seasonings.  Pretty tasty, as plain fondues go.  Made me want to try making my own.  Next was a salad, but it was a fairly generic Caesar, so we’ll skip over that.  For our entree, we chose the “Pacific Rim” entree for two: Teriyaki-marinated sirloin, white shrimp, marinated pork tenderloin, breast of duck, breast of chicken and potstickers.  At The Melting Pot, this all comes out raw and you cook at your table using the cooking style of your choice.  We chose Mojo (Caribbean-seasoned bouillon with distinctive flavors of fresh garlic with a citrus flair).

Read the rest of this entry »