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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Today was my department’s holiday party at school. There was a huge spread–8 trays of fried chicken, 3 platters of ham, 3 of mac and cheese–and it included some homemade dishes too. I decided to make these stuffed portobello mushrooms (appetizer sized) and forgot to take a picture of them! So I’ve yanked the one from Giada De Laurentiis’ recipe on Foodnetwork.com:

Stuffed Mushrooms

These stuffed mushrooms are soooo good!! I’ve made them with large portobello caps once before, and they could honestly be an entree by themselves as opposed to the appetizer Giada suggests. For the holiday party, I found smaller “stuffer-sized” portobello caps, and they came out great.
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I planned a girls’ night out last weekend…sorta. I wanted to get together and do something, but couldn’t think of what. Luckily, one of us had tried and liked TWO Urban Licks, and the other 2 were interested in checking it out. There’s no pic of the facade because the outside of TWO is basically a warehouse. Inside, however, is a huge, busy space surrounding an impressive rotisserie. On our visit, we tried tons of tapas:

Lamb Flat Bread

Shaved Calamari

Oysters & Onion Straws

Friday night we visited Utopia [insert various food types here] Lounge for a friend’s birthday.  Although Utopia is located less than half a mile from my current residence and I’ve heard good things about its bar scene, I have never taken the opportunity to visit.  Utopia is currently touted as a Cajun and tapas lounge, but has previously been a tapas, sushi, and martini bar, among other things.  Despite all this, Utopia is, at it’s heart, a nightclub. The kitchen is open until 1am and there are three different rooms with separate DJ’s and ambiances. The Lounge’s confusion about its cuisine led to a little confusion over its menu offerings, but we soon settled on two items from the Cajun side of the menu, the Southern Fried Chicken and the Seafood Crepes, both with a side of Cajun fries.

Southern Fried Chicken

Seafood Crepes

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