The Neighborhood Eatery

The Brookhaven Village area of Atlanta (on Dresden Dr. close to the Brookhaven MARTA station) is slowly developing its character and is becoming another destination to go out and meet up with friends in town. While it has a long way to go until it becomes as established as favorite neighborhoods like Virginia Highlands, Inman Park, East Atlanta, etc., the presence of cute boutique shops, and the addition of more restaurants is a good beginning. The newest place to open was Kaleidoscope, which is an interesting mixture between a restaurant serving American food and a bar. The food is definitely better than the usual bar fare, but not fancy enough for a typical restaurant.

I went to Kaleidoscope with Pumpkin and my parents on a nice summer night, so we were able to sit on the big patio on the side. Pumpkin and I wanted to get drinks, but it was hard to choose anything from their limited drinks menu. Their beer selection was particularly small and surprisingly expensive. I ended up choosing a $10 Belgian beer that didn't seem any more special than a Stella Artois. The appetizer menu offered better selection, though. We finally chose the hot wings with blue cheese. The wings were tasty, well cooked and moist, and with the right amount of heat. The cheese was starting to melt on top of the wings, and gave them a layer of additional flavor.

We also liked the options for entrees that Kaleidoscope offered. I had heard that the burger was really good, but none of us got it. Instead, both of my parents got salmon with tomato and cucumber salad. The salmon portion was huge! It was twice the size of the usual salmon filets that restaurants serve. It also paired great with the fresh salad that it came with, which reminded me of Greek salad, but executed well.

Pumpkin's choice was flank steak with fries and chimichurri. The only reason she got the dish was because she didn't realize how much garlic the chimichurri had, and that the fries would have garlic too. She doesn't like garlic, so she didn't like the dish. I, on the other hand, thought it was great. The steak was a little overcooked, but it had kept some of its moisture. I wish it came with a little runnier sauce to make eating it a little better. The fries were nice and crispy, though.

Finally, I got the seared tuna with Asian slaw. The tuna was good, but what I really liked was the slaw. I was impressed with the peanut sauce because it tasted just like peanut sauce in Asian restaurants. The sauce drizzled around the plate was a great addition to the plain steamed rice. Out of all the dishes we had that night, my dish was the only one that had a good mixture of starch, greens and protein that all worked together great :)

Happy Hour!

Sometimes all I need at the end of a long week is good drinks, tasty food, and good company. Well, I enjoy that all the time, but it's especially useful as a mood lifter :) At the end of one such week recently Cashew and I headed to the happy hour at Ra Sushi. We were so determined to make it there, we almost ran from 5th St. to 11th St. to arrive before the end of the happy hour specials...

This was our first time at Ra, and I had a great first impression of the space. It was very modern and sleek, typical of the new restaurants in Midtown. Cashew and I were starving by the time we got there, so we ordered a variety of dishes. We first got the ceviche and avocado salad and the yellowfin tuna tartare. I liked both of them. The ceviche was lemony and very refreshing. It also came in an interesting presentation: a fried wonton bowl. We weren't sure if we were supposed to eat the bowl, and it wasn't very flavorful, so we just nibbled on it a bit. The tuna was also amazing; it was fresh and well seasoned.

Well, this was a sushi place, so we had to order some sushi rolls. We went with the traditional spicy tuna roll and rainbow roll. Unlike the appetizers, the sushi was really disappointing. The tuna roll had some weird unrecognizable taste and texture. It seems like the tuna was ground up and mixed with spicy sauce, but the result wasn't good at all. The rainbow roll was slightly better and slightly more edible, but it wasn't even close to good sushi...

To make up for the bad sushi, the last dish we had, the BBQ ribs, were all we hoped them to be. They were done in Korean-style BBQ, they were perfectly seasoned, and they were juicy and tender. We seriously ate every last drop of them, even the visible fat, and ended with licking the bones. I wish we had gotten three portions of the ribs rather than sushi.

At the end of the night, we had to have our happy hour drinks. I ordered a lime mojito, and Cashew had the mango mojito. Both of them were really good. The lime mojito was as sour as I wanted it to be. Even the mango mojito was more on the sour, as opposed to too sweet and sugary, side.

So the verdict is, if you go to Ra Sushi, avoid the sushi! All the other things they had were delicious.

Almost great

In case I haven't mentioned it before, I love Scoutmob. This is a website/phone app that gives you deals at various vendors, including restaurants. I've chosen many of the places where I eat based on whether they have a Scoutmob discount or not... I also learn about new restaurants through the app. This was the case with Top Flr (no misspelling), a nice restaurant on Piedmont Rd., close to Georgia Tech.

Cashew and I made a run to Top Flr on a random week night just because we wanted to try it. It had some interesting items on the menu, but we came to an agreement about what we wanted pretty quickly. For appetizers, we had the Tuna tartar and the Purple and green cabbage salad. Both of those were AMAZING! The tuna tartar was served on top of flat bread, a presentation I hadn't seen before. It had aioli on top. If you remember, I vented once about how I don't like aioli. Well, the overall flavors and textures of the tuna tartar were so good that I didn't mind the aioli. My only slight complaint is that the taste of the tuna itself got lost in all the other ingredients. The salad, however, I have nothing negative to say about! It was sooo light and tasty. The dressing didn't overwhelm the dish, it had the perfect amount of Gorgonzola cheese, and the caramelized nuts and granola weren't too sweet. I could eat that salad every day. By the way, our waitress said the same thing.

After these two dishes, Cashew and I got really excited about the restaurant and even started comparing it to Pura Vida. So, we couldn't wait to try the entrees: duck breast and apple-orange tofu. I wouldn't usually order tofu in a restaurant, but this one was supposed to come with bok choy and eggplant (miso), two ingredients I love, so I was intrigued. We also ordered a side of quinoa with tomatoes and curried onions. Honestly, I was pretty disappointed with all three of these. The duck breast seemed so sad sitting only in some kind of jus. The tofu didn't have any flavor until you dipped it in the eggplant miso. The quinoa seemed underseasoned. The curried onions seemed very out of place in the quinoa dish because they represented a strong flavor in the middle of no flavor. That could have turned out ok if the curry flavor wasn't so overpowering by itself. Needless to say, the comparisons to Pura Vida didn't continue by the end of the night, and Pura Vida is still the best place in Atlanta!

Aja in two takes

This week is Buckhead restaurant week. That means that participating restaurants offer 3 course meals at a pre-set cheap price. When most areas of Atlanta have it, the prices of the menus are usually $15 or $25. But because Buckhead needs to uphold its glitzy and pretentious reputation, its restaurants offer dinner for $25 or $35.

Anyway, on Friday night Cashew and I decided to try Aja, a so-called Asian fusion restaurant, i.e., they admit they serve Americanized Asian food... Well, the menu did look amazing, so we were excited to try it. For appetizers, we chose the Green mango salad with dried beef and the Spicy Cambodian fish soup. I liked my soup. It was light (read, no coconut milk) and not over-salty. The mango salad didn't have any mango flavor, so I was a little disappointed. I liked the dry beef, but Cashew says that it wasn't as good as traditional Vietnamese dried beef. Sometimes it is advantageous to never have tried the original version :P

Our entrees were the striped bass and the Masaman curry with beef. I loved both dishes. The bass tasted like really good pork, but with the light texture of fish. Sounds impossible, but I swear that's what it seemed like to me. The bass came on a field of rice with some kind of pesto. Again, the rice was really really light, especially compared to the sticky rice I got with my curry. As to the curry, it was the best Masaman curry I've had. Well, I have to admit that the only other place I've had curry is at Top Spice, and it is not a place for light food... Again, Cashew pointed out that real Masaman curry is better than what I got. It seems like I need to find a way to try more traditional Asian food...

Finally, our desserts were the Mango lassi and a parfait with pomegranate seeds and pistachios. The mango lassi was amazing. It tasted as if it was made with real fruit and not some weird juice concentrate. The same can't be said about the parfait :( I do like plain yogurt that's pretty sour, but the parfait had a really weird sour flavor that I couldn't figure out. Well, the pomegranate seeds and pistachios saved what it would have been an uneatable dessert...

The title of this post is "Aja in two takes." That's because I went to Aja today as well... Yup, that's right. I was supposed to meet up some friends from school for dinner, and they ended up making a reservation for Aja... The other choices on the $25 menu didn't seem too appealing to me, so this time I ordered off the regular menu. I got the miso soup and the wok-seared tuna with sauteed greens. The miso soup wasn't much better or worse than any other miso soup I've had. Haha, maybe miso soup is a fool-proof item that's impossible to mess up.

The tuna was pretty good, but not the best I've had (that honor is still held by Pura Vida). It was well seared, but it seemed a little dry. The sauteed greens were amazing, though. They consisted mostly of bok choi and something that looked like spinach (or a similar plant). They weren't soaked in oil, yet they had plenty of moisture. They were perfect!

While there were some good dishes at Aja, I'm pretty sure I won't go back. The two things I really liked, the tuna and bass, could be found at most good restaurants. I guess I'm not too excited about the idea of fusion Asian cuisine. The regular dinner menu at Aja had a section called dim sum. However, most all but 1-2 items in that section were not what I would think of dim sum. Aja did make me crave dim sum again, so I hope I can have it soon!

P.S. Especially for Pumpkin, I edited the pictures I took on Friday with my phone. I did remember to bring my camera today :)