Restaurant Review - Desperately seeking

It’s Thanksgiving, and you know what that means: holiday shopping season! And you know what that means: bad food on the run in all the malls in Atlanta as you spend too much money while hunting desperately for the perfect gifts.
But fear not. Once again, I have suffered so you won’t have to. Here are some notes I’ve gathered over many years of eating (and many more of shopping) that might come in handy as you dash to and fro in the next few weeks.
GWINNETT PLACE
Your best bets for decent food are, not surprisingly, outside the mall itself. The only chain representative worth going to, in my opinion, is Hops, which makes the best ribs in the city. And the root beer, brewed on-site, is incredible.
MALL OF GEORGIA
Why this year-old shopping behemoth has no decent restaurant attached to it is beyond me. Especially given that whole town square pedestrian area out back.
The mall’s in-house food court offers the usual, with the exception of a Bourbon Street Cajun Cafe & Grill in one corner (it does a credible bourbon chicken) and a Starbucks in the other. The food pickins are slim at Starbucks, and although the interior is cozy and invites lingering, it is exceedingly small — only two upholstered club chairs. You’ll be lucky to get a table outside.
Across Buford Drive, there’s a T.G.I. Friday’s. Friday’s was the pioneer of the fun food chains; it seems sedate now. If you have kids with you, you may need to mollify them with a visit here. I notice less salt in the food than there used to be years ago, and sauces now are automatically served on the side, which is a good sign.
If you want to treat yourself, however, it’s worth a drive a few miles down the road to historic Buford and Aqua Terra bistro. There is some truly wonderful cooking going on there. You’ll need reservations at dinner, but the true shopper will be needing the break at lunch, and getting a table around that time is not usually a problem.
PERIMETER
Once a vast wasteland of a food court. Actually, it still is. But now, a handful of decent restaurants have attached themselves to the front of the mall, and several more have popped up around the man-made lake a mile up Ashford-Dunwoody Road.
Goldfish is a grandly colorful paean to seafood and chic, young shoppers. It’s a scene, all right. I recommend steering clear of sandwiches, simply because the bread is so thick. Otherwise, the simpler the dish, the better.
While I’m not crazy about the way much of the food is prepared and seasoned at Maggiano’s, and am even less impressed with the service, I nevertheless recommend it for holiday shoppers. The casual atmosphere and low lights are welcoming; that can be tonic enough if shopping puts you in a foul mood.
If you have finished shopping and are ready to leave the mall, head up Ashford-Dunwoody Road to Il Fornaio. Yes, this is a chain, but it is an uncommonly good one, steered by honest-to-goodness chefs. Monthly specials highlight Italy’s wonderfully diverse cuisine.
And if you really want to be good to yourself, head directly across Ashford-Dunwoody Road from the mall to the Crowne Plaza Ravinia, wherein La Grotta nestles. Although this suburban branch is not as polished as its venerable Buckhead parent, it is nevertheless an oasis of serenity, gastronomy and service. And there is always risotto.
NORTH DEKALB
(aka MARKET SQUARE)
Except for the theaters, North DeKalb does not have a lot to recommend, shopping-wise. And even less, food-wise. But it does have an almost brand new Johnny Rockets, a welcome addition. I have yet to visit a Johnny Rockets anywhere in the country where service was not a problem, and this location is no exception. But the surroundings are so endearing and the chocolate malts are so good, it is almost possible to overlook that.