Oral Pleasures

We’ve been addicted to the lamb sandwiches, croissants, chocolate-chocolate cookies and country French bread at ALON’S BAKERY for more than a decade. In recent years, Alon Balshan has expanded his Virginia-Highland shop into a true gourmet treasure, with prepared foods and artisan cheeses. Balshan is also responsible for the fabulous gelato next door at What’s the Scoop. less...

Fried food at bars is a given, but vegetables? That’s the BRICK STORE PUB for ya. Its food menu offers both expected pub fare like brats, burgers, sandwiches, fish and chips, and hearty, comforting dishes like pierogi primavera covered in seasonal veggies, and the volcano, a bread bowl bursting with Brunswick stew. You’ll need the sustenance to look over a beer selection so large that it’s housed in a binder. Forget about Buds or Millers — the downstairs bar stocks 17 international, regional and local drafts, plus more than 60 bottled varieties, including English ales, pale ales and German hefeweizens. There’s also a Belgian bar upstairs with eight rotating drafts and more than 100 options. On the rare occasion your table may agree on a single beer, the reserve list offers a few 5-liter personal kegs. What a centerpiece. less...

In most cities situated more than 5,000 miles from Seoul, it's hard enough to find a silky, sizzling bowl of tofu soup at a normal hour of the day - let alone at 5 a.m. Doraville is the exception. Tucked just inside the Perimeter on Buford Highway, 88 TOFU HOUSE serves tofu nearly 88 ways, predominantly in soups rounded out with meat, vegetables, seafood or bean paste. Even better, the restaurant stays open around the clock, meaning that you can order up the ultimate hangover cure — at a spice level that will knock the misery out of you - before your hangover even sets in. Even in the wee hours, the slightly tattered and friendly space can be packed with Korean diners, but servers do their best to make customers of all ethnicities welcome. The menu is printed in both English and Korean, and the waitstaff communicates well enough to let you know that the raw eggs on the table are to be cracked into the bubbling broth. less...