Monday, February 11, 2008
Restaurants Pinwheel aesthetics rule
Posted by Cliff Bostock @cliffbostock on Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 3:58 PM
Every time I visit anything in the vicinity of Boulevard and Edgewood Avenue, I hear that the area is about to explode into a popular neighborhood. Well, I'm waiting. In fact, I've been waiting for years, having heard this as long as I've lived in nearby Grant Park.
Lately, though, things have livened up there for diners. Besides Dynamic Dish, Cafe 458 and Javaology, the corner has two newcomers, Cafe Circa and Edgewood Corner Tavern. We visited the latter after we couldn't get a table at Cafe Circa Saturday night. (We made a reservation for Sunday night.)
Whereas Cafe Circa has a sleek urban vibe, the Corner Tavern (464 Edgewood Ave.) is your usual pub with an ultra-friendly staff, inexpensive food and, um, functional design. Apparently, the Pinwheel School of Plate Design predominates here, as you can see in the plates I photographed.
The top picture is of the restaurant's chicken curry, which I thought might be fun to compare to the Standard's Monday-night curry specials. Oy. Apart from the weird accompaniment of garlic toast, the dish had little chicken -- all of it in tiny cubes -- and a sauce that tasted like seasoned ketchup. Don't go there.
I did, however, very much like the starter of corn and shrimp fritters -- glorified hushpuppies -- with a mango dipping sauce (above right). The third pinwheel -- an asymmetrical one -- featured shrimp in a Buffalo sauce with the usual accompaniments (left). Not bad.
This restaurant, immediately next door to Javaology, is the third in a local chain, which includes a Corner Tavern in Little Five Points and East Point.
Comments (4)
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Cliffy, those are some of the worst looking food I have ever seen...that is curry chicken? Tomatoes, bananas and toast, WTF?! The plating looks like it was done by a 4 yr old. It looks worse than the food pics on Kayson's Grille site. http://www.kaysonsgrille.com/ The buffalo shrimp looks like the krill they feed the whale sharks. I will never set foot in this place ever. Thx for the tip.
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I feel shallow - I thought the plates looked pretty in these pics :) I've been wanting to try the Corner Tavern, but whenever I'm in this area I keep getting sucked into the delicious Dynamic Dish vortex. It's hard to say no to that. Hopefully I can resist and give the tavern a shot some time. That part of Edgewood has some beautiful old buildings and a great view of the nearby downtown skyline. When I first started going to Javaology a few years ago I thought it was gonna 'splode with successful businesses, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Maybe it's more of a slow burn area. Also - does anyone actually live in that ginormous condo development on the SW corner of Boulevard and Edgewood? It also seems deserted to me.
Appetizing food pics are really hard to take when you're just chowing down at a restaurant and not doing a professional photo shoot. I rely mainly on Cliff's thoughts on the food than his pictures of the food. Plus, it is a bar. So, for bar food, the plating isn't so bad!
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