grazing
Monday, August 2, 2010
grazing This week in Grazing: Tibetan food at Shangrila
Posted by Emma Harger on Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 1:08 PM
- James Camp
In Grazing this week, Cliff Bostock has found the mythical Shangrila. Turns out it is a bistro in Marietta that also serves Chinese dishes. The restaurant uses local ingredients (shrimp instead of hard-to-find yak, for example) and shows Tibetan cuisine's Sichuan and Indian influences. He found many of the dishes surprising in a good way. Check out the full review, plus his plea for restaurants to stop poisoning diners.
Monday, July 26, 2010
review / grazing This week in reviews: Panita Thai Kitchen and Goin' Coastal
Posted by Emma Harger on Mon, Jul 26, 2010 at 1:53 PM
- James Camp
This week in reviews:
Besha Rodell visits Panita Thai Kitchen, an adventurous bungalow of a restaurant that "channels another place, another feel, another country entirely." Spicy, flavorful, authentic Thai dishes served in fruit bowls (like in the photo) are unlike anywhere else in the city.
Cliff Bostock is Goin' Coastal over fresh seafood, like stellar oysters on the half shell, from sustainable sources. The restaurant also has an array of Southern side dishes and pecan pie so good you'll want to order it twice.
Friday, July 9, 2010
grazing Grazing: Ethnic eating and the perils of culinary elitism and exoticism
Posted by Besha Rodell on Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 11:18 AM
- Joeff Davis
Friday, July 2, 2010
Food & Life / grazing It's not just Mayberry
Posted by Cliff Bostock on Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 4:13 PM
I received this email in response to my recent Grazing column about Farmstead 303:
You and I sat near each other on an airplane ride to California many years back when you were commuting there for your doctorate....I have loved and missed your personal columns as well as your foodier pieces ( I was a cultural critic for 26 years in the Bay Area...)
I was however taken aback enough to write you about your description this week of Decatur as Mayberry or Hooterville. Even when we chose this community in Georgia as the only best way to transition from our previous home, 17 years ago, there was a Seattle's Best coffee cafe, now Java Monkey, that sold t-shirts with the caption: "Decatur: where Mayberry meets Berkeley." You overlooked that part of the identity equation.
This is a place where my husband and I can walk to more than 50 eateries, not to mention independent book stores, boutiques, galleries and a really decent CD store- and where every year we have a wine festival, a gourmet beer festival , an arts festival with a regional following and of course the Decatur Book Festival- 70,000 folks visiting us to catch a glimpse of their literary superstar, up and coming poets, etc. A green city, a diverse ( or more diverse every year) place.
It may look like a prototypical Southern town....with its square, gazebo, etc. But hey- it really is a metro-smart, culturally happening place.
I hope nobody else took my hyperbole seriously. I love Decatur and wish I lived there.
At the same time, the courthouse square and train depot do indeed remind me of the small towns where I worked for weekly newspapers when I finished undergrad. But, yeah, Elberton and Thomson don't have Decatur's cultural life, or at least they didn't back then.
"Where Mayberry meets Berkeley" is a perfect description!
Monday, June 28, 2010
review / grazing This week in reviews
Posted by Emma Harger on Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 11:40 AM
The duck breast with hoppin'-john style risotto at Farmstead 303 in Decatur.This week in reviews:
Besha Rodell compares Atlanta's dining scene to an Australian children's book and visits Rathbun's, finding that it still defines Atlanta's restaurant scene and we should be proud of it for doing so. She recommends the Jonah crab tart, rib-eye steak and other wise choices on an enormous menu.
Cliff Bostock has a first look at Farmstead 303 in "pedestrian-friendly Hooterville" Decatur. His favorite dish is the one pictured above, which is the most expensive one on offer, but he also notes the presence of other, wallet-friendlier items on the menu.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Restaurants / Food media / grazing Actin' the foo'
Posted by Cliff Bostock on Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 2:57 PM
Usually, there is unspoken agreement that the restaurateur will act as if he doesn't recognize the critic. It's an awkward and often silly game. So, I laughed when my bill at Farmstead 303 Saturday night (right) arrived with the notation of "FOO CRITIC" on it. I wasn't surprised I was recognized because, as I explained in an earlier post, the chef here is Ryan Stewart, Besha's husband.
Attitudes about anonymity have changed tremendously in the years since I started writing "Grazing." At the time — over 25 years ago when I was also editor of Creative Loafing — critics made much of being anonymous, at least publicly. I have never disagreed that anonymity is important to a critic's job but it always seemed more honest to me to disclose when I knew I'd been recognized than to pretend otherwise. I've also always, perhaps unrealistically, differentiated between the role of the lead critic and the "Grazing" columnist in this regard.
I found it weirdly coincidental that the issue of recognition arose at the same restaurant that provoked a controversial, mixed review from a reader during its first week. Commenters argued that I was wrong to allow a reader, not a professional critic, to be the first to write about Farmstead. And, in any case, they wrote, it was too early in the restaurant's life to be critiquing it.
As it happens, John Kessler of the AJC, who is unselfconsciously not anonymous, came under similar criticism for writing a first look at the restaurant during its first few weeks. Kessler describes the dilemma well (although he also seems to blame us in part for his decision to review Farmstead so early):
For a proper starred review a writer should wait a few weeks. But the reality today is that people start posting impressions of restaurants as soon as they open. If we in the mainstream media stayed mum the whole time, we wouldn’t be part of the conversation. What I try to do with posts labeled “First Look” is to give an impression of what the place has to offer, both in terms of food and service. If this seems a little on the critical side, it’s to warn people against storming a restaurant that is still getting up to speed and also to encourage the restaurant to redouble its efforts to figure out what must be a very difficult space to work. There was a lengthy report on Creative Loafing about a long wait on a weekend night at Farmstead. I personally prefer to wait longer, but in today’s climate I think gentle criticism — the kind that food writers do better than most Yelp posters — can steer the conversation in a good direction. Thanks for your comment.
Of course, in actuality, I haven't written a "first look." I have maintained that if a critic finds problems at a restaurant during its first few weeks, he should return before writing anything decisive. Maybe for the same reason, I shouldn't have published the reader's letter about Farmstead. Or maybe we should abandon our policy of waiting three weeks altogether...or...
Monday, June 7, 2010
grazing / Restaurants Grazing: First Look: Sushinobo
Posted by Cliff Bostock on Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 3:25 PM
I get a lot of grief for not venturing to Atlanta's northern suburbs often. For many of the 20-odd years I've been grazing, good restaurants in the boonies were few and far between. But that changed ... while my in-town dining habit did not. Happily, the lead critics at the paper have been fine with culinary safaris.
But the recession has slowed restaurant openings to a historic low. Meanwhile, the herd of great bloggers in the city circle soon-to-open restaurants like American Indian scouts spying on frontier settlers. The object is to be first to review a newbie. I rarely go to a new restaurant now that hasn't already been hit by a vigilant blogger.
Case in point is Sushinobo (4500 W. Village Place, Suite 1005, 678-401-7322, www.sushinobo.com) in far-away Smyrna, a land of trees encircling Aunt Fanny's Cabin when I was a kid in Sandy Springs. A friend told me about the place last week and, despite the address, I sped immediately to the new sushi bar, only to find that Tom Maicon of Atlanta Cuisine had put up a review weeks ago. I hate feeling like a stalker.
Continue Reading "Grazing: First Look: Sushinobo"
(Photo by James Camp)
