Jim R wrote:2nd on Mary Macs. They've been around since dirt, and are the real deal. I was last there with a buddy who works for Consumer Reports who was down here doing media appearances. He requested real Southern food, so I took him there. He was hugely impressed. They're also one of my wife's clients, so I recently got some of her office's leftovers from a "bring meals in for the staff while working late" sort of thing. Fried chicken, greens, mac and cheese, fried green tomatoes, and peach cobbler was a big winner!
All of Carrie L's suggestions are good ones. Veni Vedi Vici is still very good, we were there in April for my birthday. The octopus appetizer was great! Highly recommended.
Do realize that The Varsity, while an institution, is also known as "The Greasy V" for a reason. That said, I do try to go once or twice a year.
There's a gourmet burger place I haven't been to yet called Flip that is getting a lot of good chatter.
Flip is owned by Richard Blais, I believe, of recent Top Chef fame. It was on my list too. Duck fat fries? I'm all over that! But alas, we were unable to escape at all except for the trip to the airport. Bob's uncle, it turns out, has diabetes in addition to the weak heart that spurred us to make this trip in the first place. He therefore has to severely limit salt, sugar and carbs. And aunt Mary Ann does NOT cook. She prepares meals, but it's all packaged food. Nothing from scratch, and she admits to hating vegetables. There was no enticing them out for a meal, and no escaping the house.
Which was the good part. You see, I've met this uncle only once in 23 years and that was 19 years ago. He's Bob's mother's brother, and to be honest I couldn't stand Bob's parents (both now dead) so I had no affection or expectation of affection to transfer beyond. Both parents made a pasttime out of self-pity, and both were manipulative and untrustworthy. Bob's brother (the only sibling) Jim and Jim's daughter are the only other blood relatives I've met, and they're just like the parents. By comparison, with his classy, strong and unshakeable sense of basic decency in all matters Bob is like a space alien he's so different from the rest of his family. Nothing good has ever come from any attempt to broker some form of relaitonship, so my desire to meet and spend time with any other members of the family just hasn't been there. And this in spite of the fact that I'll admit that Bob has always spoken well of this uncle who he adored in childhood and trusted in a way he never did his own father. Understandable, but viewed in light of his other options not neccessarily a high commendation. Well, Bob's childhood adoration turns out to be not only entirely deserved, but mutual: Uncle Bob is a very fine man, and as we learned this weekend he always saw in this namesake nephew the son he could have had. So these four days were true gold for both men, and I finally saw the cloth my husband was cut from.
Our first meal there was excellent barbecue (take out) from a Williamson Brothers restaurant. The ample leftovers provided a redux dinner, and the next day we dined at a little cafe in the mountain country of Ellijay, the only place open there on a late autumn Monday. We went to Ellijay to see the home Uncle Bob and Mary Ann had lived in at the top of Walnut Mountain before Bob's heart trouble started some nine years ago and required them to move closer to good medical care. I cooked dinner at home that night, a heart-healthy 'lite' meatloaf made of a 50/50 blend of lean beef and ground chicken bulked out with an unusually large quantity of grated carrot, zucchini, and sauteed onion. I served that with a warm 'salad' of sliced red potatoes and the most unusual peruvian peas (I'd kill to get these here) which I cooked in the pod like a snap pea, but these weren't the hard-shelled sugar snap peas I know. They had soft, thin walls, even more so than snow peas, and were a darker green color than either snow or sugar snaps usually are. I fashioned a dressing for the pea-potato combo out of olive oil and a squeeze bottle of French's Horseradish mustard--the only mustard in the fridge. For dessert, a course that must not be skipped in this home, I made a fresh apple pie from some green mutsu apples we bought earlier in Ellijay--an apple I've never seen or had before, and which I liked so much I brought the rest of the peck home in my luggage. Sadly, Mary Ann assured me they wouldn't eat them.
The only meal we got to choose was lunch on our way to the airport, so we hunted down Mary Mac's. What a delightful place! It struck me as possibly being to Atlanta what Gallatoire's is to New Orleans. Best collard greens I've ever had. Thanks so much for that reccomendation, Carrie. I could have had fancier food, but this was a more essential experience.
Btw, Carrie, what part of North Atlanta were you in? We were in Canton.
And Jim, welcome to our forum!
