Alma Tell Yo Mama!

Like in most cities, Atlanta has become home to a few different restaurant groups, which own a collection of restaurants throughout the city.  Hopefully you are familiar with the most well known, Concentrics, who own One Midtown Kitchen, Two Urban Licks, Parish, Murphy's, etc, and of course there is the Fifth Group, who I have mentioned before in my post regarding Ecco.  Well Fifth Group decided to grow their company by one more restaurant adding a Mexican flare to their repertoire, a place called Alma Cocina in downtown Atlanta.  My friend and I were lucky enough to get a reservation, well sort of and I shall explain later, by giving a generous donation from yours truly to @fifthgrouper, who I follow on Twitter of course, for his Movember campaign.  In return, I received a reservation for 2 before the restaurant even opened and everything was complimentary! Shall I say that is the most divine way to eat!!

So a couple Friday nights ago, my friend and I head off to the not-so-frequented down down downtown area where we eventually see Alma in the 191 Peachtree building.  Our next feat...finding a parking spot.  Since we rarely venture that far downtown, we had a little trouble finding a place to park, but we eventually came to a correct entrance of a parking deck and rationalized the $5 fee to what we would have paid a valet (plus a couple more dollars).  Once we finally weaved our way back to the front of the building, we see the restaurant and the ever so cute patio in the lobby of 191. At first it kinda had a mall restaurant feel to it just because everyone was sitting in a huge indoor patio with greenery and Christmas lights surrounding them, but once we got inside, it felt a lot more cozy.

We had our first hiccup though when we arrived at the hostess stand and they could not find our reservation, but the host added us to the list and we went to the bar to have ourselves a yummy margarita. We both chose the Just Wear Black margarita that was made with fresh squeezed lime juice and agave syrup and of course some good tequila.  It was very simple, which is just the way I like my margs, and it was super delicious!

As this was a pre-opening function, the full menu was not available, however, each table had a different selection of options to choose from and while the suggestions we received from the bar were not on our menu, specifically the chicken mole, our meal was quite good.  We started off with not 1, not 2, but 3 appetizers not only because the meal was free, duh, but also because it was about 9:30pm at this time and I was freaking starving.  And also because we couldn't decide what not to get.  The first app was fried avocado taquitos with poblano pesto and roasted tomatoes.  Not really much I need to say about this dish.  Give me pretty much anything fried and I will probably like it.  As you can tell, the avocados were perfectly fried, and it had just the right amount of crispiness.  I have never had fried avocado, but I fell in love.  I also liked how the tortilla was extra crispy since the avocado still had a soft consistency and the pesto and tomatoes topped it all off.

Next came the yellowtail ceviche with pickled mango in cucumber-serrano water.  When we were given this dish we were given pretty specific instructions as to how to eat the ceviche. We were told to get a piece of fish, slosh (technical term) it in the cucumber juice, and then add the mango and pepper all in one bite.  I have to say those were pretty specific instructions but I was glad I followed them!  The fish was less of a ceviche and more of a hamachi sashimi if you know what I mean.  Either way, I thought it was amazing with the mango and the cucumber water or juice or whatever it was.  Some of the best sushi, I mean ceviche, I have had in Atl.

The last of the appetizers was a grilled salad.  It enticed us with the goat cheese notion and our waiter told us the lettuce was actually grilled, so we just went for it.  This was probably my least favorite dish.  I guess when I read the menu I didn't assume the "grapes" that were referenced would actually be olives, and the entire dish was covered in some type of olive vinaigrette.  Seeing as I am not a fan of olives, I did not take well to this app, but it's all in personal preference.  Also, the fried goat cheese balls just were in no comparison to the balls at Ecco.    

On to the main course.  As we just wanted to get the best food on our menu, we relinquished our power to our waiter and he told us to order the Chile en Nogado and the Red Snapper Mole Amarillo, and with my vast spanish knowledge I can tell you Amarillo means yellow (see picture below).  Damn I'm good.  The chile was made up of poblano chile, winter squash, raisin apples, cranberries, walnut sauce, and pomegranate seeds.  I think I need to read my menus a little more closely, because this dish was just that, a mix of veggies and fruit.  It was a lovely mixture of winter foods, but I was just glad we had ordered a crapton of apps and another entree because I do not see how that could be a main course.

The red snapper on the other hand was better than expected.  It was cooked just right and the mushrooms in that sauce with the swiss chard on top just warmed you up from the inside out.  I honestly don't think of mushrooms or swiss chard when I hear mole, but it all just worked and the swiss chard was cooked just right in my opinion, not too mushy.  The entire combination was super scrumptious, especially when you piled all the components on to your fork for one great bite!

Even though we were full to the max, we of course ordered some dessert, but due to our late eating, the dessert that was recommended to us, the grapefruit sorbet, was all sold out, so we ordered the flourless chocolate cake instead.  The first bite was so chocolately and yummy, but then you waited and the after taste became super spicy.  Not my favorite chocolate cake ever.  Maybe I'm a wuss, but I just like my chocolate cake to be rich and milky, not really spicy, but to each his own.

All in all, it was a really fun experience.  The food was great, the margs were delicious, and the servers were really enthusiastic which made me more excited!  Obviously this is a new restaurant so I was not super harsh about my missing reservations.  I don't know how many times my friends and I will venture downtown to eat since we like to stay in our little bubble, but maybe on special occasions we will fight the tourists at the Hard Rock and come back.

Brunswick Stew

One of my favorite things to do on Twitter is enter contests for some free goodies, even though I never usually win anything.  So one day I saw a chance to win free tickets to some chef demo at Bloomingdales with chef Virginia Willis.  It seemed interesting so I retweeted @AtlEvents' tweet and 5 hours later I somehow was the winner of these tickets!! I didn't really know the details of this event at all, but I just showed up with my friend in the Home section of Bloomy's and just went with the flow!

When we got to the event, we saw tables around for wine tasting, so we tried some different kinds of wine and walked around in awe of all the different kitchen appliances.  I wanted so bad to be able to buy every single thing in that store! I mean who doesn't need a 5 slotted toaster with 15 different settings for your toast?!  So we eventually found the area where the cooking demo was to be performed and watched hungrily as the Chef cooked up some sweet tea brined pork tenderloin, sweet potato grits, and mushroom ragu.  After we got to sample the wonderful food, I was able to purchase her lovely cookbook where all this goodness was documented and I was able to talk with Chef Willis and have her sign the book!  Turns out she was from Georgia and even studied history at UGA!! Go Dawgs! So this whole long story brings me to Virginia Willis' Brunswick stew recipe.

As I was flipping through her book looking at the pictures, I freaking fell in love with the pic of her BBQ stew.

It looked sooooo good and I knew it was going to be the first recipe I tried from her book.  So here we go!

2 Tablespoons of canola oil
1 onion chopped (preferably a Vidalia)
1 poblano pepper or a green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
coarse salt and ground pepper
2 garlic cloves finely chopped
1 teaspoon of paprika
1/2 cup dry white wine
8 fingerling potatoes
6 cups of chicken or beef broth (I used beef)
1 (28 oz) can whole tomatoes with juice
2 cups of fresh of frozen butter beans
2 cups of corn
Bouquet garni which is 8 sprigs of flat leaf parsley, 6 sprigs of thyme, 2 bay leaves, 10 whole black peppercorns tied together in cheese cloth
1 pound boneless, skinless breasts or thighs cut into 1 inch pieces (I used thighs)
1 pound pork tenderloin, cut into medallions

I started off by making the Bouquet garni.  It may be hard to find the cheese cloth in the grocery store, but it's pretty cheap and you get a lot for what you pay for.  It can also be good for straining, which I will be doing while making my thanksgiving dishes!  Anyway, make your little bouquet of herbs and set aside.

Next, I cut up all my veggies, the onion, pepper and garlic, and set aside so it can be ready to throw in the pan.  I like to cut the veggies before the meat so I don't have raw meat germs everywhere, so now you cut away at your meat and set that aside as well and start heating your oil on medium to high heat in a large pot.

When the oil is simmering, add the onion and pepper and season with salt and pepper.  Cook the veggies for about 5 minutes until they are soft then add the garlic and paprika and cook for another minute.  Now add the vino and cook until it is almost all evaporated, about 3-5 minutes.

Next, add your potatoes, beef stock, tomatoes with juice, beans, corn, and your bouquet garni.  Let this come to a boil and then decrease the heat to a simmer and cook for about 30 minutes until the beans and potatoes are just tender.

Now season your meat with salt and pepper and add it to your soup and continue to cook for 5-7 more minutes or until the meat is done.  I also like to add a little more pepper to give it some more spice since it is Brunswick stew.  Before you serve, though, remember to take out that bouquet of herbs!

I love this recipe because it is so easy and doesn't really take that much time, and, of course, the finished product is so delicious!  I also made some cornbread because I just have to have some when I'm eating any kind of stew, especially Brunswick stew! Hope you enjoy!

Taste of Atlanta

A couple weeks ago my friend and I went to the 10th annual Taste of Atlanta.  If you don't know, this event hosts a crap-ton of restaurants from around the Atlanta area from Iberian Pig to Morelli's to even Waffle House (sorry no pics of cheese n eggs here).  The streets are blocked off around the Georgia Tech square in midtown, and booths are set up for each of the restaurants to serve tastes of food.  When you purchase a ticket, you receive 10-15 taste tickets depending of whether you paid for general admission or VIP.  These taste tickets are what you use to "buy" tastes from each of the restaurants.

This was my 2nd year attending the annual Taste of Atlanta and of course the second year I found a deal for tickets.  Last year my twitter scouring led me to a $10 discount for general admission tickets, which my friend and I were very excited about.  However, as it was our first year attending, we were not aware of the perks of having VIP tickets and we quickly realized our naivety.  Therefore, we decided the next year we would find some way to afford the way better, more expensive tickets and indeed did we find that way!  Turns out if you test drove a Cadillac at any of the Atlanta Cadillac dealerships you could get a pair of VIP tickets for FREE!  So I hopped right on that free train and didn't actually end up test driving anything, but was just given the free VIP tickets.  It was pretty awesome.  So moral or the story...follow me on Twitter and I will lead you to the land of freeness (@frugalfoodiejg).

Back to TOA and the food.  So we get to Taste of Atl early in order to beat all the lines and make sure none of the food has sold out, but since we went on a Sunday, we couldn't get in the VIP tent where all the free alcohol was until 12:30 because of the stupid blue laws!  I won't go into politics, but....blue laws are dumb!  So we went to the restaurants first and started off with a Korean BBQ pork slider from Takorea.  This was pretty delish, but give me Korean bbq  any day because I always love.  This actually won best taste for Sunday, so apparently I was not in the minority liking this dish.

Another trick I want to share that my friend and I figured out last year was to combine our taste tickets and just order one item from each restaurant and split each sample.  This way we were able to try double the amount of food! Yeah, I bet we were the only ones to think of that.  We so smart.

Next we had the s'more doughnut from Sublime.  I had yet to try one of the Sublime doughnuts, but had wanted one for a long time, and this definitely lived up to my expectations.  It was so airy and light and the chocolate and mellow were sooo goooood!  I wanted to eat a dozen, but I had to move on.

Then I see the little Iberian Pig sign and I get all giddy!  We got the pork taco and the only thing I didn't like was that it was so tiny.  I liked the crispy taco shell and the guac, but it was just so small even though this picture makes it look the contrary.

At Rosebud we got 2 of their samples because they both sounded so good and my friend is crazy and isn't a fan of grits.  The first taste was slow roasted pork shoulder with creamy grits and the other was a chicken slider with slaw.  The grits were delish and the pork was tender, but the bun on the slider was a little too hard for me.  The slaw was great too, but the bun just made the slider hard to eat.  Also it seemed EVERYONE had made sliders, which makes sense because of the eating standing up situation, but it just got a little old.

Next we had some amazing pork and polenta from Strip.  The flavor was so rich and again I love me some grits/polenta any day of the week, and this dollop was very yummy!

The next restaurant we tried, 246, which is the new Italian eatery in Decatur, was a place I was also really excited about.  I have not yet been to the establishment, but love Italian food and have heard so much hype about the Ford Fry (JCT Kitchen) and Drew Belline (Floataway Cafe) collabo.  From their samples we tried the meatball slider and the meatball was sooooo gooooodd!  It was so juicy and a little messy but worth the sticky fingers.

So now it was time for a little dessert break and of course we went straight to Morelli's, and I was floored when they told me they had a bacon brittle ice cream flavor.  I was so excited to try it that my mouth was watering as they were scooping it into the cup, and boy, did it live up to the hype!  The bacon crisps were like candy.  Well, I guess it was kinda like brittle.  You don't say! Any who, it was scrumptious and not greasy bacon tasting, but sweet with a slight yummy bacon taste.

The last place we tried before we headed to VIP was Urban Pl8.  We decided to go the vegetarian route and had the veggie burger because I thought it looked pretty good, but it turned out to be a ball of mush.  Not appetizing at all, and we couldn't even finish it.  So on we went to bigger and better places.

Now not only did we get free wine tasting (there was also beer, but I just stuck to the wine), but we also got free food only for VIPers.  Inside the tent was the new Italian place that is opening next to the new STK, Cucina Asellina.  This Italian restaurant also had meatballs, but just as a tre tre by itself and this did not need ANYthing else.  They put some fresh grated parmesan on the top and I just dug in.  If you remember, previously, I called 246's meatball slider "sooooo goooood" but this meatball was soooooooooooooooooooo gooooooooooooood!!  Get the picture? Ha- get it...down below....

The last place we came upon was Three Sheets and at this point I could hardly walk up-right because I was so freaking full (not because of too much vino), but I pushed through for the the cherry on top.  Three Sheets had both grilled cheese sandwiches and deviled eggs.  I mean who doesn't like grilled cheese, and I could probably down half a dozen deviled eggs in one sitting, so I thought this was a pretty good ending to a delicious day.  This deviled egg wasn't any kind of deviled egg; it was a truffle deviled egg.  Nuff said!  The sammie was an applewood smoked cheddar grilled cheese that was creamy and crisp.  

All and all I thought the food was pretty good this year.  I did feel there were more restaurants last year, but I still walked/slouched away full and happy as a clam.  Hopefully next year Cadillac, the best car dealership EVER, will be doing the free VIP tickets next year and we can all go for free!