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Just a few short years ago, the area at the corner of Nashville Road and Campbell Lane held one of the few remaining cow pastures inside the city limits. Now a pharmacy, a coffee shop and the Buckhead Cafe anchor the corner of what is rapidly developing into a long Buckhead Empire of shops.
The cafe has been there since the beginning, and I tried it early on and must say that initially I wasn’t impressed. The food was good, but it was not a place that I’d go out of my way to get to. Everyone else thought I was crazy. It’s a popular place. So, I decided to give it another try. For me, something’s changed since my last visits - and not just the expansion that brought the outdoor seating inside. The food impressed me, and I tried a pretty wide selection of dishes.
We were pretty hungry, so we began with the killer fries. I was prepared not to like this - I’m not a big fan of these kinds of calorie-bomb dishes. What arrived was a french-fried, potatoey monstrosity slathered in cheddar and jack cheese, with bacon bits strewn around the top. And it was good.
The portabella panini comes stuffed with portabella mushrooms, mozzarella, peppers and garlic, with a vinaigrette dressing on top. As someone who likes vegetarian cooking, I’m partial to the thick, meaty portabella mushroom. Prepared at Buckhead, the sandwich is zesty and garlicky, without those flavors overpowering the rest of the sandwich. It’s a full meal.
A note about the side dishes. All the panini sandwiches come with the choice of a side dish, including a small side salad. The broccoli and raisin salad on offer is amazing.
The cooks at Buckhead combine walnuts, red onions and tiny, raw broccoli florettes with an in-house dressing that reminds me of a slightly creamy Caesar, but which I am assured is completely their own creation.
This is a salad that ought to be on the main menu of soups and salads. It’s the kind of salad one might expect to find at Greener Groundz, one of my favorite eateries in town. Buckhead’s broccoli and raisin salad should definitely be offered during the spring and summer, when a bowl of this light, tasty creation would be the perfect complement to a cold Spanish soup like a “sopa de ajo” or a gazpacho.
I also tried the buffalo wrap, which contains chicken, bleu cheese, lettuce and red onion. Despite the spicy sting of the hot sauce on the chicken, this is not an overwhelming dish, and the cooling flavor of the side potato salad went well with it.
Everyone at our table fought over the French onion soup, but the BBQ chicken sandwich was only so-so. Coming with sauce, mozzarella cheese and bacon, the dish was a bit sloppy in presentation, and the sandwich didn’t hold together very well. The taste was fine, but unremarkable - the sauce could use some work.
With free wireless, a menu of 13 different coffees, several teas, hot chocolate, muffins, some very good cheesecake and a nice atmosphere, Buckhead might be aiming to poach a bit of the Panera crowd. I’m not sure it will work (it doesn’t have the same coziness as Panera or Barnes & Noble), but this isn’t a bad place to spend a few hours working.
In all, the food was much better than I remembered from two previous dining experiences - each more than a year ago. I’ll come back here, perhaps to sit for an hour or so, write a review, nibble on some broccoli and raisin salad, maybe a slice of pizza or two, and surf the Web.
— Our anonymous food reviewer gives new restaurants a six-week grace period before reviewing. To comment, contact Managing Editor Mike Alexieff at 783-3235 or via e-mail at
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BUCKHEAD CAFE & BAKERY
760 Campbell Lane 846-0110
Hours: 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Price range: Appetizers $3.50 to $6.50, regular items $4.29 to $6.99
Libation situation: None
Smoking: No Read The Full Article At
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Bowling Green has a few decent eateries serving Hispanic food of different kinds. Although some of the places - Garcia’s and Peppers Mexican Grill & Cantina most prominently - claim to be straight-up Mexican food, they are more properly classified as Tex-Mex restaurants, which are quite distinct from Mexican food. Tex-Mex food, which is a fusion of cooking from Mexico and the American Southwest, gained popularity in the United States in the 1960s. Characterized by ingredients such as heavy melted cheese, beans and chili, it also usually includes heavy doses of the Indian spice cumin, which migrated to the Americas with the Spaniards, and today is mostly found in the northern border areas of Mexico and then throughout the United States. I’m a fan of all the cuisines of Mexico and Central and South America, and enjoy Tex-Mex as well.
So, I set my sights on the Peppers on Campbell Lane, and tried a wide array of dishes. All were very good, although I will say that I have definitely had some uneven meals here in the past. The caliente camarones (spicy/hot shrimp) came in a tomato-based sauce that contained a nice hot punch, but without overwhelming the palate. The shrimp were tender, and cooked just right. Many restaurants will serve the small “popcorn” shrimp in a dish like this. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Peppers used the medium/small shrimp this time. While not the giant shrimp that one might like to see, there were still about a dozen of these beauties bathing in the sauce.
The word “enchilada” comes from the Spanish word “enchilar,” which means “to add pepper to,” and enchiladas are a simple dish constructed from a corn tortilla wrapped around some kind of filling. The cheese enchilada at Peppers comes with a thick layer of melted cheese wrapped in a tortilla covered in a thick sauce, while the spinach enchilada includes a hefty portion of spinach together with the melted cheese.
Enchiladas del mar at Peppers comes in a fire-roasted sauce that speaks to the peppery roots of the dish. All these dishes - indeed most of the entrees - come with a side of beans and rice. I enjoyed each of these.
One of the more fun dishes is the fajitas, which are not a Mexican dish of Mexican origin (though they can be found in the tourist areas of Mexico) but are unique to Tex-Mex cooking. They arrive on a sizzling iron plate, with the hot veggies steaming the table. Sides of rice, beans, lettuce, guacamole, onions and sour cream all wait to be wrapped in corn tortillas, along with a meat, if the diner chooses. It’s one of my favorite dishes, particularly because the whole point is to allow diners to build their own meals, using as much or as little of each item as they want.
Finally, I also had a simple bean burrito. No frills to it. Growing up, this was one of my favorite meals. It’s simple, filling and tasty. Top it with a bit of salsa to balance the texture and flavors, and this makes a nice meal.
No Tex-Mex dinner would be complete without a margarita, and the strawberry margaritas at Peppers bear mentioning. A margarita is a blend of tequila, triple sec and lime juice, with different proportions depending on the bartender. I prefer a blended margarita, and strawberry instead of lime. All too often a bar will skimp on the tequila. Not here. The tequila in the Peppers margarita was present, but not overwhelming. That is, I could just taste the tequila hovering below the other flavors. It was just as it should be. I had another.
In all, the food at Peppers was good, not outstanding. My only complaint with the experience was that the wide-open smoking area (inhabited by only a few customers) allowed the smoke to drift into the main dining area. Unpleasant. But if you take a seat away from the smoking section, expect a decent meal for a good price. The people around me with children indicated that Peppers is kid-friendly as well. Its food is a good deal for the price.
— Our anonymous food reviewer gives new restaurants a six-week grace period before reviewing. To comment, contact Managing Editor Mike Alexieff at 783-3235 or via e-mail to
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PEPPERS MEXICAN GRILL AND CANTINA
1268 Campbell Lane 846-2437
Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday
Price range: $6 to $15
Libation situation: Full bar
Smoking: Yes Read The Full Article At
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This is the third installment of the “Tour d’BBQ.”
If the community barbecue prior to the Civil War - a side event to the annual hog slaughter and processing - reflected the rural nature of the United States, the community barbecue after the Civil War also changed with the country. As more people migrated to cities and towns, and as the rhythms of life moved away from the farm, so too did barbecue.
Beginning in the late 19th century, the community barbecue underwent some changes that moved it away from being simply a type of food eaten at an annual event. Instead, at church gatherings, slow-cooked pork complemented tables full of food brought by the congregation and shared by all. At political rallies, mountains of barbecue sandwiches got washed down by lemonade and whiskey, with the price of the food being a candidate’s stump speech.
By the beginning of the 20th century, cooks had begun to make semi-permanent barbecue pits in which they would smoke the meat to sell locally. Those roadside pits were the forerunners of the modern barbecue restaurant.
Bowling Green has a number of high-quality, locally owned barbecue joints. For this outing, however, I decided to try a chain restaurant. If everything else is equal in terms of the quality of the food, I normally try to eat at a local business. However, I had been a fan of Whitt’s Barbecue in Nashville, and so I decided to see if the quality had made the trip up Interstate 65 along with the franchise. I was not disappointed.
Whitt’s offers the standard dishes that one might expect from any BBQ joint: pork, beef and chicken plates, as well as pork and beef sandwiches. In addition, they also sell turkey plates and turkey sandwiches. I went with a pork plate, a beef plate, a turkey sandwich and a loaded turkey potato.
Both the pork and the beef plates were excellent. Both were juicy and very tender, and tasted as if they’d spent a great deal of time melting in the cooker. The beef had a very complex, smoky, sagey and deep flavor that leapt off the plate - even without the sauces. As a platter it was excellent, and I look forward to returning to try it as a sandwich. The pork was quite wet, retaining the lighter pork flavor in spite of the slow cooking.
A note on the sauces: I tried several different sauces from Whitt’s. They serve both vinegar and tomato-based barbecue sauces, with heat ranging from mild to hot. The tomato-based sauce was robust, with a nice balance of the tomatoes and vinegar, and a bit of the sugar seeping through. Although I’m less inclined toward vinegar sauce, Whitt’s was very tasty. On the heat scale, Whitt’s “hot” is definitely the hottest sauce I’ve had on the tour so far. What makes it so good, though, is that while the sauce is fiery, it still retains a good flavor.
I wasn’t as impressed with the turkey dishes. Smoking chicken or turkey requires a great deal of attention, especially given the relatively bland flavor of modern factory-processed poultry. The meat also dries out much more easily than pork, beef or mutton, and this was the main problem with the potato and the sandwich.
Although I could taste what must have been a dry rub on the meat, both were quite dry. Layering on some sauce enhanced the flavor, but this couldn’t overcome the dryness. Given the high quality of the other dishes, I’d chalk this up to a one-time issue. And given that Whitt’s has created a full barbecue menu for the holidays, more turkey is in my future. Even with the quality of the turkey, the potato itself was nicely done. It didn’t taste as if it had sat in a steamer all day.
In all, this was a great stop on the Tour d’BBQ. Whitt’s makes good food, and the store is geared for the carryout crowd. I look forward to returning.
— Our anonymous food reviewer gives new restaurants a six-week grace period before reviewing. To comment, contact Managing Editor Mike Alexieff at 783-3235 or via e-mail at malexieff
@bgdailynews.com. Read The Full Article At
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You know that feeling you sometimes get when you just want some takeout? A funny kind of craving comes over you and you just have to get something. That was me the other night. I needed some Chinese takeout. But at the same time, takeout might be the only “escape” of the week for families rushing home from work and trying to corral children.
Takeout food has to be taken on its own terms. This is not haute cuisine. It’s not supposed to be the best food you’ve ever eaten. It’s supposed to satisfy a need. In that sense, it has its place in the pantheon of foods we eat regularly. So I thought it would be good to review a takeout place instead of a more traditional sit-down restaurant. Chinese food was just the thing.
Great Wall is in the Kroger shopping center on Campbell Lane, between CD Warehouse and Puerto Vallarta. It’s spartan in appearance, the service is friendly and fast, and they have never made a mistake on any of my orders. Best of all, they run regular coupons in the Clipper and elsewhere. My companion and I can easily get out of there with a full meal for less than $30. Altogether, this is the perfect place to satisfy a takeout craving.
We started with shrimp rolls, spring rolls and steamed dumplings. The shrimp roll in this case didn’t seem to have much shrimp in it, being filled mostly with cabbage. Even so, they were tasty. Some people favor the light crispiness of a shrimp roll over the heavier wrapping of a spring roll, but this seems to be a religious divide. I liked both. The steamed dumplings were a bit heavy and might have been overcooked. But the ginger and pork filling is nicely accented by the soy-ginger dipping sauce and helped rescue the dish.
In the interest of having as much as possible from Great Wall, I decided to try three main courses that I’d never had at other restaurants. Mongolian beef is an Americanized dish with sliced flank steak stir-fried in Cantonese hoisin sauce and vegetables. The cooks at Great Wall mix this with scallions, snow peas, onions, broccoli, carrots, baby corn and water chestnuts. The sauce comes through as spicy without being overwhelming, and serves as a nice taste foundation for the vegetables and meat. The large vegetables don’t drown out the ample portions of meat. As leftovers, the flavors of the dish soaked in and made an excellent lunch. This was an excellent choice and I’ll order it again.
“Happy Family” combines lobster, pork, chicken, beef, shrimp and scallops with most of the same vegetables found in the Mongolian beef. The brown sauce has a sweetness to it that is reminiscent of the Mongolian beef, but without the spiciness. This was an impressive dish, if only for the seafood. In a carry-out order it can be easy to overcook shrimp and scallops, which become rubbery when overdone. Here, the seafood remained quite tender, and the cornstarch coating on the shrimp didn’t make it too mushy. We both commented on how good the seafood was in this dish.
The shrimp and scallop with chili sauce was probably not a good dish to order with the others. It was good, but the shrimp and scallops followed the cooking of Happy Family quite closely. It was very good, to be sure. As with Happy Family, the shrimp and scallops were cooked just right. But I didn’t feel that I had tried something all that different from another dish.
Over time I have tried a number of dishes from Great Wall. The standard “American Chinese” dishes such as General Tso’s chicken, sesame chicken, moo shu and the fried rice dishes are all good but not notable. If all you’re looking for is comfort food, they aren’t bad. But as long as you’re going for takeout, why not make the cooks work? Order something that you think most other people won’t order. Just because you’re there to satisfy a craving doesn’t mean that you have to eat ordinary dishes. Go to Great Wall and give it a try.
— Our anonymous food reviewer gives new restaurants a six-week grace period before reviewing. To comment, contact Managing Editor Mike Alexieff at 783-3235 or via e-mail to malexieff@bgdaily
news.com. Read The Full Article At
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Restaurant Reviews
