weekend restaurant round-up

Maru Sushi
date of visit: 10/3/08
kiwis: taste 4, service 4, ambience 4

Thanks to a friend's review of Maru Sushi, I was totally craving sushi all last week. Then voila, Ryan got a full time job, so we had reason to celebrate and go to a nice dinner. Thank goodness he was feeling sushi too!

I would never have stopped here on my own. It's on the end of a little strip of stores in South Cobb. But the service is awesome, everyone is so nice, and the sushi chef is incredible. The fish is so fresh, and the attention to detail is impeccable. The prices are so reasonable too. I really liked the neighborhood feel to the place. It seemed like everyone that came in knew the owners, or knew someone else in the restaurant. I would love to become a regular here.

Taco Mac
Perimeter location
date of visit: 10/4/08
kiwis: taste 3, service 4, ambience 4

I love Taco Mac...some are better than others though. This location is great! This is my 2nd visit to this Taco Mac, and I went with a couple friends for lunch/GT football. We started with the queso, which I have talked about previously, and we quickly wiped it out and ordered a refill. Our server was really good for a busy game day. It was almost like she could read my mind...I would think "we need more chips" then 2 seconds later she would appear and say "do you need a chip refill?" It was awesome!

The only thing I was disappointed to find out was that there is essentially no difference between Mild, Medium, and Hot wings. They all have the same sauce, they just put a different amount of sauce on the wings. I felt kind of cheated. Shouldn't they always put the same amount of sauce on the wings, and the sauce varies in intensity or amount of peppers in it? That's how I would do it...not putting less sauce on the wings. But the server was nice and brought me some extra sauce when I found my wings only half covered.

Other than that, it was a great visit.

OK Cafe
date of visit: 10/4/08
kiwis: taste 4, service 4, ambience 4

There's just something strange about OK Cafe...like why is only OK? And not good? Or great? I could never figure this out...

The food is always pretty good. It depends on what you get. This particular visit, everything was delicious. Especially the pot roast and mashed potatoes, which my mom ordered. I loved my strawberry milkshake (I can attest that it is made purely from milk and ice cream), and we also got strawberry shortcake for dessert.


But to let you in on what is always good:
milkshakes
pancakes - huge & melt in your mouth, no need for syrup!
hamburgers - they were reeeeeally good when Van was still the burger cook
grouper sandwich
french fries - they have a really addictive seasoning on them
veggies - I'm a big fan of the veggie plate, especially with fried green tomatoes (the veggie of the day on Mon & Thurs) and a baked sweet potato with all the fixins - brown sugar, walnuts, butter
corn muffins
carrot cake - I don't even like carrot cake. This is soooo good though.

Here are the foods I usually avoid:
chicken pot pie - really hard, tasteless puff pastry on top
meatloaf - dry
rotisserie chicken - also dry
squash casserole - sometimes has a weird taste to it

But it's a good place to go for average comfort food & really nice service. Saida is the coolest host! If she's your cashier, you'll feel like you've known her for years. And if you're in a hurry, Ok Take-away is a great option. Beware the pay-per-pound - you may not think you're getting that much food, but the pounds really add up!

Also it's a bummer that they don't serve breakfast all day :( But they do have brunch on the weekends :)

weekend of reviews!

So just had a great weekend, a perfect balance of relaxing, fun, activity, and friends from all over! I decided to lump everything together into one post...so here goes!

Friday
Lime Taqueria
kiwis: taste 3, ambience 4, service 3

Here is how Friday dinner decision-making goes...
Ryan: where do you want to eat?
Me: I don't know...are you craving anything?
Ryan: I could go for anything.
Me: Hmm me too...

So we often times end up driving around, smart phones tuned in to Yelp & Google Maps. As we near things that sound good, we look up reviews and/or websites and then decide on a place to eat. Random! But it works :)

So we ended up at Lime Taqueria on Friday. It's a cute little place in the West Village at 285 & Atlanta Rd. The interior is really cute, and they had live music. The music was cool but we opted to eat outside since the weather was nice and we wanted to be able to hear each other. For appetizers we tried guacamole, tuna tostadas, and avocado salad. Everything was good, but not awesome. I was a little disappointed in the tuna tostadas. It was 3 chips with 1 piece each of seared tuna. I was expecting a little more substance for the price!

For dinner, we tried a variety of tacos: lobster, chorizo, pork, carne asada, chicken.

Those are my tacos, and the carne asada was my favorite! Each was delicious, but I was hoping for more. We had sides of plantains (which were amazing!!! mmm) and yucca fries (not as amazing). I may go back, I may not. It's a really cute, trendy place where you have to shell out a lot of $$ for not much food. Thank goodness I had a $25 gift card.

Saturday
Silver Comet Trail

After much finagling, pushing, and shoving, we managed to get my bike into Ryan's car to meet my friend/co-worker Holly at the Silver Comet. We biked from Smyrna Bicycles on the East-West Connector out to mile 10 on the Silver Comet, which was a little bit past the Powder Springs trailhead. It was SO MUCH FUN. My butt hurt so bad at the end of our out & back 21 miles, but man, it was great!! I want to do this at least once a month. Maybe start at different trailheads to get further out towards Alabama. And one day, I would like to bike all the way to Alabama. I think it'd be so fun to take it leisurely and stop at all the cute little towns or historic places of interest. And, it's only 60 miles! :) Anyone want to come along?

Here are some pics, proof that we made it 10 miles out, and a pic for my mom so that she can see I still use my Christmas present:


Oh and coincidentally, I ran into another co-worker at the trail who is training for the Callaway Gardens triathlon. What are the chances? I wished him good luck! Maybe one day I'll be fit enough to do one?

Atlanta Bread Company
kiwis: taste 4, service 2, ambience 3

Yes it's a chain. But has anyone noticed their total rebrand? It's awesome! And the ABC on South Cobb is probably the nicest and tastiest I have ever been to. I'm sad it's not closer to my house (free wifi!). The only problem was that there were only 2 or 3 workers. Severely understaffed. Nice people though, and lots of people there who were coming off or hitting the trail. I had a chicken pesto panini that just hit the spot! delicious.

Georgia Dome

I won't rate this on kiwis, but I will say that although the renovations are AWESOME, the food hasn't really improved that much. I tried a cheeseburger (ok) and fries (horrible). But there seems to be more options than there used to be...

I really just wanted to mention it because it is SO much better than it used to be. The red & black is really intimidating and I'm glad the outdated, faded pictures of sites around GA are gone. I know the Falcons must be pumped. And even with how much bigger it feels, you can still run into people you know (another co-worker! random). And even though the home team lost, I had a great time watching (the video intro shown at the beginning of game and beginning of 2nd half is really good! The falcon is so scary, it gave me chills!)


Taco Mac
kiwis: taste 5, ambience 5, service 4

I love love love Taco Mac. I could go there any day of the week. This day happened to be Saturday, and we walked in the moment the last relay for Michael Phelps was in progress. It was a real American moment for me. Every TV was on the race. Every person in the place was yelling & screaming & cheering. It was surreal. And then the Americans won, and Michael Phelps got his 8th gold. I can't really describe the moment. I got a little tear...and I'll always remember it!

But yeah Taco Mac always has the best sports on awesome flat screen TVs, good people there, and the best queso dip in the city. Even though our server was busy, another server covered for her while the other caught up on her tables. I thought that was really nice considering the chaos that ensued after Team USA's win. We went with my old roomie Linds and 2 of her friends, and then also ran into 2 of my friends from NorthPoint/Fusion. It was good times!

Sunday
After church we were craving some Southern veggies and decided to hit up a perennial favorite, Roasters. I was hoping for some fried green tomaotes, but settled for fried okra and mac n cheese instead. Oh yeah, and chicken fingers. Sometimes you just have to indulge. Our server was really nice, we always get great, friendly service at Roasters. The food was decent, I just wish the tomatoes had been there. So for kiwis: taste 3, service 4, ambience 3. It's just your average comfort food, family type restaurant. Solid choice when you want some good, great price comfort food.

And that wraps up my weekend! Woohoo!