One of my last draft scouting trips of the spring brought me to Atlanta for the weekend with a detour to Tuscaloosa, my first-ever first to Alabama’s home stadium as they’ve generally been one of the weakest SEC teams for draft prospects.
In Atlanta, I hit Varuni Napoli, which would now make my top 50 pizzerias list if I revised it today. It’s Neapolitan pizza but just stretched a little differently, so the pizzas are larger with less of a puffy exterior ring, while they still have the wet centers that are the hallmark of the style. I went with their sausage, mushroom, onion, and red pepper pizza, a standard option that happens to be one of my favorite combinations as is. The dough was still airy around the edges, and the sausage, which is sliced like pepperoni so it cooks more quickly, had a peppery kick and strong fennel-seed note. The sauce was excellent, slightly sweet and slightly tangy. I haven’t been to Antico in a decade or more, so it’s tough to say truly that this is better … but I think it might be.
Buttermilk Kitchen showed up on some list of the best brunch spots in Atlanta, and I saw they 1) had homemade biscuits and 2) promised they made everything from scratch while using local ingredients where possible, which, coincidentally, are my two main criteria for breakfast when I’m in the south. The biscuits are enormous drop biscuits and very, very buttery, while also a little sweet even before you try the blueberry-basil jam it comes with. One of those and two eggs probably would have been a full breakfast for me on any day, although this was Sunday and I knew this was essentially breakfast and lunch in one, so I ordered the daily special omelet with butternut squash, onions, and fontina, along with hashbrown fritters as the side. The fritters were more like little knishes than hashbrowns, with the center more akin to mashed potatoes. The omelet was a gamble because I don’t normally care for butternut squash, but it looked like the best choice to get some vegetables without resorting to the lunch part of the menu (it was 10 am, I can’t eat “lunch” at that hour, it’s uncivilized). I wouldn’t have even thought to put winter squash in an omelet. It worked, though, I think because the eggs were so fresh and there was so much cheese that the squash was a supporting player in the whole dish. That had to be at least three eggs’ worth of omelet, and it was seasoned perfectly as is. I ordered a cortado, which is on their menu, but they seem to think that means a full-sized latte instead. I will caution you that parking there is complicated, although on weekends they share some of the neighboring lots – check their website for specifics.
I met some board-game world friends for dinner at Miller Union downtown, not too far from Georgia Tech, for a meal that reminded me in the best possible way of FnB in Scottsdale, one of my favorite restaurants in the Valley. The menu was heavier on small plates with a small number of larger entrees, and the smaller plates weren’t all that small, anyway. The smoked trout with spaetzle and mushrooms was the consensus winner at the table, with the pasta (it’s pasta, I know it’s not Italian, so what) a sponge for all of the umami coming from the other ingredients, and the smoky notes from the fish well-balanced by other flavors so it didn’t overwhelm the dish. The farm egg with celery cream is apparently a longtime standard, and it’s definitely one of the weirdest things I’ve eaten in some time: it shows up in a soup bowl with the yolk barely set in a pool of what looks like a latte, and you break the yolk and swirl it into the cream before dipping the crusty bread into it or spooning it on top. It’s good, just unusual; I kept expecting a different flavor profile, because I’m used to dipping bread into a pasta sauce, while this is rich and more muted. The butter-poached shrimp with English peas, salsa macha verde, and benne (sesame) seeds was on the quieter side, with delicate flavors even in the sauce, with particularly sweet peas since they’re in season now. I had the duck breast entrée, which was cooked medium rare (as it should be) and remained tender, with a blueberry mostarda, creamed greens (spinach and maybe mustard greens?), and corn pancakes. That last bit wasn’t great – they were dry, and there wasn’t anything for them to sop up elsewhere on the plate – although that’s nitpicking. I had two cocktails since I wasn’t driving, first a Last Word and then their gin-lemon-thyme syrup cocktail, which one server said was their riff on a gimlet, but a gimlet is gin/lime without sweetener so I don’t know if that’s apt. I was afraid a second Last Word (does that make the one before it the Penultimate Word?) would put me on the floor, so the latter drink was a sound compromise and much lighter on the palate. They have an enormous wine menu, if that’s your beverage of choice.
I had coffee at Spiller Park the other two mornings I was in town, visiting their newest location in Midtown and the Moores Mill store, so I’ve now been to all four spots. The biscuits at Midtown are solid – that’s a rolled biscuit, so very different from Buttermilk Kitchen’s, and while I like both varieties I’m definitely in the rolled camp (think Biscuitville or Cracker Barrel’s kind). The Moores Mill shop offers bagels; I had the Controversial Vegan, with mashed avocadoes and sumac onions, which was very sharp and highly spiced with sumac.
I only ate one meal in Tuscaloosa, and that had to be Dreamland BBQ, which scouts have been telling me about for years. I’d been to the Birmingham location, but I’m a believer in trying the original whenever possible, and it’s better in terms of the food and the atmosphere. The ribs were solid but a little tougher than I expected; the smoked sausage, though, was fantastic, perfectly moist, smoky, just faintly spicy, no sauce required although I did as I was told and tried the dipping sauce it came with (I wouldn’t bother). It’s a bare-bones menu – ribs, sausage, pulled chicken or pork, with platters or sandwiches, and just four sides: cole slaw, potato salad, baked beans, and mac & cheese. I picked the first two, because I was already out on a ledge eating that much pork, and believe it or not, the cole slaw was excellent. It’s so often an afterthought at barbecue places – sometimes it’s a goopy mess, sometimes it’s clearly not that fresh and so it has no crunch, and sometimes people put weird shit in there – that it was a delight to get a very basic, straightforward version that was fresh and not overdressed. Also, if you get the sweet tea, be prepared for a sugar rush. It was all great but I don’t know that I’ll go back, just because I don’t eat like this any more and certainly shouldn’t eat like this any more at my age.