What I Ate This Week

Well, gang, here’s something I didn’t expect: I’m writing this from the Atlanta airport, one day after I supposed to be on from here and in “radio silence.”. But, as it happens, our flight into ATL came in over 4 hours late and so we missed any chance of connections and were stuck with a nearly 24 hour delay without our luggage. Curse you, Atlanta summertime weather!

So with these unexpected lemons, we made a coarse lemonade, filled with deliciousness.

We started at Spondavit’s- it’s an interesting and frankly awesome place that was walking distance from where Delta put us up for the night. (Despite the bad weather and delays, the Delta folks have been awesome.) rather than call it a night, we made a go for it and were so pleasantly surprised. It was 1am on a Tuesday morning and the place was lively, not because of the bar but because of the seafood- only in Atlanta! We enjoyed delicious clam chowder, a robust bowl of gumbo, and a literal bucket of crab legs and jumbo shrimp with all the trimmings. The soups were bold, the crab was fresh and sweet, the shrimp was succulent, and the gin was a good apology for losing a night of vacation. A lucky find on our part!

For lunch today, we took a cab to Midtown to Mary Mac’s Tea House, a veritable institution of Southern cookery. Amidst a genteel and (as always in Atlanta) diverse environment, we enjoyed heaping helpings of some of my favorites: fried okra (stunning), collard greens, Mac/cheese, fried green tomatoes, catfish, meatloaf, and of course, peach cobbler and pecan pie. Oh yes, folks, this was a restorative meal- I whole-heartedly recommend this place, and if I come back I may just get a vegetable plate, it was so good. (oh, and sweet tea to die for)

And after an afternoon at the silly, endearing, and very Atlanta World of Coca-Cola museum, we learned that our flight tonight was delayed (still is, actually- oh joy!), we made a snack stop at that ATL institution, The Varsity. I’ve only been to their Athens, GA location before, but this was somehow even more chaotic, even on a Tuesday afternoon! We had hot dogs, of course, and S had a really tremendous (and timely) Coke float. “What’ll ya have?” indeed!

And so now we sit at the airport hoping our plane leaves for exotic places in 2 hours. So far the traveling haven’t particularly shined on us, but then again maybe they have. We’ve had an awesome day and are charged up for what’s ahead- I just wish I had a change of clothes!

That’ll probably be it until we get home from the trip at which point there’ll be oodles of stories, I bet. In the meantime, enjoy and here’s hoping the hot weather eventually breaks in the ‘Nati!