two restaurants

[previous post in the Friday Night Dinner Club thread]

[june 17, 2005]: Friday evening on Cheshire Bridge Road. For the not-so-comon reason. After all, this is sleaze street. This is an avenue (in the etymological sense), but the trees are various purveyors of adult entertainment. Luckily, CBR is also home to some of the city's better restaurants. There's Sundown Cafe, and then there's Thep Thai (been there, done that). The choice for tonight was Bamboo Luau's Chinatown (been there once). The order-for-two soups are deceptive, and actually serve at least another person (perhaps even 4 in all). The entrées were tasty enough, but I've had more affective schezwan elsewhere.

[june 18, 2005] Saturday was Mediterranean cuisine day. I've begun to develop an appreciation for some aspects of this genre (if you will) of food. The most recent haunt was Falafel Cafe. The other spots in the near and distant past were Ray's New York Pizza & Mediterranean Grill (5th Street; the Technology Square near Georgia Tech) and Cedar's (on Lenox Road). This time it was a bistro in Decatur called Mezza. The thing to remember about this popular place is everything is an appetizer. A tapa. If you expect a menu item to correspond to an entrée, you'll be sorely disappointed (of course asking your server helps clear things). There's a special meta-order on the menu item that I'd recommend as a first bet. We noticed it a few nanoseconds before placing our order comprising a customised list of entrées. Still, I think we broke fairly even (although some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations would reveal that we could have shaved off a couple of $ on our tab). The hummus has a nice tangy jolt of lemon; the kabaabs swung between being nicely done to a little too well done (Falafel Cafe scores on this account). The shawarma and falafel made good complements. Must remember to try the tabouleh next time.