Crested Butte, Colorado

The snow was not so great. Eating was. Here are three places we tried if you ever find yourself out that way.

1. The Secret Stash: Awesome Pizza. Try the fig pizza with prosciutto.
2. Marchitelli's Gourmet Noodle: Homemade pasta and a variety of sauces. Also specialty entrees with veal, elk, chicken and seafood.
3. The Slogar: Fried chicken that easily rivals what you'd get at any Southern kitchen.

Alabama adventures -- The Yellowhammer and Castello di Oliver

While some of us were celebrating the Year of the Pig on Buford Highway, others took a detour to our own little backyard third-world country -- Alabama. Our travels to visit parents in East Alabama included tasty and surprising treats.

The Yellowhammer, Waverly, Ala.
We dined Friday night in Waverly, Ala., population 225, at a place called the Yellowhammer (map included on web site). Waverly is a five-building, uh... "town," about 15 miles West of Auburn. You have to look hard to find it off of the recently completed "bypass." The restaurant is in a remodeled early 1900s Ford dealership, that also once was a general store. Neat warehouse style decor -- concrete floors, brick walls, the whole works in that regard. Now before you start the Alabama jokes, there are two things you need to know.

1. There's no roadkill on the menu
2. Our waitress did speak passable English.

Our appetizers included fried calamari and bacon-wrapped dates. The calamari was fair -- but a bit overcooked and tough. The dates were pretty good owing to the fact that they had bacon, which may well be the perfect food.

Rachel and I both had pan seared sea bass on a bed of cauliflower/crab risotto. Whomped-up cauliflower substituted for arborio rice in this dish. It tasted like, well, ground up cauliflower with crab in it. Nothing special, but OK. The fish was perfectly cooked, tender and delicious.

Mom had duck confit with polenta. This was awesome. Duck was crispy on the outside, tender and flavorful inside. Dad won the Fred Flintstone award by ordering the lamb shank, served with asparagus. Also excellent -- rich, tender and not too lamby tasting.

Dessert was an average creme brule' and a trio of homemade ice creams, the best of which was pomegranate flavored.

Out-of-the-way location aside, this place could easily hold its own around Atlanta. Three out of four possums for this Alabama surprise because if you want some good food over in East-Central Alabama, you'd be hard pressed to do better.

Castello di Oliver
On Saturday night we cooked in at my parent's house. We recently splurged on a good bottle of Abbadia Ardenga 2001 Brunello di Montalcino wine that we'd been wanting to drink. So, we needed something hefty and authentically Italian to go with it. We decided to make a dish called Peposo, an peppery Italian beef stew from Impruneta, near Florence. We cooked ours for about 7 hours in a crock pot. We served it over polenta that we grilled. This was great with the wine, which was full bodied, nicely balanced, had good plum and cherry flavors and good acidity to cut the pepper of the stew. A really great meal to share with family and friends.

Chinese New Year at Royal China

Since chinese new year is this weekend we decided to hit one of the many chinese restaurants in the Buford Highway area. At the suggestion of some chinese coworkers we went to Royal China Friday night. Royal China is located in a strip mall with some latino businesses on Chamblee Dunwoody near the intersection of Buford Highway. The decor of the restaurant was like that of most large chinese restaurants with red being the predominant color , tanks filled with live fish and lobsters and lazy susans on the large tables. As we scanned the dining room there were many chinese couples and families which is always a good sign. Our waiter who was not fluent in English but was easily understandable brought us a pot of hot tea and we ordered Tsingtao beers. The menu was extensive and seafood was the predominant ingredient. There was fish, abalone, mussels, oysters, sea cucumber and shrimp in addition to the regular food offerings. We had some recommendations from the coworkers and ordered fish steamed with ginger and soy sauce (the waiter recommended the sea bass over the talapia. Both are live in the tanks you see when you enter the restaurant), house fried rice and chinese broccoli with garlic. As typical for chinese restaurants the food arrived in different stages. The house fried rice came first. It was a large plate of white rice that had been cooked with soy sauce which turned the rice brown. It was filled with pieces of shrimp, beef, pork and peas. We are not big fans of fried rice but this was really good. Next came the broccoli which was pan sauteed with garlic. It contained alot of garlic and was crunchy and tasty. We thought is was much better than what we have had at other restaurants in the area. Our steamed sea bass arrived in the soy sauce and covered in ginger.


If you have not had steamed fish in a chinese restaurant it is the entire fish with head and bones in tact. The secret is to get to the meat without getting a mouth full of bones. In addition we have always heard that it is bad luck to flip the fish over so the trick is to eat the meat of one side then remove the back bone and eat the meat from the other side. The fish was good and the soy sauce with fresh ginger is great over the steamed rice that was provided. The ending course was a sliced orange but we requested the red bean desert soup. We have found that in the larger chinese restaurants some type of desert soup is provided if you ask.
Overall our experience was good. We would give rating of 4 oyster shells out of 5 to Royal China.

Pre-Valentine's Chinese: PF Chang's Cumberland Mall

Chinese is the traditional Valentine's meal for me and Rach, so we tried out the new PF Chang's at Cumberland Mall Feb. 13 to avoid the rush. We generally prefer non-chain places, but this is an old favorite from B'ham. I'll keep this short and sweet. Food was good as usual. Service was not. Appetizer arrived before cocktails, wrong dish brought to me (chicken an shrimp sound sooo similar), and rice was about a 10 minute wait after the main dishes were brought. The yummy calamari appetizer was like little squid French Fries, my honey shrimp was sweet and tangy and Rachel's ginger chicken was good, too. Haven't worked out the rating system yet, so for familiarity sake, I'll go with two stars out of four on tastiness alone.

Inaugural Post

Welcome. Look for our first review soon. Just building out the blog.