Get comfy, my chickens. At Homegrown.

Tucked onto the side of Reynoldstown, holding down the I-20 belly-button of Memorial Drive, is Homegrown. My obsession with Homegrown's food is new but I've always been a supporter of their breakfast/lunch hours because it meant I could find a parking spot for any event at the neighboring WonderRoot arts center. Years passed. I stopped going to WonderRoot because I started to notice I was the 'old dude' at the shows, and I was never awake early enough to eat at Homegrown.

Fast forward a few years. I've gotten over being the oldest guy at WonderRoot and have started eating at Homegrown as often as I can manage to make it over to this side of town before they close up shop for the day.

Homegrown

Lot is full-up with earth haters.

Hot and sweaty, Summer in Atlanta. Homegrown's parking lot was packed--as usual--when J and I showed up around noon on a Saturday. We ended up parking on a side street and walked thirty sweltering miles back to Homegrown. The cracked sidewalk and refuse on the street didn't bother me. I previously lived on/near Memorial Drive and the shambly-nature of the area is part of Reynoldstown's charm--or so the new homeowners in the restored shotguns and ranch homes squeezed in between mini-McMansions are trying really hard to push.

It was so hot I could see the heat waves rising like charmed snakes from the sidewalks. I wanted to give up and get back to the air conditioned car J and I had just exited. It was an inner struggle because my friends had raved about Homegrown for years but I never gave it a chance. I wasn't into Southern home-cooking for a few years because I thought I was getting fat. I'm over that now. But damn... I needed air conditioning and an iced cold sweet tea immediately (Homegrown does not serve alcohol). 

The warden of the Homegrown garden, Man-Bear-Pig Papa Iopa?

We stepped through the side door into Homegrown's front dining area. It is a neighborhood mom and pop operation and feels like the hipster spawn of a Cracker Barrel/Waffle House sexual union, complete with a Homegrown version of the Cracker Barrel Country Store: Sew Thrifty Five and Dime, located in one of the back rooms of Homegrown. A few booths fill the wall to the left, a long food counter and grill fill in the right and then there's the usual odd assortment of knick knacks and objets d'art that fill the niches and walls of most homestyle Southern dining spots. The inside was even more full than the parking lot and I felt my stomach sink as the host said it would be a few minutes and asked us to wait outside. IN THIS HEAT? I wanted to guff, but I held my cool and J and I went outside, trying to find a bit of shade to sit out the wait.

Thankfully, it didn't take too long for the host to call our names and lead us to our table. A cheerful waitress greeted us and took our drink orders--iced teas, yeeeup!--and gave us a few minutes to look over the menu. J explained that many of the veggies on the menu are grown across the street in the Homegrown garden. I had always assumed the extremely overgrown lot next to Wonderroot was just a place for the more sophisticated homeless guys to poop, but now the name Homegrown made more sense. 

The first time we visited, J ordered The Omelette and I ordered the Gum Creek Farms hamburgers--yes, two huge burgers!--but I'm not going to waste time talking about that stuff, just remember three words when you go break your Homegrown virginity: Comfy Chicken Biscuits. It is far and away Homegrown's best seller and is the best fried chicken biscuit--smothered in a thick sausage gravy--that you'll find in Atlanta. VIMEO: The Chickening of The Comfy Chicken Biscuit

This is after I ate half of the plate.

The waitress had to jerk her hand back from a pair of chomping teeth when she dropped off J's pimiento cheese/fried green tomato BLT--AKA the Grant's Stack--and my Comfy Chicken Biscuits in front of us. We all would have laughed about it--or apologized--but our mouths were full of hot, exquisite homestyle food. I finished the Comfy Chicken Biscuits within two minutes and watched J take down most of her Grant's Stack before she offered me a taste. Oh my god! Food coma was about to set in. Delicious day napping... 

J's pimiento BLT.

We paid our check and stood up to leave. It was close to Homegrown's 2 P.M. closing time and the place had emptied out while we dined. The din of the brunch/lunch rush had been replaced with the whirring of a ceiling fan and the quiet buzz of a few scattered conversations.

"Hope to see ya'll again soon," one of the cooks--or maybe the manager?--called out as we opened the side door to leave. J stepped through the threshold and into the parking lot as I turned to say thank you. The glass and metal door ripped off of its hinges and fell into my arms. J started laughing. The guy that had just spoken to me looked slightly amused but didn't move to help. "Don't worry about it," he said as I stood there, holding the door in a startled death grip. I slid the door back into place as best I could and looked at J. She shrugged and we started the trek back to the car.

The sign read: 475. For one morning.

The Promised Land of Pho and Banh Mi

I used to be in a really kick ass stoner rock band. Aside from my guitar player, we never took it seriously and ended up only playing smaller clubs around metro Atlanta to the same thirty people every month. But we were a tight band--we never had to worry about onstage monitor mixes--because we kept a strict practice schedule that included smoking a lot and listening to Justin Bieber. One day after practice, the keyboard player suggested we try out a pho/banh mi place down the street from the studio, Lee's Bakery. I had dabbled in the banh mi at EAV's We Suki Suki and pho-ed at SoBa, also in East Atlanta Village, but had never had a true Buford Highway experience. Fast forward a few years and I'm no longer a Buford Highway n00b or in a kick ass stoner rock band, and I have made Lee's Bakery part of my circuit.

This is actually the ass-end of the building.

Lee's Bakery

Monster is the premium beverage on display.

J and I were in a hurry. My nephew's fifth birthday party had started ten minutes ago but we were starving and had a daunting thirty minute drive ahead of us. She looked at me with big and hungry, wolf-like eyes that said, "We need to go to Lee's Bakery and get some banh mis and iced coffees to go RIGHT NOW!" Her head began to spin around and the pea soup started. Luckily for the new jeans I was wearing, we were already in the parking lot of Lee's and I was snapping dumb pictures for this stupid blog while this was happening. I was getting a shot of the ass-end of the building when I heard a sound like a garbage truck dropped off the Empire State Building. J was rushing me. She scooped me up and tucked me football-style under her left arm, slammed through the glass doors and stiff-armed a nerdy, white neckbeard guy/buckle-y boot BDSM girl couple out of the way. The cashier lady wasn't at all put off by this and drummed her fingers on the counter as J dropped me, whimpering, in front of the nerd core/goth duo we had cut in line. The interior of Lee's dissolved and started whooshing past as J's eyes grew larger and she howled anime language at the cashier. The cashier calmly wrote everything down, handed it to a younger guy standing behind her and held her hand out for our payment. My ribs were broken and it made digging in my pocket for the ten dollars a little difficult. J, satisfied, went to rut in the bin of fresh baguettes while we waited for our number to be called. 

Mmm...Head cheese

Turns out the other couple had already ordered and were waiting for their food. I Wolverined-up through the pain and decided to investigate a display case full of dead things, pickled things and sprouts. It all looked disgusting. And delicious. I don't understand how that works but it does--I have a weird brain. J was at my side again, leaving the bin of baguettes behind and was talking about some Asian grocery stuff that was on a shelf behind me. I gave it a quick glance and began to count the number of quarters in a charity display on the dead meat case. Seems like $8.50 to donate to charity every few weeks is slow-going. And I was out of quarters.

Our number was called. We grabbed our iced coffees and our sack full of banh mis and raced back to my house. I was starving. J was starving. There are dogs in the desert, abandoned by their cruel owners, that don't get hunger pangs like the ones we were experiencing. And when we finally pulled the banh mis from the twisted, burning wreck...it looked like THIS:

J had her sandwich down in the time it took for me to grab a cup of water from the kitchen--I needed to swish all the sweetener off of my teeth from the iced coffee. She grinned up at me, no longer afflicted with the crazy eye.

I love Lee's. It's cheap. It's fast. They have delicious banh mis and decent pho and it's down the street from my house. I've only been there once when it was empty and have seen it packed more than a few times. Get the iced coffee. It is made with Cafe du Monde--a classic French chicory blend--and sweetened, condensed milk. It is thick, like a gloop of saltwater taffy, on your tongue and in your mouth hole. It is wonderful. I know didn't talk about the banh mis in depth but many many many other blogs have talked about Lee's Bakery and I wanted to tell a story about rutting in baguette bins and the ass-ends of buildings rather than rehashing old foodie trends.

If you haven't been to Lee's Bakery, go. And if you end up ordering some of the weirder things on the menu, eat it and tell 'em Large Marge sent ya.

The Case Against Free Public Art

Last week, I suffered through the opening of Mi Casa, Your Casa at the High Museum. I hate art openings. It all feels pretentious, people standing around wearing monocles and sipping Miller High Life out of plastic champagne flutes chortling to one another while a bunch of unemployable twenty-somethings give a modern interpretive dance performance set to a Philip Glass knockoff's piano score. This was the opening for Mi Casa but with more babies and dudes wearing Braves caps.

The artist was actually raised in a barn.

This house barely survived Hurricane Uggla and was FedEx'ed to the High Museum the night before the opening.

Following the herd to watch a really drawn out and geographically overreaching dance piece by GloATL.

Mi Casa, Your Casa @ The High Museum of Art

The exhibit is a bunch of A-frame houses bolted together and painted bright red like a weird IKEA/Target mash-up. Most of these houses have oversized but uncomfortable hammocks hung across them because the artist figured--correctly--Atlantans are oversized and like to lounge. There was a noticeable lack of A/C units.

Some of the casas that had actual art inside of them. I'm sure when the directors of the High Museum saw these being installed, they breathed a collective sigh of relief--the artists' grant hadn't been entirely wasted on heroin and American Apparel lolitas.

They may have gotten their money's worth. There was a house with a chair. I demanded a self-portrait. In a few years, J and I will sell that to the High Museum.

Then he shows you his butterfly collection, including the killing jar.

Originally, this door featured the Death Head's moth from Silence of the Lambs but someone stickered over it.

Mi Casa, Your Casa is on display in the Sifly Piazza just outside the main entrance to the High Museum of Art. I would say briefly look at the Hurricane Uggla house pictured above and then tear through the boring hammocked A-frames on your way to check out the High Museum's Dream Cars exhibit. Does the public deserve free public art? No. The artists, Hector Esrawe and Ignacio Cadena, should have bought more drugs and booze and come up with something more horrifying than a representation of American home life. If the artists ever read this blog, here's a free idea: Cthulhu at Home & The Private Lives of the Other Elder Gods. You're welcome.

NOTE: I was informed the Hurricane Uggla house is a permanent installation at the High Museum by famed pop artist Roy Lichtenstein III. I need to pay more attention and/or stop by the High Museum more often.

Escape from New York... and eat in Atlanta

Everything you have heard about The General Muir is true. It is a New York-style delicatessen, named for an American transport ship that brought Jewish refugees to America during World War II. And it serves some of the best food and drink in Atlanta. If you haven't yet dined at The General Muir, you need to drop what you're doing and go there right now.

The General Muir

It was a hot and humid Summer Saturday morning in July. The sidewalks were gray and slick from the early morning rain showers but the sun was slipping out from behind the cloud cover and began to steam the city. I was starving--I usually am starving if I am not putting food in my mouth--and J wanted to lunch at the General Muir. 

I had read a lot about the place. Every foodie in the city gushed about The General Muir. Creative Loafing, Atlanta magazine and every podunk, supplicant blogger pushed its menu like Homegrown pushes Comfy Chicken Biscuits. I had avoided the place, as I avoid most things that get too much press because I assume everyone dining there has a scarf wrapped around their pencil-necks and a Smith & Corona typewriter on their table. Okay, I wasn't avoiding the place. I was avoiding Emory Village. But J insisted that I would die regretful, ashamed and alone if I didn't try The General Muir at least once. So we headed over.

We arrived and gave our names to the hostess. There was a fifteen minute wait. I sat on the wall that separates the outside "patio"--a glorified raised sidewalk with a few cafe tables-- from the plebeian public sidewalk. It was damp and my jeans became squishy. After fifteen minutes, the hostess came out and apologized because some gray hairs were camping the tables in the main dining room and it would be a little longer. Or we could sit at the bar. Let me be clear: I love sitting at the bar because I love drinking. We sat at the bar.

There are knives on the beer taps because they really push cocktails.

The bartender welcomed us and set us up with drinks. J ordered the house Bloody Mary which is served with the usual Bloody Mary garnish of a house made pickle. I spent a few minutes studying the liquors on display and decided on a Sazerac. The bartender asked me for my absinthe and rye choices and then whipped me up a nice, lunchtime Saz. 

J is a deviled egg fiend and told me The General Muir has some of the best deviled eggs in the city. I am smart enough not to argue with her over these kinds of things and when they arrived a few minutes later, after one bite, I knew she was right. These babies didn't last very long and I was craving more as soon as they were gone. 

My mouth was bulging from the deviled eggs when the guy from Ancient Aliens sauntered up behind the bar, propped his elbows on a bar mop with his hands folded under his chin and asked me how I liked my Sazerac. I pointed at my glass, gave him a thumbs-up and wiped paprika yolk from my lips. He explained that he was the FOH manager and that they hadn't trained their bartender on the new house recipe for their Sazeracs yet and wanted to make me another one in order to show the bartender the new official version. I realized this meant I got another Sazerac for free and anyone who turns that down is an idiot. I thanked him profusely, tasted each version, looked at the difference in hues and realized the official house version is superior. Day-buzz started to kick in.

The brunch/lunch menu at The General Muir is a hard hard mistress. So many temptations. I ain't too proud to beg, so I asked J for suggestions. Todd Ginsberg, the genius that created Bocado's burger--thought to be the best burger on the planet-- also created The General Muir burger and added special sauce.

I love burgers but I wanted a love that I could see. Noticing that I was a ball of confusion, the bartender suggested the nova salmon latkes--Jewish hash browns floating atop a dollop of house apple sauce, topped with cured salmon, arugula and fresh green apple slices. Done. J got the burger with fries. The burger at The General Muir is a simple beast, but everything about it is perfect. I felt a little betrayed that I didn't order it and only got to feast upon J's scraps. Next time, burger, you're all mine. CHECK IT: Creative Loafting ATL voted The General Muir as the #1 burger in Atlanta.

The way they do the things they do, The General Muir works wonders. Was it just my imagination? Was the food that good? Were the drinks so delicious? Oh, Muir of mine. I love you. You're my girl. We connected soul to soul.

I ate all of my food. And some of J's burger. I drank all of my glug. And didn't want to leave yet.

A few guys next to us at the bar had ordered a basket of sin from the bakery counter and told us to dig in. The cinnamon rolls were extravagant. I honestly don't remember what happened after the salmon and the burgers because I was on Cloud Nine. Point is, everyone here is high on The General Muir and everyone wants to pass the bowl to you.

J and I may have left that day not knowing that something special--something spectacular--had occurred. Point is, Atlanta has a world-class, casual/fine dining restaurant you should visit with your date. Or your whole family. Or by yourself.

Appendices

#1

The first time J and I tried to visit The General Muir, it was early evening and the candle-lit restaurant didn't seem open. We approached the hostess hesitantly. Everyone was wearing suits and yarmulkes. 

"Hello, do you have a reservation this evening?"

"No...?"

"It's Passover."

We left. Our hearts full of sadness and our stomachs rumbling. That evening taught me that I need to be more culturally aware.

#2

The lady reading at the bar next to me got up to go to the restroom. I looked at J with a sly look and reached over to turn the book over so I could judge this stranger on her reading material. Something about baseball. I returned the book back to its original position. The bar manager saw me do this and grinned. I think he had a Sazerac too.

Zyka: The Taste of the Best Family Reunion Dinner You Probably Never Had

I was in London the first time I can remember eating Indian food. I was seventeen and on a Summer EF tour with my then-girlfriend and some of my best friends. After a long day of sightseeing, our tour director had everyone meet at an Indian restaurant a few blocks from the British Museum. EF Tours include a breakfast and dinner meal. I feel like the restaurants that offer these deals to the tour company hate everyone and go out of their way to make everything bland and unappealing. That being said, there's no real way to make Indian food taste bland, and so from that day on, I've been hooked. I live over by Buford Highway, the mecca for ethnic eats in Atlanta, but most of the good Indian restaurants are in Decatur. Like Zyka: The Taste.

The dinner scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was filmed in Zyka's banquet hall.

Zyka: The Taste

You have probably driven by Zyka a couple of times -maybe hundreds of times if you live in Decatur- and not realized that it was a separate entity from the Montessori school built overtop of it. It's a brick building, fairly-nondescript and combines the architectural elements of a funeral home and a convent. I usually don't try to dine out in funeral homes, but sometimes I like to get weird and when J and I pulled into the lot, it felt real weird. There was not a soul around and the air was thick and deadened from the Summer heat. A covered sidewalk with a large sign (see above) beckons you down into the cardamom-scented crypt but the serenity of the location ends when you open the glass door into the restaurant's dining room. I saw about fifty tables of different sizes scattered around the large, hotel lobby-esque space, each full with families of all kinds. Kids ran under tables giggling as the adults ripped apart freshly baked naan and dipped it into the styrofoam bowls filled with something delicious.

It was like stepping into a Chuck E. Cheese minus the game room and the creepy robot show. It had been a while since I've been to a restaurant packed out with children. It gave Zyka a welcoming, youthful energy and made me feel as if I had just stepped into someone's multicultural family reunion. 

Again, Zyka picks up on the trend of no hostess stand/order at the counter. J browsed the menu while we waited in line while I stood and stared through the window behind the counter into the kitchen. The smells coming from the window and the frantic chatter of the chefs made me realize that anything we chose off the menu was going to be amazing. J asked if I wanted to try a few dishes. I was entranced, but I do remember we picked the Chicken 65 and Beef Nehari and two vegetarian dishes: the veggie samosa and Paneer Makhni with a side of naan. With drinks, the total bill came to less than $30.

We gave the counter our name, filled our drinks at the beverage station and found a table. Moments after sitting down, a couple of kids decided our table made the best hide and seek venue, complete with Stranger Legs. This was me from two until a few months ago, so I didn't mind. The children's father tracked them down, boomed at them in Hindi and nodded at the two of us as the rug rats skittered back to their table.

Our names were called ten minutes after we ordered and we grabbed our fully-loaded cafeteria trays and made our way back to our table. At one point the paper bowl containing the naan slid precariously to the edge of my tray and almost teetered off onto a man's back but I maintained and got my balance. The spices were making my eyes water.

Ahh! Snake Surprise!

Zyka's food is glorious and rich. Each dish has at least four complementing flavors and the fresh cut peppers help cleanse your palate between bites. Or maybe it was the water after the peppers. Dipping the soft naan into each dish's sauce gets the slightest taste of the dish and is the best way to mop up the delicious sauces left over when you find yourself out of mains.

I ate everything and felt myself slipping into a food coma brought on by the ever-loving arms of Ganesh.

....::::::Zyyyyyyka:::::....

Zyka serves its Indian and Pakistani cuisine cafeteria style to a C. It comes out on cafeteria trays and each dish is loaded into paper and styrofoam dinnerware. Plastic cutlery rounds it all out. If you're a person that can't handle a low-key but delicious meal, I don't want you reading my blog.

Everyone else, go to Zyka.

Buford Highway: El Rey del Taco

Buford Highway is the Chinatown, Little Italy, Tiny Tegulcigalpa, and whatever else Atlanta needs it to be. The real estate is cheap and savvy restauranteurs have snapped up the strip-mall fronts and filled them with delicious, ethnic eats that can't be found anywhere else in the metro Atlanta area. I love driving up and down this street, stopping at Lee's Bakery, and just making a mental note to check out the Pizza Patrons and Pho 24s that I pass. I intend to check them all out later but for now...

Buford Highway and some trucks.

El Rey Del Taco

I love Mexican food. And sometimes, I speak Spanish, although I find it funnier to speak it with an American Southern accent because, why not? But I couldn't call myself a true Buford Highway believer until I sampled the delights of El Rey Del Taco. 

Roughly translated, the name means The Best Cheap Tacos You'll Ever Eat. If you asked a native Spanish speaker to translate it, they might come up with something boring like "The King of Taco" which is not really what this is about. Situated in a wild strip mall that is also home to a ping pong bar, El Rey Del Taco slathers up delicious and insanely cheap food at all hours of every day, including Mexican Fourth of July.

J had talked about this place for weeks. She usually does that. Mentions a restaurant but we don't go there for a long, long time. She will continually bring it up in conversation, especially during our vanilla, white-bread-people sex. "Oooohhh... you're just.... Ah!... you're... just... ohhhh El Rey Del Taco." I felt cheapened by this comparison to my love and a taco until I was lucky enough to visit El Rey Del Taco.

The handicapped spot is open because these tacos are said to cure people.

I ordered a michelada using the Mexican PBR Bohemia as a base. That was my only mistake. Little did I know, I'm not too keen on Bloody Mary's made with beer. Or tons of limes. Or whatever else was in there besides tomato juice. It was extremely limey. Tart, in layman's terms. But whatever, it had alcohol in it so I'm not saying it was terrible. Just... you know, no soy mexicano.

The menu has a lot of stuff you'd expect to see at a Mexican restaurant: tortas, enchiladas, quesadillas, nachos, ensalada, bistec, and more refined flavors like cheeks and butts. Probably some wieners thrown in for good measure.

I blushed and decided to avoid all of the weirdness and dove straight into the taco section of the menu.

Goat. Beef tongue. And pork tacos. Side of beans and rice that were more expensive than the tacos, even with the handmade tortilla option... Either way, I thought I would order more because let's face it, tacos are for babies and toothless grannies that handmake tortillas in the back of a taco shop for gringos to write about online.

Beef tongue, goat and chorizo. Not sure which is which.

Chico, was I wrong! Not only was I full and satisfied and porked and cheeked up, but I didn't even finish my michelada (cause it was gross) or the beans! They were good, but I hadn't reached that point in my relationship where I was okay farting in front of J.

I had a moment to survey the bright colors of the dining room and in my taco coma, investigate my surroundings a little closer. On the table there are two different house sauces. The red, and a deceptive, friendly-looking green. The red one tastes like you'd expect. Blood. Not really. It's hot enough and peppery to add a little kick to your taco experience but it doesn't destroy your tongue. Now that's out of the way, the green sauce is a killer in disguise like Michael Moore. It has a sharp tomatillo flavor but adds fire and hatred to any dish you're smothering. Tread lightly with both sauces at the same time and your butt-tacos will shine. Bright like a diamond.

I went back two weeks later with my sister. There was an old guy going from table to table selling fresh churros. The smell was heaven in baked cinnamon bread form. He skipped us because we were gringos. I wanted to tell him "No no! Hablo espanol like a champ!" but then my tacos came out and I got down to business. 

Returned with the infamous Andrew the week after and had more porks and cheeks. Now he's obsessed with this place and gets all weird if I don't get The King of Tacos with him on Sundays. Ah, well. I live to break hearts.

Ammazza. Don't Go There... or Do...

When I was in kindergarten, my best friend Geoffrey and I would spend our afternoons at his house pretending to be Westley from The Princess Bride and loading up his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle van with Hook action figures. We knew everything about the snapping turtles and crayfish that lived in the creek in his backyard and ate a lot of Chuck E. Cheese pizza when our parents decided that creepy robots made for great babysitters. We knew nothing of pizza. I've eaten a lot of pizza since. Atlanta has some decent 'za for a city that is not Chicago or New York but I don't want this to be another Atlanta food blog and I really don't want to dog on a place when I think it could be good. Let's just say as a Neapolitan pizza joint, Ammazza has some serious competition.

Not pictured: Inconvenient, long-term construction projects on Edgewood Ave.

Ammazza

A few weeks ago, J invited me to crash one of her friend's birthday parties. We spent a few hours playing volleyball in Piedmont Park with Dio blasting on a boom-box. And then we wasted some precious time and money that could have been spent on Korean karaoke having lackluster pizza at Ammazza over on Edgewood Avenue. This street is home to my favorite vampire haunts. But so far, I haven't ate up any noteworthy grub on this stretch of concrete and my experience at Ammazza hasn't changed my opinion that Edgewood is a pit of despair when it comes to dining options. And no, I haven't tried Illegal Foods yet because Turtles In Time takes up too much of my damn time.

Table numbers.
The reason so many 16-year old girls use their parents' credit cards.

Ammazza is located in a beautiful brick commercial building on the Inman Park end of Edgewood Ave. The decor is urban chic. Concrete floors, dark wood, and sexy lighting help offset the sparseness of the space. You order at the front counter bar and get a number to place on your table. Ah, the new and wonderful trend of casual restaurants to eliminate the pointless hostess station.

The website for Ammazza claims they want to ball-out with good beer and good 'za. The beer list does have some really great brews on it, both local and international. My biggest complaint on it is that almost every beer on the list is $3 more than I'm used to paying for the same damn beer a block down the street. Great you have craft beers! But I'm not happy paying Buckhead gas-station 6-pack prices. Cut some of the beers off the list, or rotate them monthly so you can pass us some savings and watch your customers' beer consumption sky rocket.

The pizza menu is all Neapolitan or NY-style pizza. I'm okay with this. I've been to Naples a couple of times. I loved it. The pizza was amazing and I kind of understand the hype of New York pizza but aside from folding my pizza, I try to stay away from the oily mess of grease and tradition that is a NY pie.

Ammazza's pizza is easily identifiable as pizza but I'm not sure if it falls into either the Neapolitan or New York camps. It has a crust, cheese and toppings, -staying with me here? The meat toppings are provided by The Spotted Trotter and are F'n A. The cheese, veggie and herb toppings are all fresh and delicious. I don't remember what kind of pie we ended up ordering because we sat with a large group and everyone ended up sharing like an epic Ninja Turtle Feast. (I would've been Casey Jones, not because I hate Raphael, but he's a mutant turtle and can't really get the girl, just FYI.)

Ammazza's 'za

The Ammazza website talks about the special process they use for creating their pizza dough, which is pretty typical and shouldn't need to be talked about but-IT'S THE WORST PART OF THE PIZZA! It looks like DiGiorno crust that has been burnt a little bit in their wood-fired ovens and was really dry and bland tasting. I'm a crust-eater because I love carbs and one day hope to assume my natural-state of being an obese American. But I couldn't finish this crust. It really is a crucial part of a great pizza that most people overlook. I want it crunchy. I want it blackened by real flame. And if it's not thin crust, I want it to have just a hint of a gooey center, like a baguette served right out of the oven. Ammazza, ya'll please look into this and we can be best friends.

The Scumbag Steve of pizza crust.

So. Ammazza. Great beer list. Not great beer prices. Exceptional pizza toppings. Not a bad topping made it to my mouth. A wonderful flavor on the main body of the pizza. Terrible crust issues. I'm willing to give it a few more chances but it made sense as to why it wasn't packed out on a Saturday night-

BECAUSE THEY'RE MISSING THIS!!!

Creative Loafing Atlanta just published an article on Ammazza's archnemesis, Varuni Napoli.

http://m.clatl.com/atlanta/grazing-varuni-napoli/Content?oid=11460541

I hate that the CL writer whines about the charred crust and says has become the new pizza cliche. Naw, that's how you make good pizza in a real oven. CL hates on everything but I still love 'em.