Taste of the Highlands Was a Great Success!

Mother nature must like children, too, because on Saturday, the rain held off, allowing Taste of the Highlands to come off without a hitch.

I was a judge, so I jumped at the chance had to try everything on offer at the event. Alas, even though I moved from table to table at warp speed, some popular stands were out of their dishes before I got to them. Tough break, DBA, I couldn't vote for your dishes although I heard they were good! Fortunately I got to try more than enough tasty bites and beverages.

The Cypress Street Pint and Plate team dishing out sliders and Sublime Doughnut burgers

An early fave was Cypress Street's Mini Sublime Doughnut Burger. You often hear about these gimmicky doughnut/burger combos, and it's usually in the context of "isn't it gross what pigs Americans are?" But I'm not going to lie, this was delish. I can't say I'd want to eat an actual full sized version but a slider hit the spot with its combo of sweet and savory.

Pozole's winning cocktail, - a jalapeno margarita 

There weren't that many cocktails on offer, so the competition wasn't too fierce for best cocktail. Goldilocks style, The Real Chow Baby's was too sweet, Rosebud's was too tame, but Pozole's was just right. Everyone I spoke to agreed that their jalapeno margarita was a knock-out.

La Tavola's prize winning ricotta gnocchi with lamb ragu

Adventurous Tastes' fave La Tavola delivered as well with a ricotta gnocchi served with a lamb ragu. This hearty dish ended up in 2nd place just behind a surprisingly good lobster bisque from Fontaine's. Can't say that it would ever occur to me to eat there, but apparently I've been missing out because that soup was damn fine. An honorable mention goes to Alma Cocina's subtle and flavorful corvina ceviche. It was my favorite cevinche of the day, while STK's slider, which came in third, was the judge's favorite burger of many. My fellow judges preferred it to the doughnut burger, but I gotta say, it was close in my book.

For desserts, Frozen Pints' ice cream sandwich made with gingersnaps and peach lambic took the cake, so to speak. It was by far the most unique dessert on offer, and I loved the unique flavor combination.

This was my first time at Taste of the Higlands despite living in the neighborhood for over three years. I'll definitely be back next year as it's the perfect combination of low key and fun. The live music was entertaining but unobtrusive; the crowd was festive but not in-your-face, and the food and booze was plentiful with no significant lines to get dishes. And of course, best of all, you are supporting a wonderful cause in Children's Healthcare of Atlanta! Congrats to all of the winners and to  my little brother and sister and the rest of the planning committee for putting on a great event!

Kitchen Nightmares Epic Meltdown

By now you might have heard about the epic meltdown the owners of Amy's Baking Company in Scottsdale, AZ, had on both Kitchen Nightmares and Facebook this past week. If you haven't you can get the full detail on Gawker and watch the show below. If you haven't, you are in for a treat!

   

 Don't have time to watch? Here's the gist. This totally delusional couple runs a restaurant in an upscale strip mall. At first glance, it seems reasonably pleasant there. But on closer inspection, nearly everything is wrong. They treat their staff like crap, not letting anyone else touch the POS system causing all sorts of delays and mistakes and even going so far as to fire 100 employees in the last year or so and taking their server's tips.

Amy runs the kitchen, but apparently can neither cook particularly well nor take criticism at all. When she's not serving up pre-made frozen ravioli or raw pizza dough, she's shrieking obscenities and threatening to walk out. You see they've never heard the maxim the customer is always right. At Amy's, the customer gets cussed out if he dares to complain. On Kitchen Nightmares you see them threaten to call the cops on one customer and have a loud altercation with him when he complains he's waited an hour for his pizza and tries to leave without paying for a pizza he has never received. When she's not behaving like a total nutter, she's apparently perpetrating frauds and doing time.

When two people make Gordon Ramsey look calm and collected, you know something is wrong. Ramsey ultimately got so fed up that he actually quit trying to help them and left. I don't usually watch this show, but if there are more episodes like this, I just might. We're talking very compelling TV here. These people are NUTS!

Better yet, the show kicked off a complete social media sh**storm in which this couple dug themselves deeper and deeper in a hole by swearing at all the "haters" and "disgusting pig people" who are trying to bring them down with bad yelp reviews and a long chain of comments on reddit. I am seriously addicted to these people. There is so much crazy that it just doesn't get old!

Atlanta Food News: May 13, 2013

We're taking a little break this week, but first, here's the scoop on what's new in food...

Kevin Gillespie's much anticipated Gunshow opened last week. Get some scoop on their unique anti-menu and ordering process here. I need a babysitter stat so I can check it out!

According to Urban Daddy, Ford Fry's much anticipated King + Duke opens today in Buckhead, but the restaurant's website still just says coming soon. Another reason to get a babysitter...

After talking about it for months, the Mr. and I finally had a date night at Tomo this weekend. Turns out you have to arrange the omakase in advance. Is it just me or does that defeat the point? It is supposed to be chef's choice of what is fresh that day. I can't comprehend why they wouldn't be able to accommodate that. Especially because I have eaten at many of the best sushi restaurants in LA and NY, and I have never had to pre-order the omakase. In the end we spent 50 percent less than we would have on an omakase and I walked away ambivalent about Tomo since nothing we tried was very exciting. Their loss I suppose.

Popped into a new bar/restaurant 1kept after Tomo to end our date night with a cocktail. Write-ups in thrillest and urban daddy both described an intriguing cocktail program complete with infused liquors. So imagine our surprise when the bartender informed us there was no cocktail menu. She also didn't make any suggestions or even mention the alleged infused liquors, saying only that she could make us "whatever." Well, duh, isn't that what a bartender is supposed to do? I can't quite figure out what went wrong here. Did their PR message just not get to the staff? The cocktails I read about sounded good and were certainly not the kind of thing you would just ask for without seeing a menu. So we left without buying anything.

Date night didn't quite turn out how we had hoped, but it was so nice to get dressed up and go out that we still had a nice evening. Next time King + Duke or Gunshow for more off a sure thing!