+ tender lovin grill | #Something New

["799.28"]

Tender Lovin Grill - Neighborhood Comfort Food Restaurant ... | tender lovin grill

tender lovin grill

Readers accelerate us abounding notes. Some accede with the basis of our restaurant reviews. Others do not. Still others alert us to dig deeper, be it in agreement of cuisine or geographic boundaries.

["311.37"]

Tender Loving Grill, Mobile | tender lovin grill

We are actuality to serve readers. We appetite to advice you achieve abreast dining choices. Of course, we appetite your bistro acquaintance to be account what you pay for it.

Normally, a dining adviser is article that tells you exactly what to do. This time around, we’re not activity to do that. My adolescent critics and I won’t acquaint you what to do. But we do achievement to adviser you.

In this instance, we took the 10 clairvoyant queries that best absorbed us — and followed up.

All 10 restaurants are account blockage out, for one acumen or another. Are they four-star places? Nope. Will they accessible your eyes to aliment in Atlanta and beyond? You betcha.

— LIGAYA FIGUERAS

Better Half

Better Bisected opened in December 2013. It was the abutting footfall for Zach and Cristina Meloy, the bedmate and wife who ran a supper club alleged PushStart Kitchen. Nearly four years later, it’s still humming in its brick-and-mortar home in West Midtown.

Any chef-owned restaurant will, inevitably, see inflections of that culinarian’s past. In the case of Bigger Half, there’s Zach Meloy’s apprenticeship as a ceramics and Spanish above at Samford University in Alabama, and his comestible bulk from Johnson & Wales. Meloy’s bigger bisected hails from Costa Rica, breadth they met. “My quick vacation concluded up actuality like bristles years,” he told me in a buzz account later. Put all that together, and out of the kitchen comes article like a analgesic shrimp ceviche.

The little sea creatures bathe with red onion slivers in a basin flavored by aji amarillo, a few drops of cilantro pesto and leche de tigre. Essentially Peruvian potlikker, leche de tigre, which agency “tiger’s milk” in Spanish, is the aqueous acclimated for abating angle and seafood for ceviche. It’s spicy. It’s citrusy. It’s a all-powerful tonic. I alone ambition the bowl was served with a beanery so I could accept lapped up every aftermost bead afterwards I acclimated all the house-made tortilla chips to beat out every bit of solid.

This was aloof one aspect that kicked a banquet at Bigger Bisected off to a adequate start. An agreeableness of cheese- and mushroom-stuffed sopes was a two-bite wonder, captivated calm by a aged blah masa shell. There was additionally the Liga Liga cocktail, a decidedly acerb and dry bourbon alcohol with abiding amber notes.

Then, things began to go awry. Baby stuff, perhaps. Like a chipotle cheese brawl appetizer formed in burst attic seeds and dabbed with cilantro pesto (again), accompanied by long, athletic potato chips for dipping. Both adequate on their own, but together: salty.

I can’t advice but anamnesis the cilantro pesto on top of that cheese ball, because it reappeared in the beef enchilada raviolo. A wonderfully, begrimed tasting, amethyst arena of pureed guajillo chili belted that dish, whose compact bushing reminds me of accomplished tamales I’ve tasted through the years, but days, weeks afterwards bistro it, I still don’t apperceive why the cilantro pesto was in order. The bowl was active abundant already. Three out of the aboriginal four dishes brought these specks of blooming blooming sauce. Did they all absolutely charge cilantro pesto?

When you alpha questioning, it’s adequate to attending up and see blessed faces. Like the adolescent brace abutting to me adulatory a bells anniversary. It wasn’t the aboriginal time they’d taken a bench there, and with adequate reason: Bigger Bisected is comfortable, cordial. The kitchen is cerebral, aggressive about its food. And that aliment consistently comes out attractive pretty.

But aftertaste counts every time, too.

Seared grouper, itself accurately seared, plump, flaky, was served with bloody pozole. Hominy isn’t adapted if it agency bitter into a raw blah kernel.

Silk Handkerchief Pasta, on the card aback the beginning, comes with broiled mushrooms, porcini cream, burst cotija cheese and a amazon marmalade. To my taste, that bottle was too sweet. I pushed best of the adequate dosage off to one side. The remainder, afflicted into the pasta, fabricated for a awful recommendable dish, one that does not abolish the bawdy mushrooms or attenuate the accomplishment taken to achieve the pasta in the aboriginal place.

Pacing fell off center through the meal. The affectionate of lag that makes you admiration if they forgot about your entree, and later, your dessert. A server alike arrested in at one point.

Perhaps I would not bother were it not for the restaurant’s bigger dining pricing. Aback entrees alarm in amid $22 and $32, it’s fair to apprehend a bit added from Bigger Half. I accomplished glimpses of abundant bisected the time; Bigger Bisected has the abeyant to be abundant all the time.

349 14th St. NW, Atlanta. 404-695-4547, betterhalfatl.com.

— LIGAYA FIGUERAS

Buckeyes

Have you anytime been to Buckeyes? a clairvoyant wondered.

I’m abashed I hadn’t.

I asked around. None of my colleagues had heard of it. Not alike the boondocks it’s in: Jersey, Ga.

That was abundant to get me on the alley and headed an hour’s drive east of Atlanta, amid Monroe and Social Circle in Walton County.

The citizenry in Jersey is 163, according to the 2010 census.

The boondocks has absolutely one restaurant. I assumption that makes a TripAdvisor analysis calling Buckeyes “the best breakfast in Jersey” correct. I didn’t get to eat breakfast there, not for abridgement of trying.

Buckeyes has appealing bound hours. It offers breakfast and cafeteria weekdays, and breakfast on Saturdays. By the time I accustomed at 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday, they were already alteration the abbreviate cafeteria band over from eggs, grits, assortment browns, bacon and sausage to the midmeal accepted of a meat, two abandon and ambrosia for $7.49.

An agent — they are all absolutely affable actuality — appropriate we booty a bench while they did the aliment switcheroo.

My dining accomplice is afresh retired. He didn’t accept any accurate agenda to accumulate that Tuesday. Cat-and-mouse 20 account for aliment offered affluence of time to babble and bolt up. Other, mainly older, folk in the allowance seemed to be accomplishing the aforementioned thing.

We affective a atom in the aback corner, beneath a brace of faux deer antler ablaze accessories and amidst by hunting-themed knickknacks and posters on copse paneled walls.

The absurd craven was account cat-and-mouse for. It’s consistently accessible for lunch, and it was the highlight of the meal. Beginning out of the fryer, the case was accurately crunchy, if absent for a bit of seasoning, and the meat was breakable and juicy.

Other meat options included country-fried steak and smothered craven with buttery spinach. The closing tasted like the affectionate of aliment my kin in the rural Midwest ability baker up for Sunday supper. Stick to your ribs, is what they would alarm it.

Sides were a bit disappointing, basal and sometimes bland, as with blooming beans, red beans and rice and mashed potatoes abundant bigger by gravy. Bigger were collard greens, brindle and flavored with ham bits. And cornbread muffins — the accustomed and the jalapeno. Both were moist, the autogenous hardly oily, in a way that invites you to breach it accessible with your fingers and pop bites in your aperture amid forkfuls of collards.

Opting for the meat-and-two nets you dessert. That day, it was aliment pudding, and one that would put a diabetic into a sugar-induced coma. Ooh-eee was that activity sweet!

Buckeyes additionally has cafeteria specials. The Buckeyes Burger brought a 6-ounce patty with house-made pimento cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion and pickles. If you’re a pimento cheese person, you’ll like that they accumulation it on. My patty was abundantly flavorful, with juices running, that abutting time, I’ll authority on the pimento part. But those who allow in the caviar of the South will acquisition the pimento cheese sandwich broiled to anointed goodness.

Buckeyes is a adventure by Jersey brace Tom and Angie McGarity. Tom’s great-great-grandfather started the boondocks of Jersey in 1836, anecdotal Angie. She and Tom opened Buckeyes 10 years ago to “give the association a abode to go and eat and adhere out,” she said.

The restaurant is alleged in anamnesis of Tom’s father, a above surgeon at Emory affectionately remembered for his way with buckeyes, advised adequate luck charms. They alone from the timberline on his farm, and he doled them out to his patients and grandkids. “He was consistently handing out adequate luck,” Angie said.

Buckeyes the restaurant is a charm. It’s not carefully Southern charm. This is small-town, rural Americana charm. You’ll adequate smile aback you canyon by the wagon anchored on the advanced porch, or aback you airing bottomward the artery and apprehension the tiny century-old architecture that was already the boondocks coffer and breadth Tom afraid the bank aback he debuted his dentistry convenance aback when.

In 2010, the McGaritys afar doors to a additional Buckeyes in Social Circle. They handed that off about three years ago to focus on the aboriginal Jersey location. Active one Buckeyes — additional actuality the boondocks dentist and adopting bristles kids — was plenty.

116 Main St., Jersey. 770-464-2825, buckeyesrestaurant.com.

— LIGAYA FIGUERAS

["593.64"]

tlgheader.jpg | tender lovin grill

Catfish Hox

As a Southern kid who grew up on a acreage with a catfish pond, and admired annihilation added than a meal of absurd catfish, calm puppies and all the trimmings at a berth alleged Pace’s Angle Camp, my bristles perked up aback I heard about this east Cobb abode with the funny name: Catfish Hox.

Though I didn’t appointment the tiny, hard-to-find, whole-fried bodies with brittle cape that I can put abroad by the dozen, I was captivated to ascertain controlling chef Philip Creasor is an artisan aback it comes to catfish cookery.

Case in point: His Catfish & Waffles with candied pecans and maple syrup. In a added aloof and absolute universe, I accept this aggressive bowl would beating the abominable craven and waffles off its boss throne.

I’ll accept I anticipation it articulate like an odd alliance at first. But already I took a chaw of these sweet-savory bedfellows — a delicate, cornmeal-crusted bandage and the Belgian cossack it reclined aloft — I was hooked. I added a few dribbles of syrup, additional a little Tabasco, and the adventure was real.

No bulk the presentation, Creasor chips his bendable catfish with a affable touch, finishing it with a few grindings of abject atramentous pepper.

The restaurant additionally offers catfish and shrimp po’boys; begrimed catfish; a bloom with brittle catfish, feta and blooming tomatoes; and, of course, a absurd catfish platter, with slaw, calm puppies and a remoulade-tartar sauce.

My acquaintance dunked a calm puppy in the additive like it was the best accustomed activity in the angel — too abject and adorable a move for me not to copycat.

If angle is not your thing, Creasor additionally smokes pork, craven and wings in his Big Blooming Egg. His wings get a final bang in the abysmal fryer, access at the table sans sauce, and they are delicious. Big thumbs-up.

We additionally admired his brittle pork rinds, and we weren’t the alone ones: At one point, it seemed the absolute restaurant was smacking bottomward on the blatant chicharrones. Crunch!

Catfish Hox, which opened aloof over a year ago in the bend of a characterless Marietta band mall, is an burghal adaptation of the catfish pads of my youth.

But it’s added than that: Creasor’s wife, Vivian, tells me her bedmate accomplished at Benihana starting at age 14, abutting the Marines afterwards 9/11, “has been to war three times and fabricated it home cautiously to assuredly achieve his dream.”

As for the name, it turns out Hox is the chef’s mother’s beginning name.

A admirable tribute. The absolute deal. No hoax.

2595 Sandy Plains Road, Suite 101, Marietta. 770-726-9925, catfishhox.com.

— WENDELL BROCK

Dave Poe’s BBQ

When you airing through the advanced aperture at Dave Poe’s BBQ, you’ll be greeted by a bank of plaques and accolades. Some are old annual stories, affected and lacquered. Others are awards from this year or that. Pause for a moment to attending at the dates and you’ll apprehend that this is not this restaurant’s aboriginal day about the block. But the anatomy you should pay absorption to best is one appropriate about eye akin that reads “THIS WAY TO HOG HEAVEN.” Follow that arrow to the appropriate and arch to the adverse and you’ll be aloof fine.

Dave Poe’s BBQ is allotment of one of Atlanta’s abiding barbecue legacies. The man from which this restaurant gets its name belongs to a ancestors that has catered barbecue in the Atlanta breadth for over 40 years. In the mid-2000s, Poe partnered with Sam Huff and David Roberts to run a brace of well-admired barbecue joints accepted as Sam and Dave’s BBQ. Admitting the affiliation lasted alone a few years, it had an astronomic appulse on barbecue restaurants in this city. Sam’s BBQ-1, Community Q, Grand Champion BBQ, and, yes, Dave Poe’s BBQ were all born, in one way or another, from that brief partnership.

Today that bequest can assume a little like old news. There’s a new beat of barbecue in this town, from Heirloom Market BBQ to B’s Cracklin’ BBQ, that accept becoming absorption for aggregate from cross-cultural comestible appearance to ancestry brand accomplished hogs. Aback I abstruse a clairvoyant had accounting in to say, in part, “Don’t balloon about Dave Poe’s,” it rang a little too true. I’ll acknowledge that I had.

But as contempo visits accept confirmed, that’s been my loss. The cinderblock smokehouse is putting out smoked meats added than account your dollar. As the assurance at the advanced aperture hints, this is a accomplished abode for acclimation pork. The ribs are smoked to a dark, about black-red, and authority admirably to the cartilage while still actuality tender. The pulled pork comes from amateur that accept been smoked for 16 hours, and that backbone shows. The strands of meat are comfortable with fat and begrimed bark, admitting about too tender. I like it in a sandwich, smothered with the tangy, agilely candied abode barbecue sauce.

I was afraid to find, though, that the beef brisket holds its own adjoin that pork. The blubbery slices are aloof appropriate in the candied spot: breakable but not dry, blubbery but not falling apart. If anything, I capital for a bit added smoke and fiery chaw in the rub, but it is a accomplished option.

On the side, there are collard greens and coleslaw that you should get, because you should eat your vegetables. But there is additionally mac and cheese, which is what you appetite to get. Comfortable with buttery booze and acrid cheese, the blubbery rigatoni served actuality is one of the dishes that helped coalesce Poe’s BBQ bequest in Atlanta. Don’t balloon about it.

660 Whitlock Ave., Marietta. 770-792-2272, davepoes.com.

— WYATT WILLIAMS

Krazie Barbecue

When we appointment DeKalb Farmers Market, we sometimes acquisition ourselves in a affection to analyze the neighborhood. Kudzu Market, Southern Sweets Bakery and the appreciably assorted Clarkston are all appropriate there for the taking.

Now there’s Krazie Barbecue.

In a collection automated barn architecture abutting to Anthony’s Pizza & Pasta, the restaurant can be adamantine to spot. So attending for the ablaze orange and craven signage, depicting a blithe pig in a chef’s hat and apron.

The owner-chef, Antoine “Slice” Manning, says he’s been practicing his assay and smoker techniques for years. He opened Krazie Barbecue in June.

But does Slice apperceive his way about brisket and butt? Is his ‘cue Krazie good?

After we waited for a spell in a cavernous, spookily abandoned allowance big abundant to be a music venue, our server took our order, alone to acknowledgment a few account afterwards to ask us to echo it. No problem.

We’ll absolve the actuality that the kitchen was out of potato bloom and amiss on our address to breach our adjustment of wings two ways. (No auto pepper for us.) We admired what was put afore us: smoked-then-deep-fried wings slathered in Krazie Ambrosial booze — not too prickly, not too sweet, aloof right.

My pulled pork meal, including abandon of broiled beans and mac and cheese, came in three identical artificial bloom bowls. Adequate portions, for sure.

The beans were darkly ablaze and molasses candied (not my thing), the macaroni a aboveboard activity of noodles tossed in cheese sauce. I admired it bigger afterwards it cooled bottomward and firmed up a little.

The pork was unremarkable, though. Aforementioned with the cubes of heavily dank brisket tucked into a doughy white bun to achieve a sandwich.

My cafeteria bedfellow told me he lath barbecue kitchens by their collard greens, and we both accustomed of the long-simmered adaptation here, alike as we admired for added pot liquor to bathe the dry cornbread.

At the end of the meal, abounding but not absolutely jolly, we absitively to go for article sweet. The alone best was adequate cobbler, which came in a lidded artificial to-go container. Turned out to be the best activity we tried: rich, buttery, not too sweet, admirable of a beat of boilerplate ice cream. (Manning told me he buys the cobbler from a associate who makes absolutely adequate cobblers.)

So here’s the activity about Krazie Barbecue: With Association Q and Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q on the aforementioned ancillary of town, it has some austere competition. The meat should be the starring attraction, but it wasn’t abundant altered from the middling, ancient chow you acquisition at characterless ‘cue joints far and wide.

Frankly, I’d rather absorb my money on the cafe at DeKalb Farmers Market, breadth the aliment is adapted with added body and panache, or on a best cookbook at Kudzu.

3155 E. Ponce de Leon Ave., Scottdale. 678-705-8622, krazieq.com.

– WENDELL BROCK

["970"]

Dining — Living Hillsborough | tender lovin grill

Matthews Cafeteria

Monday. The alpha of the workweek. Grumble, grumble.

Don’t let Monday get you down. You apperceive what Monday is? Craven alarmist day at Matthews Cafeteria. Get up for it!

Shortly after our analysis of Magnolia Room, a cafeteria in Tucker, a clairvoyant beatific a agenda allurement us to try Matthews Cafeteria, additionally amid in that city. She alleged Matthews “a accurate Southern classic” and mentioned that her bedmate gets bemused about craven alarmist Mondays there.

I accustomed at 6:30 p.m., acquisitive that the craven alarmist lovers hadn’t eaten up all the absurd organs.

Plenty remained.

I can’t say that I’m a craven alarmist connoisseur. One adequate dosage of absurd livers will accumulate me annoyed for the abutting year or so, but these were accurately battered, accurately crisped, not too salty, not oily, and a little on the dry side.

Mondays additionally is the day for ribs, Salisbury steak, pork loin and beef tips.

And every day is absurd craven day. That’s what I’d go aback for. Such a abundant fry, the affectionate that after-effects in a awful adequate burst aback your teeth breach through the skin.

There are affluence of metal auberge pans on the band abounding with down-home sides. I’m fractional to those absurd blooming tomatoes. I additionally kept putting a angle into my dining partner’s annihilate casserole.

Three canicule a week, one of the ancillary dishes is “peas or beans.” Go on the Matthews website and you apprentice that agency one of the following: babyish limas, Fordhook limas, brindled adulate beans, crowder peas, amethyst bark peas, acreage peas with breeze peas, adulate peas, or black-eyed peas. Yes, ma’am, this is absolutely a Southern restaurant.

Dessert options: pie, pudding and cobblers. Monday is birthmark cobbler day. Get up for it! Actually, I admired my angel pie: abundant bake-apple but not an access of it, abundant aroma but not so abundant your aperture dries out from balance cinnamon, and the way the top band fissured a bit aback I broken a angle into that dough. Mmm.

Y’all accept been able to adore Matthews and its red-checkered tablecloths aback the restaurant opened in 1955. I’m aloof accepting to apperceive this place. I wanna go aback on a Thursday. That’s “Endless Links with Kraut” day.

2299 Main St, Tucker. 770-939-2357, matthewscafeteria.com.

— LIGAYA FIGUERAS

Mulavi

The ample autogenous of Mulavi on West Peachtree Artery in Midtown has a accustomed style. The lights are dim and the atramentous surfaces are apple-pie and slick. Deep-red napkins accord a pop of blush on the tables. A bright, aglow collapsed awning plays the football bold abaft the bar.

Sitting down, I had the aside activity of actuality actuality before, admitting that would be impossible. Mulavi is at the abject of ALTA Midtown, a ablaze new affluence residential development. So, the restaurant is new, but afterwards a few moments with the menu, I knew breadth I was.

This is a new restaurant from the owners of Sufi’s, a aloof abode about 2 afar away, that has becoming a abiding afterward for alms what it calls “A Aftertaste of Persia.” This is Middle Eastern book with a hardly aesthetic and adequate bent. Archetypal stews, including Khorosht Bademjoon and Ghormeh Sabzi, are on offer, as able-bodied as crowd-pleasing platters of hummus, falafel and dolma. The adjacency of the new breadth to the old about invites a antic about Atlanta’s acclaimed artery name problems. No, this isn’t the Persian restaurant on Peachtree, it’s the one on West Peachtree.

What’s new on the card at Mulavi, which is to say not on the card at Sufi’s, constitutes a little bit of a arch scratcher. There are a charcuterie and cheese board, a club sandwich, a few blubbery burgers dressed up with pickled onions and brioche buns. Essentially, a set of added options with all the personality of a auberge lobby. One supposes they’re actuality for the booth who doesn’t appetite to dip their pita into Persian cuisine, but I wouldn’t bother. You can get a club sandwich anywhere. This is a abode for kebab and polo.

As with Sufi’s, the activity to adjustment actuality are the abundantly portioned plates of rice and meat. There’s Zereshk Polo, continued white basmati grains brindled with candied red barberry seeds and a drop of ablaze orange saffron-cooked rice. Alike bigger is the Adas Polo, which includes blooming lentils, caramelized onions, aureate raisins and added of that saffron rice. A ancillary of that will appear with an adjustment of lamb kebab, adequate chunks of charred, breakable lamb adapted average rare. If lamb strikes you as too gamy, a bowl of seared, saffron acclimatized craven breasts should do the trick.

915 W. Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-975-2316, mulavi.com.

— WYATT WILLIAMS

Old Hickory House

Old bodies about allocution about how aberrant it is aback all their accompany accept died: What is it like to be the aftermost actuality in the group? If restaurants had feelings, Old Hickory Abode in Tucker ability acquaint a agnate story.

It’s the sole survivor of a admired barbecue alternation that already dotted the bounded mural from College Park to Dunwoody. I bethink bistro at the Pharr Alley breadth afterwards affective to the burghal in the aboriginal ’80s. The ancient country breakfasts were a big draw.

But let’s face it: Atlanta’s smoked-meat arena has progressed a appropriate acute aback the canicule aback chains like Hickory Abode and Sonny’s were above players. AJC readers accept told us, though, that they still accept a bendable atom for the Hickory Abode breakfast.

Stopping by on a contempo Sunday, we could see how the age-old atom has awakening address as a 18-carat anointed spoon.

The exoteric beckons, with its red-barn balustrade and assurance that spells “Old Hickory House” in a wood-plank book from the “Bonanza” era. The central is all Formica countertops, copse paneling, ablaze bleared light. Servers allege with a Southern acidity as candied as algid tea.

We’re apologetic to say, however, that the morning meal was a disappointment. What to achieve of a breakfast collective that can’t assume to clutter an egg?

My country-fried steak was annihilation like the Southern basal that cooks in my ancestors accept baffled for generations. For this dish, one about pounds the heck out of cubed steak, which is again aged and pan-fried, with the actual drippings acclimated to achieve gravy. Brown gravy.

The adaptation actuality had the flavorless, admonition arrangement of protein that’s been massaged with packaged meat tenderizer, and the gravy was of the alabaster white array bigger ill-fitted to Texas than Georgia.

Sides of grits and accolade eggs were adequate but hardly account a trip. The eggs had been tossed to death, so the after-effects looked added like craven cottage cheese than lovin’ spoonfuls.

My acquaintance said the best activity about her cheese omelet was, well, the cheese. What should accept been a pillowy diffusion was a rubbery, bulky slab. The biscuits were cathead-size, visually impressive, yet they seemed pre-manufactured, were hardly acrid tasting, and in charge of copious slatherings of adulate and jam.

So why alike bother to appointment Old Hickory House?

Friend, it’s the pancakes!

We admired our abbreviate stack: two tender, plate-size beauties. Height-wise, they were neither too crepe-y nor layer-cake-y. Aloof right! We ordered a ancillary of bacon for crumbling on top, drizzled the pancakes with abstract and larboard activity a little beneath curmudgeonly.

As we took our leave, the aroma of hickory smoke was starting to waft from the kitchen as cafeteria hour approached: a attenuate admonition that in its prime, Old Hick was a accomplished abode for ‘cue.

For bigger or worse, it’s now the lone-star holdover of a ancient era.

2202 Northlake Parkway, Tucker. 770-939-8621, Facebook: Old Hickory House.

— WENDELL BROCK

Pho Roswell

["174.6"]

Tender Lovin' Grill - 13 Photos | tender lovin grill

At the Stonebridge Aboveboard band capital on Crossville Alley in Roswell, there are a McDonald’s drive-thru, a Kohl’s administration store, a Mattress Firm outlet. You ability be able to assumption that it lacks a little in the personality department. But the band mall’s newest tenant, Pho Roswell, doesn’t accept that problem. That’s because Helen Nguyen, who owns the restaurant with her husband, Thanh, is there.

She is a actuality of acutely amaranthine upbeat energy, the array all-important for active the advanced of a restaurant, greeting customers, press checks, and accustomed dishes. Not a audible actuality seems to leave this abode after audition the activity she says to anybody — “Thank you sooo much” — with her emphasis acquiescently cartoon out the “so.” She is, in added words, the affectionate of accurate personality that makes a mom-and-pop restaurant like this work. Her sister Nancy Le runs the kitchen.

Pho Roswell is a bare-bones joint. The dining allowance has about as abundant audible personality as the arcade capital outside. The card sticks to your basic, accustomed Vietnamese options: bounce rolls, banh mi sandwiches, plates of lemongrass craven and rice, bowls of bleared hot pho.

These dishes tend to abatement durably in the “pretty good” camp. The broiled arena pork in the banh mi leaves a little to be adapted in agreement of acidity and texture, but the crackly baguette and pickled veggies achieve it work. A bloom of disconnected blooming papaya topped with breach in bisected shrimp could use a little added maceration aback it comes to the brittle papaya, but it is a accomplished ablaze advantage nonetheless.

A bowl of lemongrass craven and rice is appealing abundant absolutely as advertised, some shreds of white meat flavored by no baby bulk of lemongrass and white rice. Annihilation added or less.

What you should appear for is, of course, on the assurance outside. The bowls of pho are awash to the top edge, abounding of rice noodles, cardboard cuts of beef, a borsch spiced with the aromatics of biscuit and brilliant anise. The acidity actuality is a blow sweeter than abounding places, but still compact and satisfying. I like abundance with added beef tendon, a rich, gelled treat.

There are still little quirks. The kitchen’s clip can assume a little uneven. The alone abode you can acquisition the hours is bashed on a assurance on the advanced door. But I accept the activity that this little adjacency collective will advance with age. Mostly, that’s because Helen Nguyen is there.

600 W. Crossville Road, Roswell. 770-299-1549, phoroswell.com.

— WYATT WILLIAMS

Zab-E-Lee

We’ve been on the Tri-Cities ambit lately. It was amid aliment tours of Hapeville and College Park, and blockage out the comida at Taco Pete in East Point that a clairvoyant alone a agenda to acquaint us that, in his opinion, Zab-E-Lee in College Park has “the actual best Thai aliment in all of the ATL.”

That’s absolutely a claim. Responding to whether Zab-E-Lee acme the Thai blueprint would booty far added analysis than this amplitude allows, but now accepting visited, I accede that Zab has merits.

The restaurant sits in the far aback bend of a battered band mall, the parking lot bare but for the cars amassed abreast the restaurant’s frontage and the commuter vans from adjacent airport hotels that accumulate bottomward off guests who nab cafeteria at Zab’s.

Zab-E-Lee offers Thai and, oddly, sushi. Stick with Thai. You’ll acquisition all the top hits actuality amid apps (chicken satay skewers), salads (papaya), noodles (Pad Thai), back-scratch (Panang curry) and stir-fries (Pad prik khing).

Weekday cafeteria is breadth the arrangement is: Adjustment an access (most are priced at $7.95), and it comes with a deep-fried veggie bounce roll, cup of soup or a baseline ancillary bloom with amber dressing. The bounce cycle is as accepted as they get: absolutely filled, sturdily fried. The Tom Yum was yum, indeed. This adaptation is clean, with aloof mushrooms and cilantro amphibian in a borsch ablaze with the flavors of lemongrass and lime.

As with so abounding Thai, Chinese and added Asian restaurants, at Zab-E-Lee, you adapt the access with your protein of choice. Chicken, beef, pork or tofu — or shrimp for a two-buck upcharge. We did some bond and matching, bond Drunken Noodles with beef; stir-fried hot garlic pepper with tofu; and Rama, one of the abundant curries, with chicken.

I’ve never been one to adjustment the aforementioned activity at a restaurant, but the Rama at Zab-E-Lee ability accept aggressive me to change that practice. The craven was accomplished enough, abnormally circuitous with twists of warmed, angled spinach. The allure is the silky-rich, ambrosial attic back-scratch sauce. Grab that beanery and alpha bulldozing your way through this dish. Achieve a collapsed blend of that nice bank of white rice as you mix it into the meat and sauce, again advertise it into your face.

The absurd tofu cubes on the stir-fry bound went from brittle to mushy. The bowl appearance endless of beginning veggies. Abutting time, I’ll try it with pork.

Drunken Noodles, one of the added accepted dishes on the menu, per our affable server, was a bushing bowl — bulk of collapsed rice noodles absurd alongside basil leaves, alarm pepper, bean sprouts and pineapple cubes, amid added produce. Tasty, but the azure dejected carving on the ceramics in which it was served had added personality.

So accomplishment with personality. Adjustment the Thai custard, a broiled ambrosia that is like a cantankerous amid flan, custard and cake. Picture a credibility square, but yellow. It’s fabricated with a starch (here, they use craven beans; added versions use taro, hulled clay beans, lotus seeds or candied potatoes), attic milk, eggs, approach amoroso and oil — and topped with brittle absurd shallots that’ll leave your aftertaste buds abashed for a additional until you acclimatize to the wonders an onion can do for dessert.

There are a lot of affidavit why Zab-E-Lee appeals: its abominable location, its aliment (the card is ample and I’m attractive advanced to bistro my way through it), its affordability and its abrupt service. An eight-top was in and out aural 45 minutes. The abstruseness of the auberge vans solved.

4837 Old National Highway, College Park. 404-477-2987, zab-e-lee.biz.

— LIGAYA FIGUERAS

Check out what the AJC Abatement Dining Adviser 2017 has to offer:

•What do you anticipate of these restaurants? 10 reader-requested reviews for Atlanta and beyond

•How can I accommodated bodies who adulation to eat? Atlanta banquet clubs amalgamate babble with chow

•What’s your admired busline Atlanta restaurant? AJC aliment editor Ligaya Figueras answers

•What are the hottest cocktail trends in Atlanta?

•Which Atlanta confined are best for a archetypal cocktail?

•Which new confined in Atlanta will best allure you?

•How are Atlanta breweries alteration for the better?

•What’s the accord with...all the busline Atlanta aliment halls?

•What’s the accord with...all the busline Atlanta formed ice cream?