Food For Thought

I will not discuss the intricacies of melts vs. grilled cheeses here, but I will try my best to not use the two interchangeably. We all know how that turns out ( "You people make me sick." ).  Melt is situated on a plain little corner in Avondale, within walking distance of other trendy, delicious restaurants like Saw's Soul Kitchen , Big Spoon Creamery , and Taco Morro Loco (Which I will eat at ASAP), meaning its continued existence says something about its novelty’s ability to bring in customers and its food’s tastiness to make them come back. Atmosphere: Bright and airy. Melt doesn’t have a big sign announcing their name, they just have their food truck with their logo parked out front. There’s ~5 parking spots, kids playing cornhole outside, and the whole building looks patchy and something a DIY dad would build in his DIY Dads Club. This isn’t bad, it’s just their vibe. For instance, there’s a full suit of armor inside, painted a pastel pink. Their waiting a...

A gritty name for a gritty place - just kidding it’s in a very nice, clean strip mall, right beside a wonderful boba tea place(I used to think strip malls had to have strippers in them for some reason). Mugshots invokes mental images of carnal food and offers huge burgers and cups. Atmosphere: Woody and raw. I don’t know how much control restaurants have over their interior decor in a strip mall, but it looked very different from any other store in the same strip mall. The tables were highly polished wood, almost looking like the preserved bread they show off during the advent month at the front of my Baptist church (They baked a loaf ~17 years ago and completely laminated it with some kind of food laminator and it’s still on display. But it’s grossly shiny and I’m terrified that it’s lasted this long). Bad wood texture. Also the wooden booths didn’t have padded seats, what’s up with that? I think it’s a BASIC requirement for booths to have padding. The brick was “raw” but fake s...

Who is Ted? Who is TED? Ted Turner the Third?! The man who CREATED CNN?! The man who was the largest private landowner in America until 2011? Who uses his 15 ranches to raise the largest herd of bison in THE WORLD, re-popularizing bison meat in his misnamed Montana Grill actually in Atlanta? Yea. That Ted. Andy here with the scoop. Atmosphere: Enter. See a bar. Bartender has a manbun, serves root beer. Good, IBC root beer. Probably also alcohol but I wouldn’t know because I am a good kid. He seems happy. The floor tiles make a hexagonal mosaic. Deeper into the restaurant, all the lights are yellowed, and the room remains dark. It feels mysterious until your eyes adjust. Then it seems romantic. To pass into the back of the restaurant is to not be seated in the 2-4 person booths, with full backs that go 7 feet up. Only very tall people will not have privacy in those booths. For god’s sake, they’re even a bit enclosed from the entrance. I sat at a circular table in the middle...