Baby Jane’s Home Cooking, Snellville GA

The best thing about Baby Jane’s might be their stuffed salmon patties: thick as the tip of my thumb, as round as a quarter, browned and a little toasty. They were breaded salmon goodness, evoking memories of sucking the last little bit of flavor out of a stuffed crab.

Cabbage, Brussels sprouts, chicken fried steak, salmon patties.

Or it might be Baby Jane’s cheesecake, rich and delicious.

Almost everything we tried was good; one exception was the brussels sprouts (overcooked, really impossible to avoid in a buffet). If you stuck to vegetables that can handle steaming over a period of time (greens, cabbage, corn), then the veggies were entirely satisfactory. The meats? There was plenty of fried chicken, but they also had good pork chops, a good fried fish, and the aforementioned salmon patties.

My wife, something of a picky eater, went back three times for plates of food. Drinks here are huge and often refilled. Staff were a pleasure.

Baby Jane’s Home Cooking
2054 Main Street East
Snellville, GA 30078
(678) 502-7055

 

O’Shucks, Loganville GA

O’Shucks is the sister restaurant to Oyster Bay, found just off Highway 78 heading towards Athens. The emphasis is on sustainable seafood, especially oysters and shrimp. It’s a smaller restaurant found in a strip mall named Old Loganville Square, next to a pizzeria. Given the crowds we saw on a Tuesday night, O’Shucks is rather popular.

As we went to Oyster Bay for lunch, we tried O’Shucks for dinner. We started with fried oysters, and a cup of she crab soup. Fried oysters were tender and tasty, the she crab soup delightful and rich.

I had a cedar plank salmon, my wife and daughter had po’ boys. My po’ boy photos are lacking, and as the same po’ boy is served at Oyster Bay, you might check out that review for a better photograph. The salmon had a hint of crustiness, and was a pleasure to eat. Po boys were devoured.

My daughter rates the fries as exceptionally good at O’Shucks. They’re crusted, the way some fast food restaurants do it. Staff were dressed in black, efficient, cute.

Despite some eater reports to the contrary, these restaurants are clearly affordable. There are plenty of seafood and other options in the $7.50 to $11.00 range, good value for this kind of eating.

Yes, we’ll be back, especially as my wife can’t eat meat on Fridays these days. This place, and Oyster Bay, are good enough to be part of the regular rotation of seafood eaters within a reasonable drive of their locations, as an original and casual alternative to Red Lobster and Bonefish Grill.

O’Shucks
3939 Atlanta Highway
Loganville, GA 30052
(770) 558-1617

Tip: Oyster special on Wednesdays.

 

Oyster Bay Cafe, Lawrenceville GA

Oyster Bay Cafe is a restaurant found on Lawrenceville Square, whose focus is fresh sustainable seafood with plenty of oyster and shrimp options. Classed as a gastropub on Urban Spoon, I’m not sure I see that. To me, it evokes an Atlantic Ocean seafood shack, perhaps crossed with a little Vortex style kitsch.

The restaurant is long and thin inside, and bigger than it appears from the outside.

We came for lunch, were feeling a little cautious and not hungry enough to push the dinner offerings, so my daughter went with a bacon shrimp po boy and I got a shrimp and fish fried basket, broccoli instead of fries. We had 6 steamed oysters to start with, tender and good.

Later our plates arrived.

Fish and shrimp basket, with slaw.

Bacon shrimp po boy, paired with some excellent fries.

The fried fish was well cooked, dry, hot, and tasty. The po boy was good. My daughter leaves food she doesn’t care for, but she took what she couldn’t eat home, including the fries. Fries at Oyster Bay have a light crust (I think I’ve tasted similar at Checkers), and she liked that crust a lot.

Staff here are good, homespun and chatty, a fine complement to the food.

Oyster Bay has a sister restaurant in Loganville, O’Shucks. We’ll be reviewing that restaurant in a later post. But for now, know that a good inexpensive seafood option is available in Lawrenceville, and if you’re close, I suggest you go often.

Complementary review: The 285 Foodies thread on this restaurant.

Oyster Bay Cafe
125 West Crogan Street
Lawrenceville, GA 30045
(770) 910-7521

Tip: 60 cent oysters on Tuesdays.

 

Watershed at Peachtree, Atlanta GA

The new Watershed is next door to a Uncle Julio’s, a good thing, as Watershed itself isn’t that easy to see, or for that matter, all that easy to get to. We went recently to try their brunch. It’s a solid brunch offering, perhaps not as over the top as some other brunches we’ve had. It’s a little more ordinary, a little more sedate.

Biscuits were excellent, my wife ordered more after receiving her first.

Seafood melange, a mix of seafood in a bowl that otherwise had a brown gravy and grits, was also pretty darned good. No one in the family are grits eaters, but were were eating those.

Perhaps our favorite was the smoked trout salad, with rich smoky flavors in the fish and plenty of tender spinach.

With it being brunch, we really didn’t get to the kinds of dishes that made Watershed’s reputation initially. That said, service was excellent, and the restaurant is beautiful, certainly suitable for a date.

Watershed at Peachtree
1820 Peachtree Road
Atlanta GA 30309
(404) 809 – 3561

 

Black Eyed Pea, Dallas TX

Going to this place was like stepping into my past. I recall a time when I was in grad school in Houston, in the 1980s, where, if someone really wanted to treat you, they would take you to this chain. The one we knew of was in the River Oaks district, near a Chili’s and not that far from the River Oaks theater. It was fantastic. And when we moved later to Orlando FL, the local Black Eyed Pea was one of the hardest restaurants to get into.

Move forward some years and in Atlanta, Black Eyed Peas weren’t all that good. Service was terrible. Food might be good, but who could tolerate the lousy waiters of the time? It wasn’t too long before all of these in the ATL were converted to Folks restaurants.

Evidently there was a bankruptcy in the chain at one point, and staff at this Black Eyed Pea said that there had been some staff loss to Denny’s, that the improvements in the Denny’s you guys have seen came at the expense of BEP. Hey, I can’t confirm it, but merely can report it.

decent fried pickles.

Chicken fried chicken was excellent. Good green beans. Fried okra weren’t crisp at all.

So, was it as good as we rememberd? Well, entrees, yes. Sides ranged from very good to a very ordinary serving of fried okra. Service was excellent, and the chicken fried chicken my wife got was transporting.

Maybe this chain will grow again. We’ll see.

Black Eyed Pea
7979 Belt Line Rd
Dallas, TX 75254
(972) 490-1932

 

JCT Kitchen, Atlanta GA

Some of the best Southern food I’ve had since my last meal at the Decatur Watershed came on a recent Sunday at JCT Kitchen. They have a fixed price menu on Sunday. You get a meat, three sides, biscuits, salad, deviled eggs, a dessert. I wish I could have included more pictures, but many didn’t come out.

The entrance to JCT Kitchen is down there, by the tower.

Good biscuits.

Butter and a dipping sauce come with the biscuits.

deviled eggs.

Of the meats, my wife had their fried chicken, my daughter and I had the rabbit. Rabbit was shredded and formed into a round patty and cooked. It was a mild meat, and in my opinion, not quite the flavor bomb the fried chicken was. On a revisit, I’d probably try the brisket or the chicken.

Fried chicken, best of our meats.

Rabbit.

Of the sides.. a family shares portions of three sides. We tried the mac and cheese (awesome, says my daughter), the brussels sprouts, and some greens. All three were good. The salad was huge, full of surprises. The quality of service was lush.

In terms of location, it’s in the same building as Star Provisions, but more towards the side and the back. Look for the JCT “Tower” to help find the entrance.

JCT Kitchen
1198 Howell Mill Rd NW
Atlanta, GA 30318
(404) 355-2252

 

Southern’s Best Cafe, Lawrenceville GA

Southern’s Best is pretty outside and inside, and manages to be cute at the same time. In many ways, it would be a good place for a casual first date. The menu is simple and straightforward. Meats tend towards chicken or turkey. One of a fistful of vegetables are made without meat, and retain plenty of flavor.

Roughly at the corner of Five Forks and Sugarloaf Parkway, across from Fronteras and Athens Cafe, and completely opposite the Publix at this corner.

I enjoyed my cornbread roll, but the spices in the roll might not work for everybody. Please don’t mistake this simple menu for plain spicing, because the people here do know how to draw flavor out of their food.

Southern’s Best Cafe
3315 Sugarloaf Parkway
Lawrenceville, GA 30045
(770) 864-9495

 

Dicky Doo’s Diner, Lawrenceville GA

Dickey Doo’s is a small restaurant, part of the same building as a gas station, at the corner of Lawrenceville Highway and Gloster Road. It was not the easiest place to find, as the maps I had available to me placed this restaurant directly on Ronald Reagan Boulavard. I wrote Dicky’s and after some time, they replied. I then passed on the improved location to Urban Spoon.

I then tried to check it out after work. No luck, as it’s a breakfast and lunch place. But one day when I had time to pick up my daughter from school, we stopped here on the way home.

Pulled pork plate

Rib plate (1/4 rack)

It’s cozy, with a drive in window and a few tables. Ordering is done at a counter, and most of the menu is on a whiteboard in the back. There is an extensive array of breakfast items, as well as barbecue, pretty good barbecue in fact.

A recent takeout menu

Both the ribs and pulled pork were smoky and flavorful. The pulled pork was a little dry, but the restaurant features some good barbecue sauces, a decent mild and a good hot variety. Sides were good, though my daughter was a little indifferent to her mac and cheese. The biscuits were a big hit with my daughter, who took mine to have for breakfast at a later date.

Getting here couldn’t be easier from Snellville. Oak Road turns into Gloster, so just head down Oak Road until it turns and crosses the railroad tracks, and just keep going. Another route would be to exit Ronald Reagan at Bethesda Church Road and head towards Lawrenceville. At Lawrenceville Highway, head north down 29. The corner of Gloster and Lawrenceville will be at the next set of lights.

Dicky Doo’s Diner
2700 Lawrenceville Highway
Lawrenceville, GA 30044
(770) 638-4778

 

Empire State South, Atlanta GA

In my wife’s lexicon, our meal at Empire State South has become “The Disaster”, a peculiar way to speak about a meal where of the 5 dishes we ate, 4 were nominally good and 3 were really good. But there were service issues and a difficult to navigate menu, which amplified the problems my wife often has in new restaurants. As for me, I knew upon reading the restaurant menu days before that it would present difficulties to someone such as me. This restaurant is a little too fond of sweets on meats, of putting jams, jellies and preserves on their proteins, and in general appears to design dishes for the carb loaders of the world. But I was thinking, get a salad, get an entree, what could go wrong?

The bottle of water at the table was a nice touch.

For one, this was the salad – the only salad – we had available to us:

Pretty, and my wife thought it tasty. But when she ordered it, she was expecting at least some lettuce and carrots, perhaps a tomato or two. Instead, she ended up with the beast that was soon dubbed the diabetic coma salad, and of course though she asked for the dressing to be put on the side, it was not. Staff, it seemed, weren’t paying that much attention to what she was asking for.

Entrees came, along with a side of collards.

Shrimp and grits. Really good, smoky flavor in the grits.

My daughter loved her shrimp and grits. This was by far the most successful dish we had. “The grits were a little smoky,” she told me. The smoked trout had a very mixed reception, however.

While I thought my trout to be a trout on a biscuit in terms of size, it at least delivered a ton of intense smoky flavor. My wife’s trout, on the other hand, was dosed in enough of a citrus dressing that it was spoiled for her. I believe the same dressing was used on the tomato next to the fish. Staff blunder #2.

The collards: again, a very small serving of food, but quite good, first rate.

We were offered desserts, but we found none of them appealing.

To summarize, our experience was mixed. The technical skill of this restaurant is high, and when they could deliver food, they did so well. But the menu choices leave much to be desired for someone who eats like me. As a result, I can only recommend this restaurant to certain types of people.

If you’re a foodie, of the kind for whom others can have your bagel when they pry it from your cold, dead hands, then run, don’t walk to Empire State South. For diabetics, people on diets, people with food issues in general, the menu, as I found it, is not for you and I cannot recommend this restaurant.

To note, I believe there are easy fixes to my issues, such as providing a simple house salad, shorn of carbs, or providing entrees with vegetable choices more akin to the “Super Food” item, seen here and here. But until I see them, I can’t recommend Empire State South in general.

Empire State South
999 Peachtree St NE
Atlanta, GA 30309
(404) 541-1105

 

Local Three Kitchen and Bar, Atlanta GA

Local Three is not the easiest place to find or park at, but thankfully the section of road this eatery is found on was delightfully free of traffic the day I managed to get there. Yes, it’s very pretty. Nearby is a small sandwich shop punfully named Local 1.5. As in many self consciously good looking places, the staff dress down a little, in a nice shirt, often an apron, and jeans. Abstract pigs from Muss and Turners adorn the walls, and pictures of Jeff Bridges in his role as the Dude in Big Lebowski are all over the place. There is a lot of light, and many well lit places to eat. There is a long bar, and probably plenty of great drinks here. I was just here for something I can eat.

I talked them out of the corn on this dish, but that's it.

Great roasted vegetables, thin sliced. Total explosion of flavor.

This is a place that borders on violating the principle of separation, which is to keep ingredients of different kinds well enough separated that someone with food issues can fix their meals. I spent forever getting the corn out of my arugula salad, and of course, succotash is the vegetable du jour of type 2 diabetics. That said, they have a rotating vegetable plate, and the vegetable sandwich was not only a complete delight, but beyond any doubt the best thing I ate all week.

Local Three Kitchen and Bar
3290 Northside Pkwy
Atlanta, GA 30327
(404) 968-2700