Food Near Snellville

The Dublin is located a little north of the intersection of Killian Hills and Highway 78,  a bit south of Golden Corral and in  the same building that used to house a Mellow Mushroom and later, Benny’s Bar and Grill. The theme is English/Irish pub, and the menu is moderately ambitious as pubs in the Snellville area go. I went recently, to try it out, and staff there were saying that the pub owners have plans to add another in the Lawrenceville area. If so, it becomes another small English/Irish chain in Atlanta, a bit similar to the Dunwoody Restaurant Group.

I had a beer, their mozzarella sticks, and a corned beef sandwich when I went. I thought the kitchen ran a little slow, but this place was only open 2 months when I dropped by. Best part of it was the staff, which were pleasant and very attentive. Food was pretty good once it arrived. My gut feeling is they’ll get better once they get all their newness worked out of the system, but for now, the Dublin is certainly an alternative to bars for whom buffalo wings represent a culinary challenge.

The Dublin Pub and Grill
3902 Highway 78
Snellville GA 30039
(678) 805-8403

I’ve reviewed Texas Roadhouse before, but this time I arrived with a camera and I took photographs. Those that want discussion, I’ll pass on to my older review, as little has changed that I can see. This article will be concentrating on photographs.

Good rolls, good peanuts. The butter is too sweet for me to indulge in.

Enjoyable house salad.

buttery and delicious.

To note, we haven’t been back much since my original review because this restaurant is just way too popular. The lines linger out the door on weekend nights and we pass on to places that can seat us. That said, the off hours aren’t bad – I had lunch on a Saturday this time – and service is good once you get inside.

Texas Roadhouse
1969 Dogwood Road
Snellville, GA 30078
(770) 985-1450

Fisherman’s Catch: It’s easy to miss this little house, across the street from the local Krispy Kreme and rows of huge chain stores, and it’s not much to see from a distance. Get up close and some of the best murals (older photos here) in the area come into view. I’ve always found the murals fascinating.

Food here is good, and you won’t need me to tell you this. However, this whole meal was peculiar from the start, and I don’t think representative of my experiences here in the past.

To note, the inside has a consistent nautical theme. Oars, miniature boats, netting, wooden paneling, all the trappings of a seafood place are here. It’s quiet, tends to have a crowd of older regulars, and is inexpensive. The most expensive filet on the menu is the wild Alaskan salmon, and that’s what I ordered. At least, that’s what I think I ordered. I also thought I  ordered the clam strip appetizer, but what came out was the crab leg appetizer instead.

A good set of legs, and I didn’t argue the  point. The one that lingers, though, is the salmon. Perhaps the fish was indeed salmon, but  it lacked the pink color normally found in salmon – I eat sockeye salmon a few times a week precisely because it can’t be farmed, and I know the look. It also lacked the distinctive flavor of salmon, and interestingly, I wasn’t charged the salmon price, either. I suspect a silent switch.

That said, the fish was grilled as I asked, it flaked the way salmon does, it was a mild and delicious fish.

All told, going in, I  thought this was going to be a home run of a review, but it’s more like a single after a bad whiff or two and a couple foul balls. The food they serve here is good, but the one time I show up with a camera to talk about a well respected place (see this review on Snellville Eats, for example), the service was kind of off.

Despite the whiffs, recommended.

Fisherman’s Catch
4132 Stone Mountain Georgia
Lilburn GA, 30047
(770)-979-2296

Update: typo fixes.

Costa Verde is a small Latin restaurant in a strip mall on Buford Highway, just a little south of Jimmy Carter on the east hand side of the road. It’s not Mexican and couldn’t be mistaken for Atlanta Tex-Mex if it tried, though, as the lunch menu is all on a placemat and written in Spanish. In place of a Speedy Gonzales, they serve this:

It has a tamal (a tamale), chicharrones (chunks of pork), some sweet potato chips, cooked onions, and some rolls I didn’t sneak into the photograph above. They have a dinner menu with translations, but I was feeling lucky today and didn’t bother. I loved the flavors in the tamal, unlike the generic yellow tamales that you might buy in BHFM, and the onions were fine as well.

They hadn’t finished their lunch sign until I left, but I managed to get a couple photos as I departed. Peruvian cuisine is a spicy Latin cuisine, and I’ve enjoyed it most when I get some fish or shrimp along with a bit of the spicy green sauce often seen in these restaurants.

This is a place with an original menu and original options, and if you’re into modest restaurants with original food, this is a place for you.

Costa Verde
6200 Buford Highway 1C
Norcross, GA 30071
(770) 449-3221 ‎

Sultan’s is a Lebanese and Turkish eatery in a strip mall a little south of Whole Foods on Roswell Road, in the same strip mall as Bishoku and Chef Robb’s Caribbean. It, like so many other Mediterranean eateries along this road, offers a lunch buffet, both a blessing and curse for the blogger. It’s a blessing in that it’s cheap. It’s a curse in that there is no easy mapping between what you eat and the names of what you eat.  It’s just that good tasting stuff in a pretty tray over there.

And in that vein we’re not going to name much of what we eat today except in generic terms. Words like “salad”, “roast beef dish”, grilled chicken will predominate. What I can assure you is that Sultan’s will feed you. And for a diabetic, you’ll be fed about as well as any place in the city can, for the price you pay.

Mediterranean cuisines have an emphasis on salads, plenty of grilled vegetables, and meats. Yes, there are excellent breads and rices, but you can ignore those in a buffet. The five or six excellent small desserts at Sultan’s? Well, I can’t safely review them so I’m not going to. Someone else can give you that rundown.

This last time I went there were two really good salads along with plenty of good additions – thick slices of cucumber, large chunks of ripe tomatoes, plenty of chunks of feta cheese and good olives. There were at least three kinds of meat: a roast beef dish, a ground beef dish, and some delicious grilled chicken. There was a soup, a lentil-rice soup  that I took a few spoonfuls of. There were small breads, about the size of the palm of my hand. There was plenty of rice as well.

Now, if what you’re after is exotic meats, then you’ll need to hit Sultan’s during dinner or perhaps some other eatery. What they do serve is inexpensive for this kind of eating and very tasty. But it’s a lunch offering, and priced that way. If that’s okay by you, then Sultan’s has enough good food to please even the biggest eaters.

Sultan’s Lebanese and Turkish Cuisine
5920 Roswell Road
Sandy Springs, GA 30328
(404) 257-2220

Inc Street Food is an exceptionally pretty restaurant, and one based on a theme. What looks like a side of a food truck is actually the portal to the kitchen, and otherwise, the restaurant features a carefully crafted look, suggesting plenty of age. The look, and the very pleasant staff helps gets customers in the mood.

Something about it reminds me of Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. I can’t tell you entirely why.  Perhaps it’s that the half car look of the kitchen reminds me of the bustle of the converted rail station. But the look for me is transporting.

steak, fish, and pork tacos.

I wish I could say the food were as wonderful as the atmosphere, but it’s merely good. There was a bit too much sauce for my  taste, and my  tacos all had oily inner tortillas. I pulled those out and threw them away; not as if I need extra carbs anyway. But really, this is a place to see and be seen. The food just has to be good enough and it is. If I were after the best and freshest tacos, I’d be prowling taquerias rather than this place. I suspect its best use is as an after hours respite. In that spirit, you could show up around 7 pm, kick back a few drinks, and eat enough food so that you could drive home.

To note, it’s a small place and seating is pretty close. You’ll end up hearing the conversations of the people around you. It’s just part of the flavor.

Inc Street Food
948 Canton Street
Roswell, GA 30075
(770) 998-3114

Gary’s Bistro has a new chef, a new menu, and they have Father’s Day specials.

They also have an excellent burger. The deal is, they don’t compress their meat the way most short order cooks do, and that leaves the meat almost melt-in-your-mouth tender.

I spoke about handling burgers this way in my article on the “Bittman burger”. Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta, as well, has touched on the advantages of being gentle when shaping burger patties. Also shown above are the mixed vegetable and grilled asparagus sides.

The service that characterized the restaurant hasn’t changed. It’s still exceptionally good. Staff tells me that part of the menu changes are to produce a more efficient restaurant. If you’ve ever seen any of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, particularly the episode on the Fish and Anchor (season 5, episode 6), you’ll know that it’s important just from a performance standpoint to have a thematically consistent kitchen. If you try to be too many things to too many people, you end up being half of what you could be with everything you do.

Gary’s Bistro
1250 Scenic Highway, Suite 1240
Lawrenceville, GA 30045
(770) 978-1800

Rich and diabetic friendly, this was a welcome addition to my day.

Cafe Sunflower
5975 Roswell Road
Atlanta, GA 30328
(404) 256-1675

B’s Bistro is on Sandy Springs Circle, in  a strip mall a little north of the intersection of the Circle and Hammond. To get there, turn west from Hammond and Roswell Road, pass the Baskin Robbins, head to the next major intersection. Head north, and B’s will be in the strip mall almost immediately on your left.

Inside, it’s good looking, with much of the seating wrapped around a very long bar. There are a few seats clustered together on  the far side, but for the most part, it’s a bar and accompanying seats. The layout reminds me of Three Blind Mice, though at this point B’s is new enough it’s still building clientele. The two flat screen televisions by the bar made sports watching easy. If they regularly show sports, then B’s Bistro would be a better sports bar  than many in the area.

Staff was good and efficient. The kitchen is still getting its act in gear. That was the major problem I faced there, finding an item I could order. I ordered mussels, and staff said the kitchen didn’t have any that day.  Order a sandwich, and my waitress apologized for the time it took. Since I brought a book and was reading, I wasn’t quite sure why the apology was needed.

At lunch, it’s far cheaper than the Urban Spoon price point. The most expensive item on the lunch menu ran around $12. The sandwich was good, though the choice of meats sort of molded into a thick chunk of meat. Maybe it’s asking much to get a little green leavened into the meat, but that’s a minor point at best. B’s Bistro offered a nice sandwich, nice bread, good presentation, very pleasant ambience. I’d recommend it for now, with the proviso that the kitchen continue to improve.

B’s Bistro on the Circle
6010 Sandy Springs Circle
Sandy Springs, GA 30328
(404) 389-9258

It’s a small taqueria not further than 5 minutes from my house, near the corner of Highpoint Road and 124. It’s clean, neat, and looked better than it did the first time I visited. The menu is all on a board in front of the window where you order. The prices have all been covered with yellow rectangles showing the new prices. Tacos currently are $1.50 each.

The tacos above are a lengua taco, a chicken taco, and a pastor taco. The pastor was by  far the best of the three.. The chicken was okay, and the lengua pretty good. The  tortilla was a thick bit of corn, and toppings were fine. You can get hot sauces here, quesadillas, drinks, tortas, etc.

Taqueria El May
2585-B Highpoint Road
Snellville, GA 30078
(678) 978-7702