This brought to mind the similarities between gregarious Southern service and the more taciturn NYC variety, both of them highly entertaining if you can get on the right wavelength, both committed to a repartee with the customer that goes beyond servile blandishments. Here though, hasty food was not on the menu. There was a 20 minute wait on the unseasoned Country Wings, which had to be fried to order, and considering time was of the essence we opted for the naked ones, pre-cooked and ready to be dressed with one of 15 available sauces. Here was a chance to do some investigation. Having already familiarized ourselves with Atlanta’s lemon pepper wings in researching for the next leg of the trip, we decided to do some preliminary testing of how Brother Z’s version related to their more Southern counterparts.
This is not a blog about perfect food experiences, however, so it's necessary to get a little deeper. What I’m curious about in this scenario is whether lemon pepper is actually a native Atlanta thing, or just an African-American thing that found it’s truest expression in one of America’s Black cultural capitals. I’m not sure there’s an answer to this question - there’s no defined origin for such a basic combination of citrus and spice - although the fact that lemon-pepper seasoning almost assuredly predates the idea of adding such flavors to wings makes me suppose the latter. Maybe this is my Italian-American side showing, but I assume it came about as a result of the ‘80s-era craze for Chicken Piccata, which contains similar elements, not to mention chicken. These are also apparently a thing in The Philippines, although I think it’s a stretch to imagine the flavor originated there.
I also think it’s just nice to imagine a pro diligently manning the fryer at a strip club, doing a perfect job in the process. Even the crinkle fries are great. Everything is overseasoned, but not in an assaultive way, and the textures are perfect. We also paid a visit to J.R. Crickets, a long-time source for this wing variant, and also the primary one for the newest mutation, Lemon Pepper Wet. Crickets’ did not invent this dish; it was likely first hatched at American Deli, then inserted into the show Atlanta, largely as a joke, representing a sort of wing Holy Grail of two popular flavors. Crickets’ has capitalized on this association, although according to employees the item was already on the menu, just under a different name. Bearing this in mind, I think it’s significant that American Deli’s website mentions their wet wings do not include Buffalo sauce, because as served at their competitor the combo doesn’t really work. Accompanied by a plain waffle, however, the inclusion of dribbled lemon pepper sauce on top makes me wonder if the spice blend could be incorporated into the waffle batter itself. A future concept to experiment with, if some enterprising Atlanta wing-monger hasn’t already beaten me to it.
The baklava, on the other hand, was unremarkable, a tad soggy and probably sitting behind the glass for a while. Signs touting local honey were prominently displayed at the counter, hinting at an old-world Kurdish focus on such, but none of this honey was currently available for sale, and so I was unable to determine either its taste or if it was produced by Kurdish apiarists.
Despite these missteps, the most famous item here remains a weird curiosity that I’m not sure exists anywhere else: a "Three-Way" combo of spaghetti submerged in chili, with a tamal floating somewhere in the muck. Tamales with chili are definitely a widespread Southern thing, and chili-topped spaghetti exists throughout Ohio, but the fusion of all three is, as far as I know, exclusive to Varallo’s. The tamal itself was a bit weird, packed with a thin, sedimentary layer of gritty meat, but well-spiced. The chili was admittedly great, and it’s basic taste and texture have led to my pet theory that this dish was derived, at some point, from pasta fagioli, morphing its soupy mass of beans into a more recognizable “chili” concoction, and therefore adopting the general spicing thereof in the process. There’s no excusing that spaghetti though, which reminded me of Campbell’s noodles, the lack of attention toward this crucial element demonstrating how deeply Italian cuisine has coalesced into the white-bread mainstream of Southern culture as a whole.
Laotian is one of New York’s major cuisine gaps, and prior to this my only experience had been at Thip Kao in Washington D.C. Expecting an ordinary supermarket with a food court as an afterthought, we were surprised to discover a full-on crowded restaurant instead, which drastically increased the takeout wait time but also allowed for further combination with the pre-packed meals and snacks stationed near the counter. Bolstered by the crowd, I decided to overorder, which was a wise choice, since the spontaneously chosen Fish Yum salad was actually the standout, with a perfect, ephemeral mix of flavors that had already lost its magic a few hours later when I attempted to revivify it for dinner. The Tofu Larb held up better, while registering as less of an epiphany, maybe only because the flavors were less zingy than that of its counterpart. The profusion of fresh herbs in both were a curative. Strangely, the menu’s summer roll was labeled as a spring roll (and vice versa, I think) and also had rose-tinged slices of pork inside, which I’m not sure I’ve encountered before. The plantain chips sold fresh at the supermarket were oddly sweet but still toothsome, and the Pork (presumably) Puff had a nice spice profile, warm with cinnamon and cumin, and also some unexpected peas inside. There is also Laotian food in Atlanta, apparently, further marking it as one of those cuisines that seems far better represented in the southeast than the north.
Korean - Atlanta is not known as a major food city, although to it’s credit there was a lot here that we didn’t get a chance to experience in the course of two days. Beyond the aforementioned wings, the biggest impression was made by Heirloom Market up on the Chattahoochee River in Cumberland. Here, Korean BBQ has a different meaning than most places, assimilated further onto the American side of the equation, with a panoply of standard Southern cuts daubed with a healthy mop of Korean sauces. The restaurant had a weird ordering system, with the staff cloistered inside, accepting requests via online order only, but I won’t question anyone’s pandemic methods, and honestly the food was good enough to justify it. Of these, the Brunswick Stew was actually the highlight, which I appreciated, the most characteristically Georgian item benefitting the most from a little infusion of Asian flavor.
Misses: As always, I was left wishing I had an extra week or so to clear up all the loose ends. These included other variants of Kurdish (Turkish/Irani), as well as the possibility of enjoying an actual full Kurdish meal. The pandemic has taken a lot of the fun out of spontaneous sit-down lunches, and made traveling around to graze harder as well. It was for this reason that we failed to hit a single meat-and-three in Nashville, an egregious oversight, but one necessitated by the fact that the combination of overflowing downtown bars and zero mask compliance basically everywhere made the city seem like an extended super-spreader event in itself. I would have also liked to try fruit tea, as well as the pimento and chow-chow dogs at I Dream of Weenie.
Atlanta also had its share of missed opportunities, mostly by way of foreign cuisines we don’t see a lot of in New York. These included pockets of Bahamian and Sinaloan restaurants (both clustered around Doraville to the city’s northeast), and Laotian (located on the opposite end, due south below the airport). The spread-out nature of the city also made it difficult to seek out regional specifics like country ham with red-eye gravy, Streak-o-Lean, and Georgia soul food in general. Some bad timing caused us to get closed out of a dog and frozen orange combo at Varsity, which left the trip’s hot dog count sadly stuck at zero. All I can say is that I will try to do better next time.