No, there’s no Sichuan food at Sweet Auburn (that would be awesome though…), but I just want to mention that we have some really cool things going on over at Atlanta Culinary Tours.

Most importantly, a portion of the ticket price of all tickets sold will be donated to the Red Cross to help the recent victims of tornadoes that jacked up the South. Our tours are a lot of fun (and a  lot of food) and now you can feel even better about coming along, knowing that you’re also helping out those in need!

Sweet Auburn Curb Market

Our tour of Sweet Auburn Curb Market is coming up on Saturday 5/14. It starts right after the Urban Picnic, so you can check out the street vendors before taking our guided tour of the market.

We’ll tell you how the market came to be, introduce you some of the amazingly friendly vendors throughout the market, give you some behind the scenes info on Southern & soul food cooking, and we’ll feed you to no end (much like this sentence…). Seriously, you’ll beg us to stop feeding you. We’re relentless – we’ll even feed you dirt (seriously). And you’ll be so happy on this tour that you’ll eat that dirt – and you’ll enjoy it (YMMV).

Your can read more about our tour of Sweet Auburn Curb Market here and here. Tickets to Sweet Auburn Curb Market Tour are available here.

Sichuan: Beyond Málà

Speaking of relentless, check out Sichuan: Beyond Málà. Another brutal culinary tour-de-force where we pass 11 dishes that run the gamut of Sichuan cuisine – from cooling vegetarian dishes like xiao bai tsai w/xiangu (baby bok choy with fragrant mushrooms) to blazing chao shui yu (mouth-watering jumping fish). You’ll also get to hear me yammer incessantly about the ingredients, cooking techniques and history that go into this important (and delicious) cuisine. We wrap this dinner up with a tour of Chinatown, including the gift shop, Dinho Supermarket and dessert & tea at the World Journal Bookstore.

The World Journal had nice things to say about us here. Trust me. Tickets to Sichuan: Beyond Málà are available here.

Niu ruo mein – Ocean Garden, Chinatown Food Court

Sliced fish in chili oil – Delicious Kabob

Torta al Pastor – El Pastor

Deli Manjoo – Buford Highway Farmers Market

Galbi & Mandoo – Cho Sun Ok

Pollo a la brasa – Pollo el Rey

Cha chiang mien – Manchunhong

Let me start off by saying that I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression (and I’m not going to win any friends by speaking the truth) so I’ll just come out with it – DON’T GO HERE. The pictures in this post and the one or two that may follow probably paint a wonderful image of a bustling and quaint outdoor market that you would be remiss in failing to explore. WRONG. I grew up in upstate South Carolina and over the years have watched the Jockey Lot grow into a monstrous, permanent, 65 acre yard sale. It may be interesting to explore once (if you’re in the area),  but a majority of what you will find for sale is trash, detritus and  just plain crap of dubious origin (wow – that sounds harsh, but it’s pretty accurate – how many broken ax handles and rusted hammers do you need?). This is not the pseudo-gracious Old South of Paula Deen. This is William Faulkner leapfrogged 100 years into the future by William Gibson, a kind of redneck Chiba, filled with  cutout CD’s, cheap knock-off shoes, plastic picture frames holding fiber-optic flowers. The sound of pachinko parlours replaced with a distorted agglomeration of Billy Ray Cyrus and tejano blasted from $50 subwoofers in the back of an ’84 Mustang. The pervasive funk of slimy boiled peanut shells scattered under the shed roof… (sorry Mr. Gibson, Skoal will never be administered in a digital patch – it will always be something lovingly spit into a styrofoam cup). Of course, I’m just expressing my personal opinion (don’t sue me). You’ve been warned.

Fresh produce makes up only a fraction of what you’ll find at the Jockey Lot. It usually seems pretty hit or miss, but on this particular day there was some nice produce available…

All pics by HX

Anderson Jockey Lot
4530 Highway 29 North
Belton, SC 29627

All photos by HX

And so our exploration continued, with HX and I ending up at the Buford Highway Farmers Market. One of the highlights of a trip to BHFM with HX is the stop at the food counter on the way out and picking up a dozen Deli Manjoo.

Deli Manjoo are small, creamy crack pockets and the only raison d’être I can determine is solely to help a Korean company sell a complex piece of machinery (which appears to only have 3 critical parts).

Image property of Delice Co., Ltd

Deli Manjoo are baked with the imprint of a corn cob (that makes sense) and filled with some form of cream (a bit like creme anglaise – though with the corn styling you may expect creamed corn). “Deli” is short for “delicious” (get it?). And “manjoo” is the Korean word for “dim sum” (get it – they’re small…). All that aside – I dig these things and want one of the machines (keep in mind that wanting and having the actual motivation to act on that want are two entirely different things).

So get ye to BHFM and try some Deli Manjoo.

Deli Manjoo
(near the exit)
Buford Highway Farmers Market
5600 Buford Hwy NE
Doraville, GA 30340

All pics by HX – he’s 7.

Karpatskaya, Pastrami Budapesht, Estonskaya

As I write this, my keyboard is taking on a sheen and smokey aroma from the pork fat on my fingers. I’m working diligently to ensure my afternoon’s haul from the Buford Highway Farmer’s Market doesn’t survive into the evening. BFM is going through some pretty serious renovations (perhaps feeling threatened by the arrival of Super H in Atlanta). As such, I’ve been having a hard time finding things. But today, this all worked out for the best as I stumbled upon a new (at least to me) Eastern European deli counter in the middle of the store.

My Ukrainian heritage has always been a bit of a mystery to me – my grandmother refused to speak of it, angry and traumatized by her escape during the revolution, and the Soviets did a less than stellar job of record keeping on those killed, imprisoned, or who knows. And so it is that whenever I stumble upon authentic items from Eastern Europe, I am drawn to them with a mixture of curiosity, fear and apprehension. I am an outsider – I don’t know how to act or even what to ask – perhaps it’s because I feel I should know and the fact that I don’t haunts me.

So I rely on my rudimentary ability to read Cyrillic and struggle to find cognates in English, French and Latin. I point and mumble my requests, praying my pronunciation isn’t too far off and hoping that I can hide what I was told was a slight Siberian accent (Mrs. Savitskaya, my Russian teacher in junior high school was a patient Mongolian woman from the border with Siberia – my grandmother refused to speak Russian with me after hearing my accent).

So, now that we’ve established that I have issues, what’s the point? Salumi. Two cases full. From the salami and pastrami pictured at the top to smoked pork belly, head cheese pork rolls, kielbasa, on and on. And then there are cheeses, pastries and cakes. If you love charcuterie and haven’t experienced what the Eastern Europeans have to offer, just go, point and mumble. Grab a jar of pickled mushrooms and some blazing hot Russian mustard and I promise a rich, fatty, delicious and obviously cathartic experience.

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