Decatur: Napoleon's Grill

Napoleon's is in the Oak Grove neighborhood of northernmost Decatur. The restaurant opened last year as part of a long-overdue revival of the long-neglected strip mall that formerly held Quinnie's BBQ. Napoleon's is a casual bar with a lot of indoor and outdoor seating.

The menu has a broad range of items: tacos, rice bowls, burgers, and dinners. If I may be a food snob for a minute, some of the items on the menu seem to suffer from the faux-fusion technique of randomly combining ingredients from different types of cuisines. I am all for new flavors, but I would like to think that an unusual combination is motivated by the natural compatibility of the ingredients, not by a radio button menu of combinations.

That being said, I enjoyed my tacos. They both had cabbage, which I consider an echo of the radio button approach, but both were quite good. One was a Korean BBQ short rib done up with a nice sauce, cabbage, etc. The other was fried tofu cubes with peanut sauce, cabbage, etc. Both were tasty and gave me just enough to enjoy the flavor of each without being overly filling. Tacos are a great neo-tapas kind of dish that lends itself very well to sampling.

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Eating Around Georgia Tech: Ecco

Our Texas Instruments colleague Cathy Wicks was gracious enough to host several of us at Ecco tonight. This is one of those restaurants that has been on my list for a long time. Even though it is within easy walking distance of Georgia Tech, I hadn't made it there until tonight. The menu is a combination of Italian, Spanish, and French that make use of some local Georgia ingredients. The combination of those three countries is sometimes a little forced, although the georgia ingredients (fruit, cheese) were all great and perfectly appropriate. We started out with a meat and cheese board. This actually reverses the French tradition, where cheese usually follows the main course. Everything was excellent. The Georgia cheese was a big hit, as was the French cow/goat cheese. I thought the sauscisson was very subtle and very good. The waitress said that the roast pork pasta was their signature dish, so I had to try it. It had traditional broad pasta (fresh, of course)

DCA: Cava Mezze Grill

Cava is a DC area chain with light Mediterranean food. Saibal encouraged me to try lunch at their airport location and I was very happy with the experience. I ordered falafel on SuperSalad with assorted other toppings. The falafel was tasty. The SuperSalad was light, flavorful, and very easy to eat. Overall, a healthy and enjoyable lunch, something you can't always say about airport eating.

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b

Atlanta etc.: Marilyn Wolf's Food Blog and Restaurant Blog

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