Finding Meals and Deals in Atlanta

A couple of years ago, when a few of the “goodest” of the city’s good ol’ boys decided they wanted to host the 1996 Summer Olympics, little time was wasted calling meetings or holding hearings. That’s not the way things are done here.

Atlanta’s power folks greet each other over grits a couple of times a week at Paschal’s on the southside, and over baked apple pancakes at the Original Pancake House on the north. They shake hands during lunch at two steak houses, Chops and Bone’s in the Rodeo Drive-like Buckhead area, and again while they’re waiting (momentarily) for tables at supper time.

One political groupie calls it “greasing the friendships.” What he means is that folks talk, pass along ideas and eat. And at some point, things just get decided. Then everybody goes quietly to work.

Outsiders might question the notion that important city decisions can be made over a humble chicken-liver omelet, but those of us who live here know the system. Whether it’s to plan strategy for luring the 1988 Democratic Convention, building the Georgia Dome (where the 1994 Super Bowl will be held), the new High Museum or the from-scratch rapid-rail system called MARTA (Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority), the deals are shaped subtly with food as an accompaniment.

And the people doing the deals vary with the restaurant.

Breakfast in the coffee shop at Paschal’s Motor Hotel, for example, offers a glimpse into the city’s black power structure. A generation ago, Paschal’s became known as one of the principal places where civil rights movement strategy was planned by the late Martin Luther King Jr. Today, it’s a paltry morning when less than a dozen city council members, state legislators, politician preachers and influential government appointees don’t appear. They are joined by lobbyists, lawyers, go-betweens and supplicants of every sort.

They fuel up on 81-year-old paterfamilias Robert Paschal’s good soulful specialties: grilled pork chops, chicken-liver omelets, creamy grits and fried chicken (cooked exactly 17 minutes). When any group arrives or leaves, handshakes cross the room like a wave. The cost is $5 to $6 per person for breakfast.

Five mornings a week, the local Bonfire of the Vanities crowd meets to strategize and press palms at the Original Pancake House franchise north of town, opposite the Brookhaven MARTA station.

A baked apple pancake about the size of an Atlanta Braves catcher’s mitt is the traditional breakfast of choice. Also on the tables are thick-sliced bacon, sourdough French toast, banana pancakes and squeezed-to-order juices that prepare Dixie’s masters of the leveraged universe for a day of money hunting. On Sundays, everybody comes back, family and/or significant others in tow. Breakfasts run about $6 per person.

Lunches belong to the Buckhead area north of downtown, where Atlanta’s two main streets--Peachtree and Piedmont--intersect near upscale shopping at Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza. Buckhead is home to most of the city’s fashionable restaurants and priciest condos. It’s also home to two of the most cholesterol-loaded restaurants in Atlanta.

Chops, the city’s new temple to post-modern conspicuous consumption, attracts fashion-conscious but macho developers, talent agents, socialite-physicians and real estate brokers. The $2-million structure, by San Francisco restaurant designer Pat Kuleto, is loud, smoky and wildly popular. Excellent food and service make up for most of the discomfort. Prime, corn-fed ribeye steaks, grilled lamb chops, crab cakes, fried shrimp and vegetables are all excellent. Save room for lemon creme brulee tart and chocolate chip butterscotch pie. The tab is $25-$30 per appetite.

Like Chops, Bone’s is a cholesterol cathedral. The city’s undisputed lunch spot for ‘80s deals, Bones is a cross between an old New York chop house and a Deep South jock fraternity. Waiters wear the kind of cotton jacket once associated with Pullman dining cars. The walls display photos and freehand caricatures of locally prominent celebs such as Ted Turner, Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter, Hank Aaron and Fran Tarkenton. Professional sports figures, media personalities and bond brokers are the clientele.

They feed on thick, prime, precisely grilled beef. Accompaniments are delicious: mammoth baked potatoes rolled in kosher salt, and spinach sauteed in rivers of butter. Salads, such as the crab meat and avocado, are ample enough for a National Football League training table. Figure on spending $25-$30 a head for lunch.

To see where Atlanta’s neighborhood activist crowd gathers to plot tactics for stopping freeway construction, as well as to save money without sacrificing an ounce of saturated fat, check out my favorite down-home place on a weekday, when it’s busy.

Burton’s Grill, opposite the Inman Park rapid-transit station not far from downtown, attracts every stripe and color of activist, student and politician. It’s an informal screen-door cafe equipped with dinette tables, school lunch trays and (not surprisingly in Atlanta) a Coke machine. Unlike most such monuments to old-time cooking, the food is good. Fried chicken and hoecakes (cornmeal pancakes) are the best in Atlanta. Greens, black-eyed peas, iced tea and peach cobbler are standard accompaniments. Lunch runs about $4, including iced tea and cobbler.

You won’t spend much more at the soul food shrine of Harold’s Barbecue, near the federal penitentiary on the southside. The place is a dump, yet it attracts the argyle-sock, banker-and-bureaucrat set. In addition to bankers, elected officials and Capitol Hill bureaucrats favor the flavor. Sliced, slow-cooked pork on toasted white bread, with a side of Brunswick stew, is the deal makers’ lunch of choice. Stools at the counter (the better to watch the meat-slicing operation) are considered the best in the house.

As for supper, Atlanta is not a late-night dining town. Two-career couples often meet early on the way back to their digs in Dunwoody, Vinings or other fashionable northside suburbs.

Veni Vidi Vici, located in the neo-Gothic parking garage of midtown’s snazzy, 50-story IBM Tower, attracts the thirtysomething set in designer suits, black silk shirts buttoned up to the throat and $115 neckties. The Milanissimo decor is slick and hot, the concept national-chain prototype, the service cool to the point of near invisibility.

Recipes by famed Italian culinary authority Marcella Hazan include lemon fettuccine, fritto misto, grilled veal chops and lush desserts.

Media types, such as Atlanta Journal and Constitution staffers and their flashier journalistic kin from Atlanta magazine, political foot soldiers and late-afternoon joggers drink their appetizers at Manuel’s. It’s just down the street from the new Jimmy Carter Library, and equidistant from downtown and Emory University. Food is pretty much limited to chili dogs and blah burgers. Insider gossip and bonding are the real reasons people show up.

Moving north, the favored early-snack shacks of high-profile people are Buckhead Diner and Indigo Coastal Grill. Buckhead owner-chef Gerry Klaskala is well known for faux retro-American specialties such as softshell crab salad, veal meatloaf with mashed potatoes, salt-and-pepper squid and potato chips with melted Maytag blue cheese. The wait for a table can take longer than dinner. Still, the place is crammed with the likes of new Georgia Gov. Zell Miller, heavyweight boxing champion Evander Holyfield and city councilman Martin Luther King III, plus such out-of-town visitors as Mick Jagger.

They also are served who stand and wait at Indigo. Perky jukebox music, a beachside atmosphere and with-it food that recalls moonlit nights in Key West, Aruba, Savannah and Quintana Roo are the principal charms that lure celebrities such as author Pat Conroy (“Prince of Tides”). Chef Alix Kenagy’s chow includes conch fritters, seafood steamer baskets and such tropical desserts as Tia Maria flan and Key lime pie.

Old Atlanta deal makers--such as Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines execs, CNN types, top-rank politicians and madras-clad groupies--graze closer to their homes in Atlanta’s chateau country: Habersham, Tuxedo and West Paces Ferry roads.

For them the top stop is Pano’s & Paul’s, which keeps the silver-haired captains of industry and their first (and only) wives happy with slick service, Neapolitan gilded-age decor and perfectly safe, Americanized haute cuisine . Special orders--from whims to dietary restrictions--are merely the norm. If you’ve never had filet mignon tartare, fried lobster tail, carpetbag steak, tarte tatin or saltless soup, this is the spot to try one or all.

The Patio by the River serves the same folks, plus an assortment of lawyers and stockbrokers. It’s also one of the few places in town where women execs congregate. The menu is New Southern with French bistro overtones, the location a ferry landing where Sherman’s troops crossed the Chattahoochee River before torching Atlanta. Tables in the riverside herb garden are heaven on summer nights. There--in discreet, peaceful, buttoned-down splendor--friendship-greasing thrives.

And there, as in other Atlanta deal meccas, the cooking is as subtle as the negotiations. Donald Trump would certainly be out of place.

GUIDEBOOK

Dining in Atlanta

Bone’s, 3130 Piedmont Road, phone (404) 237-2663.

Buckhead Diner, 3073 Piedmont Road, (404) 262-3336.

Burton’s Grill, 1029 Edgewood Ave., (404) 525-3415.

Chops, Buckhead Plaza, 70 W. Paces Ferry Road, (404) 262-2675.

Harold’s Barbecue, 171 McDonough Blvd., (404) 627-9268.

Indigo Coastal Grill, 1397 N. Highland Ave., (404) 876-0676.

The Original Pancake House, 3940 Peachtree Road, (404) 237-4116.

Pano’s & Paul’s, 1232 W. Paces Ferry Road, (404) 261-3662.

Paschal’s Motor Hotel, 830 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, (404) 577-3150.

The Patio by the River, 4199 Paces Ferry Road, Vinings, (404) 432-2808.

Veni Vidi Vici, 41 14th St., near West Peachtree Street at One Atlantic Center’s IBM Tower, (404) 875-8424.

--E.M.