 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
 |
|||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Agnes & Muriel’s; Comfort Food With A Twist by Mindy Thomas Imagine sitting at June Cleaver’s dining room table eating homemade fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Add color, some funky music and your favorite comfort foods, and you’ll get exactly what Agnes & Muriel’s restaurant prides itself on: a completely nostalgic experience. Serving Atlanta since 1995, Agnes & Muriel’s has a concept as sweet as their peach-raspberry cobbler. On the corner of Piedmont Avenue and Monroe Drive, the restaurant offers down-home food in an atmosphere that resembles a kitschy, 50s-style house. The menu features home-cooked dishes with a heavy Southern influence. “Mom food” they call it. The Coca-Cola BBQ baby back ribs, their signature fried chicken and the fried green tomato burger are a few of the crowd pleasers here. The menu offers a little of everything from chicken, pork and seafood entrees to numerous appetizers, salads, sandwiches, veggie sides and their “Man-size” homemade desserts. I had a tough time choosing a cocktail to set the mood for my much-anticipated menu sampling. While the cactus margarita and the spicy sake bloody Mary were tempting, I opted for the peach sangria, which proved a perfect blend of peach nectar, fresh fruit and white wine. I also found myself scouring the drink menu for sweet tea, and there it was: my true indicator of an authentic down-home establishment. For starters, the lightly breaded fried green tomatoes are not to be missed. Served in a cast-iron skillet, they are dripping with a spicy red pepper sauce and topped with goat cheese. They promise a perfect blend of salty and sweet, and are not so heavily fried that you find yourself searching for the actual tomato under a thick, deep-fried jacket. Bursting with flavor, the Dijon-soy marinated Portobello mushroom appetizer spills over the sides of its retro china saucer and is served with tomato-basil relish. The lump crab cakes are another worthy choice. Filled with fresh crab meat, they melt in your mouth. For the more waistline-conscious eaters, the Carmen Miranda chicken salad is excellent. A grilled chicken breast is tossed with greens, mango, pineapple, cashews and banana chips in a sweet, tangy lime vinaigrette. Though this dish feels like it should be served on a beach instead of a down-home restaurant, it’s a great alternative for those who seek a different kind of nostalgia. The fried chicken signature entrée deserves its own praise. While you may need to add a little salt and adjust the buttons on your pants to fully enjoy this dish, you will be most grateful that you ordered it. The generous portion of chicken is pre-soaked in saltwater and buttermilk, and comes out so crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, you will feel the urge to call Jason Alexander and tell him he’s promoting the wrong chicken. The mouth-watering list of vegetable sides is endless and includes highlights such as green bean casserole, lemon-sesame collards, griddled sour cream cornbread, mashed potatoes and watermelon Vidalia salad. No matter how stuffed you get here, ordering one of their homemade desserts is essential. My favorite is the warm, peach-raspberry cobbler with brown sugar vanilla ice cream. Both sweet and tart, it is dished out in gigantic portions and worth every bite. So what is the key to Agnes & Muriel’s success? According to co-owner Glenn Powell, it’s the unpretentious atmosphere and food selection that reminds us of home-cooked Sunday dinners. Powell and original partner Beth Baskin named the restaurant after their moms -- two cooks you wouldn’t necessarily want preparing your Sunday feast. “We serve the type of food we wish our moms cooked,” says Powell. “We wanted real food.” Both Powell and Baskin worked for the Peasant Restaurant Group in the ‘70s, where Powell started as a baker and progressed to become their corporate menu director while Baskin began as a trainee and moved up to a kitchen managerial position in some of Atlanta’s hottest restaurants at the time. Both saw the restaurant group start to regress and decided they needed a fresh idea of their own – only they weren’t quite sure what it would be. They started The Festive Feast small catering company while toying with possible business ideas. It was a simple yet catchy advertisement that awakened their senses and helped plant the seeds for future prosperity. “I saw an ad for pancakes. It was exactly what you think of when you think pancakes: a huge stack with butter everywhere and syrup dripping down the sides. I tore it out, showed it to Beth and said ‘This is what I want: real food.’” Opening the restaurant in a bungalow-style home was the obvious choice. “It needs to be in a home. It needs to feel like a home. I was determined to keep the integrity of the house, but I wanted to go over the top,” says Powell. From the mock ‘50s television set turned hostess stand to the Barbie dolls, nick-nacks, old records, plastic tablecloths and mustard and ketchup squeezables, Agnes & Muriel’s’s screams retro, hip and cozy. Baskin sold her ownership to David Sneed in 1999, who was then the general manager, and the restaurant’s quality and charm has remained strong ever since. Powell’s goal is simple: “I just want to give people a truly honest experience.” Agnes & Muriel’s is located at 1514 Monroe Drive and can be reached at (404) 885-1000. Visit them online at www.agnesandmuriels.com. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| from top: Fried green tomatoes; signature salad, the Carmen Miranda; owner David Sneed; brown sugar pound cake. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.jpg)
