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for breakfast and lunch every day until 4 p.m.,
encourages 8Y0B from Five Points Bottle and
takes credit cards.
B8Q Beat: After my experience at the first
Dickey's Barbecue Pit in the area, which
opened in WatkinsviUe three-plus years ago, I
was loath to revisit the place when a second
The Russians Are Here: Ever since The
European Deli dosed a while back, Athens
has been sorely lacking in Russian food, apart
from cabbage rolls vended at the occasional
holiday market. Thankfully, Irina Cochran,
who owns The Local Tam (1650 S. Lumpkin
St.), has a mother who is here to help. The
normally breakfast-focused eatery has been
expanding its offerings of late, branching out
into dinner (although not this summer—it will
return in the fall) and now, on Wednesdays, a
special Russian menu.
If you fead Julia Ioffe's tong article in The
New Yorker on the rediscovery of traditional
Russian cooking and are salivating, scale your
expectations back a bit This is Russian food
tha way we actually think of Russian food:
cabbage, meat, borscht And also, yum. The
menu changes up weekly, depending on what
the lady in the kitchen feels like serving up,
but here are some of the stomach-warming
things it might include: Russian potato salad,
in which potatoes compose no more than 50
percent of the ingredients, studded with peas,
carrots and quite a tot of ham; rice goulash
cooked with hunks of pork (thick, comforting,
ideal food for the middle of winter); borscht,
served warm not cold, made with loads of
beets, cabbage and beef stock, but a broth- .
based rather than cream-centered version,
thoroughly tasty but less meaty than the rest
of the offerings; cabbage rolls, in which leaves
of the green stuff are wrapped firmly around
meaty rice, then steamed into marvel
ous pabtum; cheese blintzes (thin,
well-executed pancakes enfolding
sweet cheese, topped with jam); and
the cutest deviled egg, done up to
look like a red-capped mushroom.
Anything involving cabbage—and
most of it does—is delicious. The
brassica family has much to offer,
and the restaurant makes the most of
it Even the side of cabbage, which
could easily have been neglected,
is prepared with care and, par for
the course, infused with a lovely .
porkiness. Russian food is not very
interested in accommodating vegetar
ians, although you can get the rice
goulash sans pork. One of the best
dishes is a sort of mushroom casse
role, topped with cheese and bacon,
and served like a personal pot pie, in
your own recyclable aluminum pan.
Soft, warm, salty, flavorful, it reaches
for the gut of what makes satisfying
food. In many ways, the timing isn't
good. When it's 90 degrees outside,
who wants to eat hot starch and fat? The
Welt the A/C is cranked up in the
restaurant to a degree that makes it eminently
possible to consume such, and it is well worth
braving the annoying parking situation in Five
Points to support this valuable addition to the
dining scene. The restaurant is currently open
one opened in what was AUen's on Hawthorne,
at the intersection with T3llassee/0glethorpe.
It seemed like a more aggravating version
of Sonny's, chain BBQ with little heart and
no flavor. But I got a tip that this location
was better, and I do trust my readers (well,
some of them). I was right to do so this
time. Dickey's is stiU corporate through and
through, with chirpy waitstaff and signage
trumpeting specials everywhere you look, but
there's not much BBQ inside the loop, and its
offerings are worth a trip.
The pulled pork is adequate if not excit
ing, but the restaurant comes out of Texas and
prides itself on its beef, so that's really what
you should pick, not the sliced beef, but the
brisket chopped to order, which it is, right in
front of you. It's not pulverized but chopped
into chunks, and it doesn't end up over-wet or
turned into soup with sauce. Be warned about
the condiments. For some reason, Dickey's
keeps its sauce in a warmer, with a ladle you
have to maneuver, and that thing is hot. The
sides are fine: green beans reminiscent of Mrs.
Winner's, unexciting baked beans, a baked
potato casserole full of cheese and minced
green onions.
The space isn't all that different from what
it was previously, a big room with a bunch
of stuff on the walls and, when it's empty, a
not particularly welcoming atmosphere. Free
kosher pickles (in a giant jar) and soft-serve
ice cream make it a great place to take either
your kids or your stereotypical pregnant lady.
Dickey's is open for lunch and dinner every
day, takes credit cards and does take-out and
catering. It also, pleasantly, serves beer, with
happy-hour specials.
What Up?: Maba Grill downtown has dosed
but should be replaced soon by Yummy Pho,
also serving Vietnamese food and, in fact,
froni some of the same folks, with a larger
menu. Chipotle on Alps may be open by the
time this runs, and Kabana has closed.
Hillary 8rown
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