Hi, Octane at Emory
Method
I sure am glad Octane’s finally opened in Emory Village.
When Silvia goes to church on the Emory campus Sunday mornings, Peanut and I have had to hang out at the Village Starbucks — which is, you know, fine … but it’s Starbuck’s.
Octane opened last week in the space formerly occupied by Method (and before that an Inman Perk, and before that a Caribou).
I prophesy: Octane will survive where others have struggled. For one thing, as I understand it, it’s never been a lack of actual business that caused any of those three shops to close (each had its reason). For another, Tony Riffel and his crew at the original Octane on the west side always have struck me as smart, customer-oriented operators.
The joe at Emory Village is a bit on the expensive side — they use the Chemex brewing method — it’s a damn good cup of coffee. And the outside digs — under a wide awning, with nice un-tippy tables and plenty of electric outlets — are perfect for drinker, dog and computer.
Organics in Georgia is a gorging organism
Hey, this here’s a great story from Atlanta Magazine. So well written. So well researched. So insightful. Who wrote it? Oh, yeah: Me!
Dee Dee Digby worked more than a decade for produce suppliers at the State Farmers Market. Then she stumbled upon a way to upset the applecart.
The facility in Forest Park bills itself as one of the “world’s largest” farmers markets, but it doesn’t quite bring to mind fresh harvests and folksy growers. Instead, rows of jumbo stalls occupied by wholesale distributors line asphalt swaths wide enough to handle the loading and unloading of tractor-trailers. The place looks more industrial than pastoral, which is appropriate when you think about Georgia’s deeply entrenched agriculture-industrial complex.
Early this decade, Digby became manager of a new distributor at the market, Destiny Produce. Soon afterward, an idea ripened into an opportunity. “All we were doing was conventional produce,” says Digby, who became president of the company early this year. “But the need for organic became apparent.” Consumers had begun to clamor for more produce grown without the help of pesticides and other chemicals. Big supermarkets that were her customers began asking if she could help them fill the growing demand.
That was the beginning of a radical transformation. Digby and her employees had to retrain themselves for a very different supply chain, one that started with an understanding of the variety of foods demanded by a more sophisticated market and that hinged upon dozens of new relationships with small growers and boutique food processors. “It’s a lot more difficult, but it is profitable and it has set us apart,” Digby says. “We love where we are right now.” Earlier this year, Destiny Produce changed its name to Destiny Organics. It is currently Georgia’s only certified organic produce distributor.
But if Digby and her team jumped at the chance to learn about the emerging organic market, the state’s mainstream agriculture industry has proven a recalcitrant student. Despite its vast farm sector, the Peach State/Peanut State/Poultry State has lagged well behind the nation (and much of the South) when it’s come to producing food the old-fashioned, natural way. A U.S. Department of Agriculture 2007 inventory found that only 2,015 of Georgia’s 10.1 million farm acres were dedicated to certified organic farms. That’s barely one-fourth the organic acreage reported the same year in North Carolina, which has 16.5 percent less farmland overall.
What happens next in this scintillating story? Continue to read at Atlanta Magazine.
Cliff Bostock on Craftbar
The dean of Atlanta food writers isn’t so impressed by the informal downstairs dining room tied to Craft, Buckhead’s new upscale restuarant.
“We had a good lunch but I feel as mystified by the hoopla over this restaurant, part of celebrity chef Tom Collichio’s empire, as I am by the raves about the upstairs operation.”
Serenbe in the NY Times
Kevin Sack won Pulitzer Prizes at the New York Times (on race in America) and the LA Times (on a dubious military aircraft). His article in today’s NYT is a bit lighter: It’s a travel piece on Serenbe, the idyllic community that former restaurateur Steve Nygren founded in South Fulton.
In just a few years, this idyllic community — which aspires to be something of a Sonoma for the New South (though without the wine) — has become a destination for Atlantans in search of a day trip with the kids or a getaway without them. My wife, Dina, and I recently took the latter course, and quickly discovered a refuge that washed away the stresses of city living within minutes of arrival, after an hour’s drive through Atlanta’s ever-worsening traffic. Despite only word-of-mouth advertising, it is increasingly attracting visitors from afar, some on extended layovers at nearby Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Hong Kong Supermarket
The Beef Rendang and Nasi Padang at an Indonesian food stall called Waroeng Corner are highlights at the new Hong Kong Supermarket food court, Tom Maicon reports on Atlanta Cuisine.
Full disclosure: Silvia just translated Waroeng Corner’s menu and helped Chef Doni and his mother, Ayu, redo their marketing displays, so I was delighted to see them get this nice publicity.
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