Transcript: HER With Amena Brown Episode 89

Amena Brown:

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to a new episode of HER with Amena Brown, and I want to talk about food today. Y'all know that I love talking about favorite things, and so this episode is going to be about my favorite ATL eats, so for people who are planning a trip to Atlanta, these are the things I would tell you. I cannot tell y'all how many people I meet, and they don't know me. We just meet each other.

Sometimes it's from work or whatever, and they're always like, "Oh, yeah. I'm getting ready to go to Atlanta," or, "I'd love to come to Atlanta," and I always tell them, "If you need food recommendations, I got you." I might not be able to tell you all of the other tourist things to do in our city, but if you have need of eating recommendations, I got you, so that's what this episode is for, so that way, if you have some friends that are like, "Oh my gosh, I'm coming to Atlanta," you can be like, "Don't forget to go listen to this episode." Mm-hmm. I have lived in Atlanta since 1998, so what is that, 24 years this year? Wow, and we're actually exactly at 24 years because I am pretty sure I was moving into the dorm at Spelman College around this time of year in 1998, so I have lived here all of my adult life without moving, and that's always kind of interesting for a person that moved a lot growing up, you know?

It is so wild to me that I actually have lived someplace for 24 years, when I think the longest I'd lived anywhere growing up was maybe six years, I think San Antonio, Texas, which is why I claim that as my hometown just because I lived there the longest of all my years growing up, but now, Atlanta's home. I'm not a Georgia peach. I think Georgia peaches are those who were born and raised in Georgia, so I'm trying to campaign for being able to call myself a Georgia nectarine, or maybe a Georgia plum, because I'm not sure if nectarines are even a fruit that grows here in Georgia. Let's talk about some favorite eats. Number one, favorite soul food restaurant for me hands down is the Busy Bee Cafe.

Let me tell you what is kind of sad about this. I did not discover Busy Bee's until after I graduated from college, even though Busy Bee's was right there, almost sitting on the campus of Clark Atlanta. If you're not familiar with this part of Atlanta, there is the Atlanta University Center, which includes Clark Atlanta, Spelman College, Morehouse College, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse School of Medicine, and now, again includes Morris Brown College. Morris Brown was kind of out of commission, dealing with some financial issues and accreditation issues, but as of this recording, Morris Brown is back up and running, so now the Atlanta University Center or the AUC, as we called it, is pretty much back to what it was like when I moved here in '98. You could really be walking on Clark Atlanta's campus and you could probably throw a rock and hit Busy Bee's.

Like Busy Bee's is almost on Clark Atlanta's campus, and I never went there my whole time of college. Wow. Wow. Currently, due to the pandemic, you cannot actually go and sit down in Busy Bee's. All of the orders are to-go, which if you're in town, it is still worth ordering this for delivery.

It is still worth going there to pick it up. However, there was something really special about being inside of Busy Bee's. Busy Bee's is, as I heard all of the Southern women I grew up around, would say Busy Bee's is this big. Did y'all grow up around Black women like that, that that's how they would describe the size of something, by the snap of a finger? Love to see it.

Busy Bee's is a small, little place. It only has several tables in it, maybe. It is not one of the larger sort Southern or soul food restaurants that we have in Atlanta, but for me, it is still the best and most consistent, the macaroni and cheese, the fried chicken. I pretty much stay in that zone. I'm macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, collard greens, yeast roll, the peach cobbler. That's pretty much the zone I stay in. If I step out of that, maybe I'm blackberry cobbler.

Maybe I'm turnip greens, but nine times out of 10, I am still fried chicken. Every now and then, I will get the fried catfish, but I typically am only getting that if we also did an order of the fried chicken. What I loved about going to Busy Bee's in person was when you would get there, it would have like a hostess sign, but the hostess was also behind the bar, multitasking, so the hostess would be behind the bar, taking orders and also greeting people and pulling together to-go orders. It was such a wonderful place to go and be in person because after I started going there after college, I think honestly, what made me start going there is that fried chicken is like my husband's love language, so I want to say he had a birthday or something early on in our marriage, and I was like, "I need to find out who makes the best fried chicken." I can't remember if I took him there or if I went there and got food.

I honestly can't remember, y'all, and I was like, when I actually drove up to the place and realized where I was and thought to myself, "Oh my gosh. Why have I waited so late to discover this?," so I remember walking in to the restaurant. The hostess who is doing three or four other things, she's like, "Hey, baby. How you doing? You looking for a seat?"

"You looking to have a seat, honey?," and I told her yes, and however many people were with me, and she was like, "Okay, baby. Go ahead and have a seat. We're going to get your seat in just a little while, okay?" Then, I remember two gentlemen walked in after me who looked like they were probably around college age. They smell of weed, and I think they're regulars, so she looks at them and she says, "Oh, baby, y'all want a to-go order, huh?," and they were like, "Yes, that's what we want."

She was like, "Okay, baby. Go ahead and let me know what you want to order. Go ahead and let me know." It was just such a wonderful way that she is just gathering everyone together so quickly. Oh, yes. Then, as many of you know, I had a long period of time in my career that I worked in white evangelical sort of Christian market, in a sense, the organizations and businesses that were doing events, that were doing video work.

I did a lot of that work for a long time, and I realized after a while, sometimes people would come into the city because we were doing video shoots or sometimes they would come into the city and they'd want to have a meeting or meet up with me for a meal, and Busy Bee's would always be my go-to, because if you can't handle being inside Busy Bee's in the West end, being in this beautifully all-Black environment, then you don't need to work with me, so there were countless times that I would invite all sorts of people from ... Those of you that are familiar with Christian organizations, if I said some of those names, you'd be like, "You invited them to Busy Bee's?," and yes I did. There were a couple of times that I was unintentionally late. I didn't mean to be late, but I was, and so here, I had left these white folks, sitting in Busy Bee's, and depending on how comfortable or uncomfortable they looked when I got there showed me like, "What are the vibes about to be if we are going to be working together on something?," so I do miss Busy Bee's being open and being able to be someplace you can go and eat in person, and I hope that we eventually are able to get back to that, but for now, if you're in town, is that fried chicken worth you getting a delivery? Absolutely, yes.

It is worth that. What would be my plan B if I could not go to Busy Bee's? I feel like my plan B is Kevin Gillespie's restaurant Revival, which only is open ... I think it's only open either Thursday through Saturday or Thursday through Sunday, but that restaurant is in Decatur, and that's a pretty solid fried chicken order. It is not soul food, but it's pretty solid Southern food.

That would probably be my other replacement. My other one that was really my top replacement was Ford Fry's restaurant and JCT Kitchen, but RIP because that restaurant is closed down now, so it's really Busy Bee's for me, and if you can't get Busy Bee's, you can give Revival a try. All right. Favorite donuts, y'all. It's a lot of good donuts to be had in Atlanta, but my favorite, when I was growing up, if you had a church that you grew up in, or your church that you went to was considered to be your home church, so then, if you moved, you could decide, were you feeling like you were going to be at home enough in your new city or whatever that you were going to get a new home church, or were you like, "I don't really rock with my new city like that. I'm going to remain a member of my home church"?

You're going to send your offerings or whatever back there. Once streaming and different things came into play, you're going to listen to the sermons and stuff like that, and so I'm bringing this principle of home church over into home donut place, and Revolution Doughnuts is my home donut place. I don't care where I travel, I don't care what other donuts they make out there, and there's a lot of wonderful donuts to be had. Shout out to my sister-in-law and our popup podcast here for the donuts. We haven't recorded in a while, but if you never heard me say that we had that podcast, the episodes are out there for you to listen to our shenanigans, and so we've had a lot of time to travel even and go to different donut spots, and I still, just Revolution Doughnuts is still my home donut place.

I'm going to tell y'all how I discovered Revolution Doughnuts. I went through a period of time where I was having a lot of health issues, and particularly very hormonal issues, and so typically, many of you that may have had issues with your hormones as well or having hormonal imbalance and things like that, typically, somebody's going to start talking to you about your diet because we do eat foods that also may cause reaction in our hormones, and so one of the recommendations I was given during that time was to go dairy-free, which just felt like, "What is life if I'm going to go dairy-free?" Yikes, but I was like, "I got to do this. I got to try and feel better," so I went a year cold turkey, no dairy, but I craved donuts so bad. The only donuts I really knew was Krispy Kreme and Dunkin Donuts.

That was it, so I was just like, "How am I going to solve this?," and I had learned to cook a lot of things myself because there were quite a few things that I had to stop eating at that time, so there were some things that I just had to learn how to make myself because I was never going to find a restaurant that was going to know how to make a version of whatever that was without all of the things that I couldn't eat because of my dietary restrictions, so I just decided on a whim to Google vegan donuts, and I figured either a place is going to come up or a recipe, and Revolution Doughnuts came up, because I think at that time, they had just opened probably within the last year or so from when I had had to change my diet, and so I went over there and just really got my life together. I remember one of the first donuts I had there that really amazed me, they made a vegan creme brulee donut. It was a yeast donut, fried, as yeast donuts are, but filled with vegan like creme brulee custard, and then it had like the candied part of the creme brulee over the top of the donut. I mean, it was amazing. It was amazing.

That's still my home donut place. I have some meetings that if I'm the one that needs to bring food or snacks or whatever, it is going to be donuts for me, and it is specifically going to be Revolution Doughnuts, so if you are a dairy-free person, if you're vegan, I really recommend Revolution Doughnuts. They don't just have vegan donuts, but I would say a large portion of the menu is vegan or dairy-free. For my folks who are gluten-free or have gluten sensitivity, they do have a couple of donuts that they typically ... I think they're not typically gluten-free, but they make some that are low-gluten, if you are able to tolerate that type of thing. Then, they have some donuts that have all the cheese or all the dairy, all the meat.

One of my favorite donuts they have is called the Crunchy Mister, which I think is based on a French sandwich. I'm sure I'm going to mispronounce it, so I'm not going to say it, but I think there's a French sandwich that it's based on. I think the French sandwich is sort of this classed up version of a ham and cheese, and so it's a savory donut that has ham and bechamel. Ugh, it is ... If you have dietary restrictions and you're able to have times where you don't have to always be on your restrictions, that one is one that I will take for the team because it is that delicious, so I recommend Revolution Doughnuts.

They have two locations, one in Decatur and one in, I think what would be considered like Edgewood or Inman Park area. Love it. It's delicious, and the coffee's great, for those of you who are coffee folks too. You hate when you go to a pastry place and you're suffering through kind of bad coffee. The coffee's great, the donuts are great, I recommend.

If you are in town in Atlanta over a weekend, I do recommend BeetleCat restaurant's Donut Brunch. Their donuts, quiet as it's kept, are very high on my ... Probably Revolution's and BeetleCat's Donut Brunch donuts are in my top two donut places to try in Atlanta, but you can only get Donut Brunch on the weekends, Saturday morning and that kind of brunch into early afternoon time, and Sunday at the same time, right? What I love about both donut places though, is that they tend to have some of their donuts that they just have all year, and then they have certain donuts that come in and out of the menu based on what's seasonal, which I really love that type of stuff, so big shout out to BeetleCat's Donut Brunch. Very delicious, and also, BeetleCat has a signature Donut Brunch sandwich that's basically like in the South. There is a high-value, placed upon a fried chicken breakfast sandwich.

If you live in the South, you will see many iterations of this. You visit the South, visit different places in the South, you'll see many different iterations of this. Sometimes it's a biscuit with the fried chicken in between the biscuit. Sometimes it has an egg on it. Sometimes it has gravy.

I mean, there's all sorts of things that are based upon this idea that this is the best thing you could have for breakfast, which is either a fried chicken breast or a fried chicken thigh in between two pieces of some kind of bread. Now, here's where they do this at Donut Brunch. Instead of having biscuits or toast or whatever, there are two vanilla glazed donuts in place of where the biscuit would be. There's the fried chicken, and I think ... It depends on when you go.

Sometimes the version has been different. The last version that I had also had an egg on top, that you could order the egg where the egg was going to be kind of runny down the side, and then they also have a hot sauce that you can pour on top of it. It's enough food that probably two or three people could share it, honestly, but it's one of their signature dishes that I highly recommend. Favorite donuts, Revolution and BeetleCat's Donut Brunch. Let's talk about sandwiches.

I really and truly could probably have an entire separate episode regarding sandwiches because I'm a person who really loves sandwiches. I just think sandwiches are the best thing. My best combination is to have a sandwich with chips and a Coke, just mmm. It really ... These days, sometimes I'm not Coke.

I'm doing sparkling water and trying to decrease my caffeine and my sugar, things you start having to think about when you get to be in your 40's, but maybe should have thought about when you were in your 30's anyways, so I just love a good sandwich, okay? I have a thousand sandwiches I could talk to you about. I was actually just telling a friend recently that I feel like if I was going to have a last meal, it's a sandwich. I would be like, "Get me that such and such sandwich, okay?" I'm going to tell y'all my favorite Italian sandwich.

Now, this was my gateway entry into the sort of typical. I don't if I should say typical, but sort of like your, yeah, I would probably say your typical Italian sandwich that would have these sort of layers of Italian deli meat, would typically have a provolone, some type of peppers, oil, herb, vinegarette type of situation on almost like a hoagie kind of bread. Now that I've said hoagies, those of you that have been listening to the podcast know anytime I've had someone on here who lives in Philly, I'm always talking about hoagies like, okay. I just want to come back to that later because have a lot of emotional feelings about hoagies. There are not hoagies in Atlanta.

I almost am wondering now if I'm into Italian sandwiches because that's the closest I get in the South to what a hoagie is like in Philly. If you live in Philly and you're listening to this, go have a hoagie today for me, okay, because they're amazing. All right. I can get emotional. Okay.

I went to Fred's Meat & Bread, which is a fantastic sandwich stall in one of Atlanta's food halls. Those of you that may live in major cities around the country know that food halls are becoming really popular in different cities. I know Matt and I have been to a few of them in different places, and so one of ours in Atlanta is Krog Street Market. Krog Street Market, which is a smaller food hall because our larger food hall is Ponce City Market, where there are even more restaurants and dessert, coffee places, et cetera, but Fred's Meat & Bread is at Krog Street Market. Krog Street Market.

Why don't I want to add a R to that, y'all? Is at Krog Street Market. Fred's Meat & Bread, no lie, just has a lot of fantastic sandwiches. Their cheesesteak is fantastic. They have a steak, cheesesteak with mushrooms.

They have sort of your regular kind of beef cheesesteak. They have chicken cheesesteak, they have a Korean beef cheesesteak, they have a double-stack burger, I want to say that's really delicious. I really, for the most part, have not met a sandwich at Fred's Meat & Bread that I didn't like, but the one that really made me fall in love with Fred's Meat & Bread was their Italian Grinder sandwich. Let me tell you something. I have a great appreciation for prosciutto. Prosciutto just, it's one of those things that it's like, "Is it really ever the wrong thing, you know?"

It's like you put it on a salad, it's delicious. You have it in a charcuterie board, it's delicious. You put it on a sandwich, you know what it is? Delicious. The Italian Grinder at Fred's Meat & Bread just has a lot of layers of a lot of different types of those sort of traditional Italian deli meats, the prosciutto, the salami. I mean, all of the things that you would want to have, this sandwich has. Delicious.

My favorite Italian sandwich is really down two stalls away from Fred's Meat & Bread, and they're really very, very close to each other in the running, but I have to say my favorite Italian sandwich is The Goodfella, which is at Varuni Napoli's, and Varuni Napoli is more so to me like more of a pizza place. They actually have two locations, and the Krog Street location is the only location that makes these sandwiches. It is similar to the Italian Grinder, but done differently in Varuni Napoli style. I think what's giving it the edge for me is the bread. The bread is tasting very fresh-baked.

You're getting a little bit of that taste of what you like about a pizza dough or the calzone dough. You're getting a bit of that taste in the sandwich bread, which is wonderful. My only small gripe with Varuni Napoli is that I wish they sold chips, because I told you, I just love the crunch of some chips with a sandwich, but that Goodfella sandwich, yes, favorite Italian sandwich. If you're visiting Atlanta or if you've just moved to Atlanta and you're looking for cool places to go, Krog Street Market is always a win. It's a great place to go by yourself and just hang out, try some things.

It's a wonderful place to go if you have people visiting in town that you want to take them somewhere, but then, everybody can kind of split up and go eat whatever food they like. I mean, there's so many food choices in Krog Street. You have the BeltLine right there, which for us here in Atlanta, the BeltLine is really like a long walking trail that, I think was built on what used to be railroad tracks, but now, there are these certain areas in the city where you can kind of go and walk, and there's restaurants along the BeltLine as well, so Krog Street Market is right by all of that area, so it just gives you a lot of stuff to do. I do recommend that, but if you're going to go in there, I mean, going to get one of these sandwiches is the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do, mm-hmm.

Okay. Favorite bakery in the city is Southern Sweets for me, which is, I want to say maybe in Decatur, or if it's not quite Decatur, it's near a Avondale Estates. Southern Sweets is a fantastic bakery for a lot of birthdays of different members of our family because my husband and I both have quite a bit of family in the Atlanta area. We will go to Southern Sweets and get cake by the slice, so that way, say if it's one person's birthday and that person's cake favorite is this, but then the other three or four people like this other different cake, you can go there and get cake for maybe six or seven bucks a slice. They do also have vegan selections of some of their desserts.

They have cake and pie as well, and cheesecake also, so you have that element of sort of your traditional kind of conventional three-layer cake, as well as having your cheesecakes, your mousse cakes, your key lime pie, and lemon meringue, and as a side note, they also have some pretty solid sandwiches. Like sandwiches are going to keep coming up here. They have some pretty solid sandwiches. Another sandwich that I'm really in love with is I love a good BLT, mmm. Just something about the BLT that's so ...

It's such a simple sandwich. I mean, it's literally slices of bacon, sliced tomato, typically some iceberg lettuce and mayo. That's it, toasted bread, that's all, and it's amazing. Typically, if I'm going to Southern Sweets or if my husband is going to Southern Sweets to pick up something for me, if there's a chance I can get their BLT and a slice of cake, I will do it, but I love their cake, and I love all the varieties of cake that they have, that you can go there and try a bunch of different things and sort of get cake according to your mood, and of course, if you are having a party or maybe you don't have to have a party and you just want a whole cake, they do have that as well, or a whole pie. You can order those in advance, and I think they do wedding cakes, all the things.

Favorite bakery in the Atlanta Metro area for me is Southern Sweets. I do want to give honorable mention regarding cupcakes, because I am also a cupcake connoisseur, and cupcakes in Atlanta, for me, have been a little touch-and-go. We had two larger like national cupcake chains here for a while. I think we still have Georgetown Cupcakes, and then we had Sprinkles Cupcakes, which I think was an original chain that was out of LA. When Sprinkles was here, Sprinkles was my favorite cupcake.

We actually had a Sprinkles ATM at Lenox mall when Sprinkles was here, and then Sprinkles closed, and I was kind of feeling disappointed because sometimes you want to get involved in more of a cupcake scenario than you do a slice of cake, so my favorite cupcake place is Endulge Bakery, which is actually not too far from my neighborhood, and has a little tea place inside of it. I'm not sure that Endulge is welcoming people to be sitting inside, but they also have a drive-thru. Who doesn't love a cupcake drive-thru? I recommend that as a cupcake place. I love their cupcakes.

Their cupcakes are so wonderful, and I love the different combinations of flavors. I'll tell y'all, my absolute favorite cupcake flavor is when the cake itself is chocolate, but the frosting is vanilla. That's a rare combination in most bakeries. Even for slices of cake or a three-layer cake, you would typically not have where the cake itself is like devil's food, and then the icing is vanilla, but that's actually my favorite way to have a cupcake, so big shout to Endulge Cupcake for having a cookies and cream cupcake, which is sort of the closest I can get to what my favorite cupcake flavor is, mm-hmm. Shout out to that.

Also, let me tell y'all a small cupcake story. I remember before my husband and I got married, when I was single and I had my first apartment, sometimes to celebrate myself or sometimes if I just had a bad week, I would go to the grocery store and I would buy the, what looked like the happy birthday cupcakes. You know how they came in a thing of six? I would buy them and just bring them home to my house and enjoy them, and celebrate myself or celebrate that whatever was terrible that had happened was over with, so you treat yourself in whatever ways are good for you, okay, and if that means you need to go up in the grocery store and get you a six-thing of cupcakes ... I was also known for buying a whole pie, eating some of it, freezing it up by the slice so that I might put the slice in the microwave later, and boom, there I am.

If I've got vanilla ice cream, I'm already right there with one of my favorite desserts. Just giving you some hacks in case you need more lower budget items that you can treat yourself to. I'm out here, people. I'm out here giving you the things. Okay. Last favorite thing is wings, and wings are very important in the South.

When we were going through the time where they’re like, "We're having a wing shortage," a lot of gasps out here in Atlanta, a lot of shortage of wings, and then they were trying to sell us that chicken thighs and boneless wings. I don't know. I don't know anything about that, but wings are very important here in Atlanta. In particular, lemon pepper wings are very important here. Just having wing places that have a variety of flavors, very important here. My favorite wing spot, the one that my husband and I go to most often is The Wing Bar.

I think The Wing Bar has at least two locations, and they have so many flavors of wing. Then, depending on your order, you can sometimes get your order split if you wanted like two different flavors. Sometimes I like to have lemon pepper and barbecue, but really, barbecue sauce is really where it's at for me, y'all. When the old lady was on the commercial saying, "I put that shit on everything," for me, that's barbecue sauce for me. I'm going to find a way to put that on my French fries, I want it on my sandwich. I just love barbecue sauce as a condiment, okay?

My favorite flavor of wing is probably barbecue sauce, and I really love the barbecue sauce at The Wing Bar. I love a crinkle fry. They have wonderful crinkle fries. You can get the crinkle fries seasoned, not so ... I think you can get them sauced and seasoned, so you could get the fries with Old Bay seasoning or with more of like a Lawry's seasoning, or with lemon pepper seasoning, or you can get the fries sauced, but you can choose the same sauces that are available for wings, so I love a good seasoning fry.

I just love a good choice there. That's also a meal for me that always feels like a soda is where it's at, and really, it just always feels like a Coke. I try a Sprite, I try a Fanta or a Sunkist or whatever, but the Coke just really, mmm. Sparkling water can get you in there a little bit because you're at least getting the bubbles, but something about Coke. I don't know, y'all.

I don't know. Wings, Coke, fries just always seems like the right thing. This is not one of those wing places where you are getting crudité on the side, so if crudité is a thing you're concerned with, you should cut up your celery and carrots before you do this thing, okay? Mm-hmm. Those are my favorite ATL eats.

I love my city, as many of you know, which is why I have lived here so long and love to call it home, but I love our food scene here. I love how it's always changing and thriving. There's always new stuff to check out, so if you live in Atlanta and you're listening to this episode and you have stuff that you think I should add to this, please DM me on Instagram or Twitter, and let me know, or tweet at me, and let me know. Would love to hear your recommendations, and if you're visiting the city, check out these things and write back to me. Let me know if things were equally delicious to you.

Thanks so much for listening. I'll see y'all next week. HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.