36. Eat the world on Buford Highway

A long, appetizing stretch of international cuisine
1967
Crawfish Shack

Photograph by Southern Foodway Alliance/Flickr

As ethnic cuisine destinations go, cities like New York and Los Angeles have distinct neighborhoods like Little Italy, Chinatown or Koreatown, and Tehrangeles. Atlanta, however, has Buford Highway, a polyglot of a thoroughfare where an ever-changing array of restaurants serve food from every corner of the globe—often in the same strip mall. The corridor runs from Atlanta’s Lenox Road to the city of Buford almost thirty miles away, but the nexus of international eats intensifies around the intersection of North Druid Hills and extends through the towns of Chamblee and Doraville, past the I-285 junction. Get in your car and explore: You’ll find (for starters) Mexican taquerias; Sichuan, Cantonese, and other regional Chinese cuisines; Korean bakeries and barbecue joints; Vietnamese pho parlors; and introductions to Malaysian noodle dishes, Filipino fried chicken, and curry-like Indonesian beef rendang.

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This article originally appeared in our April 2013 issue.

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