Breakfast

The restaurant prides itself on using local vegetables (some from its own garden), but you’ll find more evidence of such efforts on the lunch menu; breakfast is mostly a straightforward montage of egg dishes, pancakes, and biscuit sandwiches.

Ria Pell’s breakfast diner has been a Grant Park draw since 2000, a bastion of tattooed waitresses and diverse crowds that mill in the small front parking lot while waiting for a table. Beyond the sense of community, though, the appeal can sometimes waver.

Small details impress: Spiced honey butter served with the waffle delivers a wallop of cinnamon and mellow sweetness, and fried green tomatoes stay crisp even while wrapped in a whole-wheat burrito with scrambled eggs.

This comfortable, meandering space is one reason to visit the community of Kirkwood; it’s easy to grab a seat for a quick early breakfast or a languorous, hours-long brunch.

It may be discreetly tucked into a nondescript strip mall on Peachtree Road, but it is well known to the local elites, who keep the restaurant busy until it stops serving breakfast at 2:30 p.m. Look to the dishes with Greek influences to give your morning a little opa.

Shaun Doty's savvy approach extends to breakfast, when he plies sleepy customers with pork schnitzel and chopped liver on toast straight from the lunch and dinner menus.

The second location for the city’s premiere java slingers and a bakery start-up that first earned loyalists at local farmers markets share a space in the back of Grant Park’s Jane building across from Oakland Cemetery.

Ah, the bumpy flight of the Flying Biscuit. In 2007 owner Delia Champion partnered with local franchise operator Raving Brands to expand beyond the Candler Park original and its Midtown offshoot. The quality at the franchised branches (there are now nine in Georgia) falters. The flagship, launched in 1993, has experienced its own ups and downs over the years, though recently we returned to find the cooking improved.

Look for omelets and pain perdu (a hybrid take on French toast dolled up with strawberries, bananas, and whipped cream) among open-faced sandwiches and savory crepes.