Photograph by Caroline C. Kilgore
Upbeet
Yeah! Burger founder Erik Maier researched fast-casual health food restaurants across the country before settling on a grain bowl + salad + juice formula for his new Upbeet on the Westside. You may be familiar with the pick-your-own-base, add-your-own-toppings format, but you’ll be surprised by how clean everything tastes here. The cold prep room is partly to thank for that: Upbeet’s kitchen crew, wrapped in snow suits and gloves, works in a refrigerated room to keep ingredients as fresh as possible. (Basically, Maier applied the idea behind cold-pressed juice to the entire menu.) Favorite signature dishes are the Aloha Bowl (bamboo rice, mango, avocado, and tuna poké) and the Thai Chia (purple rice, chia seeds, cabbage, snap peas, and citrusy shrimp), but you can go bespoke, too, choosing from any number of combinations of mostly organic ingredients. 1071 Howell Mill Road, 404-347-1071
Monsoon Masala Kitchen and Sweets
A growing number of Bangladeshi restaurants are finding homes on Buford Highway. What’s special about this newcomer is that it has its own bakery, where you can find Bengali sweets such as kheer, rice pudding scented with rose water. The savory side of the menu includes haleem made with mashed lentils and topped with your choice of chicken, beef, or goat meat, and an assertively spicy egg curry in tomato gravy. 3979 Buford Highway, 404-228-0017
The Canteen
Devotees of the General Muir’s Todd Ginsberg are lining up inside the Canteen, a micro food hall the chef and his partners opened near Georgia Tech in June. New specialties await them: At TGM Bagel, order your smoked sturgeon on a pumpernickel bagel, which you can’t find at TGM Bread. At this outpost of Fred’s Meat & Bread, go for the new blackened tuna sandwich with bacon and avocado or the insanely rich porchetta on ciabatta. The Canteen also has a bar where you can order juice in the morning and frosé at night. The communal tables fill up fast, and the cleaning crew struggles to keep up with the constant rotation, but, all in all, this is a welcome addition to Tech Square. 75 Fifth Street
This article originally appeared in our September 2017 issue.
