February 2023
Features
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Sunday mornings with Mighty Hans
During the pandemic, Fu-Mao Sun launched a pop-up called Mighty Hans that specializes in Taiwanese American fare; his brunches, featuring some of the dishes you see here, gained him scores of fans.
“We’ll call it Sunday Service even though it’s not church”
At 12:30 p.m. on a Sunday in early December, Erika Council’s Bomb Biscuit Co. was already booming. Council’s reputation preceded her new restaurant in Old Fourth Ward: She’s been operating Bomb Biscuit in various configurations—pop-ups, deliveries, a space at Irwin Street Market—since 2016, and today, patrons were lined up in anticipation of ordering Council’s famously fluffy creations.
Chefs hate brunch…or do they?
It’s no secret chefs hate brunch. In his 2000 book, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain famously disparaged the booze-laden meal that’s not quite breakfast, not quite lunch—and not much has changed in the decades since. “I would be shocked if you were to find a chef who likes it,” said Zach Meloy, the former chef-owner of Better Half, which shuttered in 2018.
Behind the scenes at Lips Atlanta’s flawless, madcap drag brunch
Serving Sunday brunch is one thing. Pulling off a drag show is another. But serving back-to-back brunches for hundreds of guests while nine high-octane drag queens perform in full costume, higher-than-heaven hair, and a full set of lights and music? That, in the words of performer and maître d’ Evelyn Caldwell, “is just madness.”
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The Connector
A love letter to Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Tickets often have to be secured months before. I’ve likened performances to family reunions. I don’t know everyone’s names, but there is surely a connection: the love of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. From a dancer’s outstretched body, a tip of a hat, and the twirl of an umbrella, to how fabrics flow with every bend and bow, each act is its own happening and affirmation—as if to say, Everything’s going to be all right.
What the Church Ladies are cooking up
Dispatches from Atlanta and beyond. Also in this month’s edition: Watching the World Cup in Norcross and trans dancers find a home on Cheshire Bridge.
Police chases are dangerous. Why do they still happen?
In 2019, then police chief Erika Shields suspended Atlanta Police Department’s chase policy. Her successor, Rodney Bryant, enacted a revised policy less than a year after the original had been suspended. But chases remain controversial.
My kids’ suburban Atlanta childhood is light-years away from mine
My childhood at age seven was nothing like my daughter’s now. My world was defined by fire and brimstone belching from the pulpit at Spring River Assembly of God. I didn’t know a Black person, and I sure as hell didn’t know what a lesbian was—much less consider a happy couple as part of my family.
A Clarkston woman’s mission to make it easier for pregnant refugees to navigate the healthcare system
Pregnant when she arrived in Clarkston from Afghanistan, Muzhda Oriakhil struggled to navigate the American healthcare system. Now she’s making it easier for refugee women who’ve followed.
5 Reasons to love Midtown
Georgia State Representative Park Cannon, whose District 58 slices through the community, says it’s a place “where people of economic opposites and vast social differences are neighbors.”
The Bite
The verdict on 3 new Atlanta restaurants: Cuddlefish, Bibi, and Bomb Biscuit Co.
Serious sushi with a cute name, Persian pleasures at Ponce City Market, and some of the best buttermilk biscuits in town.
Love letters to the Atlanta meals, restaurants, groceries, and drinks that sustain us
Comforting takoyaki at Daisuki Sushi Izakaya, a home away from home at the General Muir, freezer isle parathas, the colorful Thai Tea-ña Colada at Talat Market, and more favorites from across the metro
Review: Lao pop-up So So Fed brings the funk
Though the menu changes weekly, Molli Voraotsady maintains a fidelity to the foods of her childhood; outside of sourcing produce from the Grant Park Farmers Market when she can, she hasn’t felt the need to mess around with tradition.
The Goods
Local jewelry phenom Machete is one to watch
Like many entrepreneurs, Jennifer J. Matchett is a serial inventor. She’s sold vintage clothing and opened a macaron bakery. But it’s her wildly successful jewelry and accessories business, Machete, which she helms out of a Marietta studio, that has won national acclaim.