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It was Sunday night at the Prickly Pear Taqueria (950 W. Peachtree St., 404-881-8887) in Midtown Plaza. The restaurant, which opened in June, was packed and there’s little doubt that its 100-plus varieties of tequila had a lot to do with turning out a crowd.

We were sitting at a small table outside. Our server seemed pretty frazzled by the crowd but when I ordered my...

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One morning, we are all going to wake up and find that we have turned the same color. A post-racial world will eliminate a significant portion of Americans’ conflicts. Until then, there is Buford Highway.

For at least 25 years, the road has been transitioning to an intense multicultural enclave best known for its ethnically diverse restaurants. Stop a moment to ponder the...

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Remember when the only destination on the Westside was the Atlanta Humane Society? It was something of a shock when Bacchanalia moved there from its cottage on Piedmont a decade ago. Then Taqueria del Sol followed, and now the area is prime real estate for restaurants that cater to the downtown lunch crowd and the inhabitants of a zillion condos that stretch from 10th Street to...

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Rosebud (1397 N. Highland Ave., 404-347-9747) is the new name of Food 101 in Morningside. Executive chef Ron Eyester bought out the co-owners recently and rechristened the restaurant. The name derives from one of the guitars played by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead.

Ordinarily, any reference to the Grateful Dead is immediately alienating to me. I used to write an annual...

image-1“Oh my god! I’m so sorry!” our server yelled. She had just dumped a glass of water on our table and it was trickling into my lap to produce that unmistakable look of adult incontinence.

“Don’t worry about it,” Wayne said as about five men attacked our table with their rags.

“She told me she was going to do that,” one of them said.

We...

The latest entry in the city’s pizza war is Nonna Mia (980 Piedmont Ave., 404-532-2815), a Sicilian-inspired café that's part of a new chain out of New Orleans.

The restaurant has taken over the space last occupied by Sweet Devil Moon and many others before that. In the 1970s, when I lived a few blocks from there, it was the original location of Proof of the Pudding, now a huge...