Woodfire, brunch, meat pies, and Hunger

I've got a reservation at Woodfire Grill this evening. It was a Christmas present to my roommate (and yes, today was the first date available for a resonable dinnertime reservation when I hit up Opentable.com back in December), 'cause both of us are huge fandorks for Top Chef and adored Kevin Gillespie's attitude and cooking style during this past season. I promise I'll make every effort to a) do a writeup about our dinner and b) not hump Gillespie's leg.


Brunch this week was at good ol' Manny's, mostly because none of us thought to check whether Flat Iron opens before noon (it doesn't). It's not a brunch I'd go out of my way to have, and like everything at Manny's it's simple and greasy, but it's so comfy and casual there that I never mind. And their biscuits are some of my favorites in town, so tender & buttery that they're perfect plain.

Before we ditched East Atlanta, I stopped and grabbed a couple of meat pies to go from the Australian Bakery Cafe, which I've been craving ever since we saw Titus Andronicus at Georgia Shakes last summer. (An' what?) Their steak & mushroom pie is still my ultimate travel breakfast food -- warming, savory, and filling, with that elusive balance of gravy-to-crust that allows for both tastiness and handheld snacking.


In literary news, I zipped through the first two books of The Hunger Games YA series by Suzanne Collins in less than 36 hours. So, um, I recommend those. I'll do a more in-depth review soon, but basically: This series was written specifically for 12-year-old me. If you were also once an unsqueamish girl who loved (mostly the food parts of) survival action stories, wasn't sure what she thought about romance, and was obsessed with dystopian-future fight-The-Man oh-the-injustice stories, then you should probably start finding a way to read these books now.