Scouting Atlanta

Today was a "free" day for us. We had nothing to attend to so we took advantage of the time and drove around the city and our new neighborhood scouting out and evaluating grocery stores and visiting the nearest Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Publix and Krogers. I decided that the Kroger on Roswell Rd. was the better of the conventional grocery stores for weekly shopping. The Whole Foods further up in Sandy Springs was really nice and offered several islands for that quick lunch or stopping off from work to pick up dinner. The Fresh Market was nice as well. In fact, this is where we are grabbing dinner tonight to bring back to the hotel and eat.
Last night we ate at Sweet Tomatoes. I have heard of this soup and salad buffet restaurant but have never tried it. There is one near the hotel so I suggested we try this. I loved it. The salad bar begins with 4 of their pre-made salads. This month they were offering ceasar, oriental chicken, greek, and one other which escapes me right now. The highlight for me is the endless row of salad ingredient selections to customize your own salad of choice. First you build a base with a selection of romaine, spinach or iceberg or a combination of any of the three, move on down the line and help yourself to about 30 different add on ingredients from tomato to jicama. I was in heaven. You pass by a selection of pasta salads, potato salad and broccoli salad (which I love). The last stop in the line are the dressings. Selections are standard such as blue cheese, ranch, 1000 island, french. I bypassed all these and opted for the tray of flavored vinegars and oils and made my own.
We sat down at a table and traveled over to the hot items which included a buffet of six different kinds of soups, foccacia breads, sweet and russet baked potatoes and three kinds of pasta. If you still have room after nibbling on all these selections there is a dessert bar with fresh fruit, brownies, tapioca and soft serve ice cream. I tried a small scoop of tapioca since I have never in my life tasted it. It wasn't bad. What a deal for $9.99 per person........all you can eat. This will be a regular eating haunt for me.
Back to our day. We drove down Peachtree Rd through Buckhead, Midtown, and downtown. We spent some time touring the Midtown area and Piedmont park. I found a Flying Biscuit restaurant on the corner of 10th and Piedmont. I've been told this is a must try place for breakfast. We ended back at the Perimeter Mall so Brian could pick up some new pants for his first day of work on Monday and we found a nice bag for him to carry his computer in but he didn't buy it........maybe this weekend.
As we were checking out at Macy's, the sales clerk asked for our zip code. It was so nice to say 30342 instead of 80466 like I've been accustomed to saying for the past 4 years.