Boiled then baked

I haven’t been happy about the Midtown bagel situation since the closing years ago of Royal Bagel at Ansley Mall. The proliferation of the grim Einstein Brothers shops is what happens when the McDonald’s philosophy is applied to bagels. Why, there was even a Mickey D-style shooting at the Monroe Avenue shop a few weeks ago when a customer interrupted a robbery.
Generally speaking, good bagels — to say nothing of decent deli food — are hard to find around town. Goldberg’s on Roswell Road still does a great job but it’s far from town. And I like Highland Bagel inside Caribou on North Highland enough, but who the hell wants to park 10 blocks away and hike for a sesame bagel?
The best place around these days is Bagel Palace Deli and Bakery at Toco Hills Shopping Center (2869 N. Druid Hills Road, 404-315-9016). I should give credit to Jay and Michele Botwinick for bugging me to go here. (After all, I dissed them last week for liking Houston’s.)
Bagel Palace, like Highland Bagel, makes bagels the proper way. The dough is boiled and then baked. The bagels at Einstein Brothers are not boiled and as a result are fluffy and not chewy, having more in common with Sunbeam bread than authentic bagels. Undoubtedly, in another few years, an entire generation will think a bagel is supposed to taste like a dinner roll from a high school cafeteria. Go to Bagel Palace if you want the real deal: slightly crisp on the outside, with a dense, chewy interior. The raisin ones rock.
But there’s much more to be enjoyed in this deli that’s a favorite hangout of Emory students and faculty. The chopped liver is to die for. The matzoh ball soup is state-of-the-art. You can find real sable, good Nova and excellent pastrami and corned beef. The menu is huge, and there’s a full bakery onsite, too.

On North Highland
I was surprised recently to find that Babette’s Cafe, one of my favorites for provincial Euro-style food, has closed its charming longtime location in a storefront at 473 North Highland. The closing is temporary. It is moving up the road to a cottage at 573 North Highland but won’t open there until mid-March at the earliest. The old location is being taken over by some people who’ve worked at Harvest and Dish, by the way.
Finding Babette’s closed, Wayne and I decided to visit Casbah, the Moroccan restaurant a few doors down from the old Babette’s (465 North Highland, 404-524-5777). Regular readers of “Grazing” will recall that we indulged ourselves in several amazing Moroccan restaurants in Paris in January. I am still salivating with the memory of the chicken tagine I ate at Le Mansouria. Its sauce was made with pounded rose petals cooked with tomatoes and honey — one of the most fragrant, complex dishes I have tasted in years.
I’m afraid the experience of reaching such a height makes a restaurant like Casbah seem very mediocre. The heavily carpeted room is fun, and Wayne and I were grateful we didn’t have to sit on the floor or take our shoes off or eat with our hands or engage in any of the other hokey stuff that makes dining in many American Moroccan spots feel like a re-run of “I Dream of Jeanie.” Well, there was a rather kitschy belly dancer, a perfectly agreeable woman who also read Tarot cards. We enjoyed her, though, and she seemed to have a sense of humor about her role.
But the food was a big disappointment. The classic bastila, Cornish hen layered with nuts, eggs and spices in phyllo pastry, is overpriced at $7.50 and simply doesn’t have much to offer other than a pleasant sweetness and texture. (“Meat baklava,” Wayne called it.) The earthy flavors and pungent spices of the dish are missing altogether. Some of the salads on the assortment ($8) are tasty, but most taste bland.
Lamb R’rouzia sounds good on paper — almost like the tagines we ate in Paris. It features “lamb dipped in honey and served with Vidalia onions ... topped with hard-cooked eggs, sesame seeds, raisins and almonds” ($18). Pity it’s not a tagine. The important thing is that the sauce, like all others we encountered, was watery. Baked fish, a day’s special, was overcooked and overdressed.
A new, fine-dining Moroccan restaurant is opening near Bacchanalia in the near future and, if all reports are true, it will blow all competition in the city out of the water — though it’s prices are likely to cause a similarly shocking effect.

Here and there
Beth Hagberg writes to ask where I go when I want French bistro food since the closing of Cafe Boheme in Little Five Points. There’s no real substitute, but I would recommend Anis, Soleil or Cafe de Nice, all in Buckhead. To spend more money, go to the Dining Room of the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead, which has replaced Brasserie le Coze as the best French destination. Le Coze, I fear, has become quite stale.
Folks in Roswell are lucky that Grant Park’s Foodz 2 Go is vending its killer sandwiches and salads at Kokopelli, a coffee and pastry shop at 1169 Canton Street (770-552-2297). Steve, one of Foodz’ owners, is there full time now. The closing of Metro Deli on Cherokee in Grant Park was a loss. Someone has taken a lease on the location and plans a daytime soul-food menu, with upper-end dishes in the evening. And nearby Carroll Street Bakery in Cabbagetown is due to reopen under the stewardship of Apres Diem’s owner. But Kim, the original owner and baker, will still be running it and serving some of the city’s best pastries. We hear the new improved restaurant will have a liquor license.