Deja food

This week, we’re visiting a few old favorites and a new cantina in Midtown.

I hadn’t visited Murphy’s in Virginia-Highland in well over a year before I dined there a few weeks ago. Mike Tuohy is preparing some excellent nightly specials called “Murphy’s Classics.”

On the Monday of my visit, the special was slices of rotisserie-roasted pork loin served over a cheese-filled polenta with haricots verts. Bits of apple and walnuts were scattered in the pork’s natural juices. Really delicious, decently priced at $13.99 and mercifully free of the intense sweetness that everyone seems to think they have to give pork these days.

Wayne’s trout, corn meal-crusted and served over peppery grits with jack cheese, featured a smoked tomato broth and a tartar sauce spiked with jalapeños ($16). A Vidalia onion soup, garnished with crisp prosciutto and a splash of white truffle oil, was a nice blend of sweetness and a hint of sharp muskiness ($5). A goat cheese salad ($7) is pretty standard fare, using young lettuces, roasted red peppers, toasted pine nuts and garlic croutons, all lightly dressed in balsamic vinegar. I suggest you spring instead for Tuohy’s famous citrus-cured salmon with shaved fennel and roasted beets ($9.50).

I also paid a visit to Anis for the first time in nearly a year with Rose D’Agostino. This cafe on Grandview in Buckhead still features one of the city’s most pleasant patios and mainly good food.

The best starter was an off-the-menu dish of fat red tomatoes sliced and served with buffalo cheese, endive and anchovies. A very good balsamic doused the tomatoes. The day’s soup was a gazpacho, a bit overseasoned with cumin ($4.50), and we also ordered tasty focaccia topped with melted mozzarella with fresh basil and tomatoes ($5.95).

The restaurant is now serving a chicken tagine ($12.95) made with the breast only and served on couscous with dried apricots. Although not authentically made, it’s quite good. In fact, I much preferred it over my entree of the day’s risotto, which featured chanterelles, scallops and a bit of tomato. Unfortunately, the scallops were overcooked and far too much lemon was in the risotto. Rose’s grilled trout was a better choice, but had its own problems with overcooking.

Generally, though, it’s hard to find a better meal for the money in Atlanta.

Will Bonner and I visited Tierra on Piedmont recently to sample the summer menu. This unusual cafe that features the flavors from Central and South America will be closed Aug. 12-20, so hurry to try it now.

Cold cucumber soup ($4.95) is served in addition to the city’s best black bean soup. There’s a wonderful grilled grouper served Peruvian-style with achiote vinaigrette, corn and sweet potato ($19.50) and fettucine with Brazilian sausage in a light veal sauce with kale, tomatoes and queso machego ($13.95).

The restaurant is making its own dulce de leche ice cream ($4.50) that is absolutely killer, but it means skipping the tres leches unless you can convince someone else at the table to order it.

The restaurant, by the way,gets a mention in the September issue of Bon Appetit magazine. Currently, Aug. 7-11, it’s featuring a special Central America menu.

Ribbit
The fool who called “imitation the sincerest form of flattery” wasn’t an admirer of the culinary arts. We could start with the Egg McMuffin’s imitation of eggs Benedict or that spongy faux crab stuff that tastes like oceanic tofu. The point is, the more something is copied, the more corrupted it tends to get.

So, I was immediately suspicious when I saw that another burrito joint had taken over the space vacated by The Great Western Burrito Company at Midtown Promenade on Monroe Drive. The new place is called F.R.O.G.S. Cantina (404-607-9967).

I was never a huge fan of the Burrito Company’s injudicious use of onions and sour cream, but the food had a certain style of its own and gained sufficient popularity that the restaurant has opened a new location on Howell Mill at I-75. It will open another at the old Rio Mall location on Piedmont in about a month.

F.R.O.G.S., the imitator, has practically nothing to recommend itself except location and cheerful service. This is the kind of Mexican food you’d find in a Betty Crocker cookbook to serve at a 15-year-old’s birthday bash.

A sampler of chips with queso, guacamole and salsa, for example, has virtually no flavor ($5.95). The queso might as well be Velveeta. The guacamole, made with bland avocados, is unseasoned. At least the tomatoes in the salsa fresca have a bit of flavor. I suggest you dump the salsa into the queso and you’ll get some taste.

Steak fajitas ($10.95) are decently seasoned and grilled, then served over a monster pile of grilled peppers and onions that gives an illusion of quantity that endures only for three medium-filled tortillas. They are served with watery beans, an absurdly small dollop of salsa fresca and — please! — some mangled lettuce. Why is there no red sauce or green sauce? Why no real pico de gallo?

Fish tacos ($7.25) include the day’s grilled fish plus spinach and pineapple/mango salsa. The spinach is the best part of the taco. The fish was limp and tasted as though it had been cooked earlier and left to sit way too long.

The rest of the menu is the usual quesadillas, taco salads and “pizzas” which are actually tostadas. There are also taquitos, along with burritos and tacos with your choice of fillings, including — ugh — ground beef.

This ain’t Macon, folks. We want a bit more authenticity in our Mexican and Southwestern food now or we want — a la Tortillas and Burrito Art — some real creativity.

E-mail or call Cliff Bostock’s voice mail, 440-688-5623, ext. 1504, with your dining comments.??