Side Dish for Aug. 8: Lviv Croissants + The Colonnade for sale!

Happy Thursday, friends!

Do you love Local Three’s all-you-can-eat (AYCE) Sunday brunches that allow folks to walk through the kitchen to fill their plates? If so, a nighttime version launches this Sunday featuring AYCE barbecue !

Each month, Local Three will pop up in the kitchen as a different restaurant on Sunday nights. August is barbecue month, so look for everything from smoked wings to ribs and sides of potato salad and creamed corn on the menu. Like its Sunday brunch buffet, the pop-up buffet on Sunday nights features a fixed price per person and includes the rule of eating what you take. Reservations are highly encouraged .

This week’s Side Dish also offers a recipe for Flight Club’s Pimms Summer Spritz, intel on a taco shop inside a Smyrna laundromat for “The Move,” and features a profile on the founder of Atlanta’s first women’s sports bar.

Plus, news that The Colonnade is for sale and a Ukrainian bakery is opening in Roswell, what Stone Mountain restaurant Sweet Potato Cafe plans to do with its $50,000 historic preservation grant, news of a rooftop bar opening in Old Fourth Ward, what’s fresh at your local farmers market, and other dining news to know.

– Beth McKibben and The Rough Draft team

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Lviv Croissants , a popular Ukranian bakery and cafe will move into the former Dozy Coffee space in the Kohl’s shopping plaza on West Crossville Road in Roswell. It opens on Aug. 10, becoming the first U.S. location.

Look for a story on Rough Draft soon from freelance reporter Adam Robb on Lviv Croissants. Robb spent a year chatting with its founder Andrii Galitsky while reporting on restaurants from war-torn cities throughout Ukraine. Lviv Croissants became a respite for comfort food, offering a sense of normalcy. It also provided opportunities to people like franchise owner and refugee Petro Dudnyk, who will open the Roswell location this weekend.

Cheshire Bridge restaurant The Colonnade is for sale , according to a recent real estate listing. The nearly century-old restaurant, known for its martinis and heaping plates of Southern fried chicken and vegetables, opened in 1927. It’s become a gathering place for Atlantans of all ages. While it’s unclear why the restaurant is for sale, Rough Draft hopes to learn more soon from the present owners. Keep an eye out for a future story.

For now, show some love to The Colonnade and head over for an ice-cold martini before tucking into a dinner of turkey and dressing or fried chicken with all the Southern sides. Many Rough Draft staffers are longtime patrons of The Colonnade, so we’d love for you to share your thoughts on the sale or your favorite memories at the restaurant. Send those to beth@roughdraftatlanta.com .

In the thick of summer, you need something refreshing to cool you down. Flight Club’s Pimms Summer Spritz is just the thing to do it.

This summer cocktail is the perfect thing to pair with a day of playing darts at Flight Club. The dart bar opened its fifth location in West Midtown in early 2023 , allowing guests to compete in high-tech games of darts.

Click here for the full recipe .

Road trip season might be winding down in the South, but you can still find a few food treasures at the back counters of gas stations around Atlanta.

I love a good gas station biscuit, burger, or barbecue plate. These food finds often save me on road trips and on days in Atlanta when sitting down for a leisurely lunch isn’t possible.

The South features a long history of such food businesses, cultivating a culture of entrepreneurship where biscuits, tacos, and burgers are served from a counter inside a filling station, folks sling barbecue from a smoker in a parking lot, or a random roadside set-up offers hot plates to go.

Atlanta and the Metro area are spoiled with great gas station eats. You’ll find arepas at Cylantros Venezuelan Cuisine next to a Shell station, double cheeseburgers at NFA Burger inside a Chevron, and tlayudas at Taquería Oaxaqueña de la Gueleguetza served beside another Chevron. In Buckhead, there’s everything from biscuits to burgers to pulled pork sandwiches found at the counter inside Mount Paran Country Store.

Gas stations aren’t the only service-oriented establishments to include mom-and-pop food businesses. In Atlanta, you’ll find car washes with full-service cafes and even a laundromat with a taco shop, similar to the laundromats in New Orleans that feature bars and restaurants.

In Smyrna, there’s J’s Snack Land inside Spring Road Laundry, a self-service laundromat.

When I’m in Smyrna, I like coming to J’s Snack Land for a quick bite, which almost always includes an order of tacos. My move tends to be a trio of steak and carnitas tacos served on fresh corn tortillas topped with onions, cilantro, and fire sauce. Tacos cost around $3.50 each. I suggest ordering the taco combo that includes three tacos and sides of rice and beans for $12.

Mind you, this is a small operation, typically run by one person acting as both cook and order taker. But the service is fast and friendly. From order placement to bag in hand, you might wait 10 minutes, depending on the number of customers in line. Order for takeout or dine-in with seating available just beyond the counter.

Stone Mountain’s Sweet Potato Cafe wins $50,000 historic preservation grant

Meet the founder behind Atlanta’s first women’s sports bar

Rooftop cocktail bar Moonlight opens in Old Fourth Ward

To read the entire issue of Side Dish, click here.

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