Khabar Magazine. May 2022 print. The mixed-use State Farm building on Hammond Drive in Dunwoody has a new addition. Sankranti Indian Kitchen is a fast-casual restaurant, aspiring to deliver “Chipotle style” healthy made-to-order Indian cuisine. Walking in the modern and clean space, there are subtle hints of the restaurant’s Indian origins. Flower motifs, stenciled in […]

Georgia Trend. April 2022. If you are planning to celebrate Easter by purchasing store-bought chocolate eggs and bunny-shaped candy, you may want to think outside the box – literally. Handmade artisan chocolate not only tastes better, it also helps local small business owners thrive and give back to the global community. Xocolatl Small Batch Chocolate, […]

Southern Living. March 2022. LaGrange is a progressive small town that offers all the amenities of a big city. Located only an hour south of Atlanta, LaGrange is home to a number of musical entertainment venues, upcoming craft breweries, one of the largest collections of Middle Eastern artifacts, and world-renowned gardens. The population of about 30,000 […]

Southern Living. March 2022. Greensboro came about as a retirement and second home lake and golf community formed by those who were looking to take a quick getaway from the big city of Atlanta. Over the past two decades, though, a boom in vacation rentals and new businesses has attracted younger families from all over the country to […]

Georgia Trend Magazine. March 2022. Located at East Atlanta Village is a new hip and casual brewery and restaurant. The exterior recalls beer gardens where you can just hang out with your two- and four-legged companions, while the cozy inside feels like the tasting room of a working brewery. With sacks of malt flour on […]

HuffPost. Feb 2022. Chef Daryl Shular is the world’s first African American and minority chef to earn the prestigious title of certified master chef, the distinction administered by the American Culinary Federation and currently held by fewer than a hundred people. Shular has also won 12 gold medals in local and national cooking competitions, including the Culinary Olympics, […]

Georgia Trend Magazine. December 2021. The holidays are a time to come together with family, create new memories and be grateful for the years past. But it’s easy to get stressed by the thought of planning the perfect meal that meets every dietary need. We leaf through cookbooks and magazines that show beautiful dinner spreads […]

Cuisine Noir Magazine. Fall 2021 Click here to order a copy of the print and downloadable 2021 special edition issue.

Georgia Trend. October 2021. Tis’ the season! With pumpkins, turkeys and candy on our minds, the last quarter of the year is all about celebrations over food. Restaurants and bars across the state are getting creative with food and drink items to get customers into the celebratory spirit. Whether you’re tickled by edible ghost candies, […]

Georgia Trend Magazine. July 2021. Though the past year has unfolded as a rocky road for most food businesses, frozen desserts have continued to be a low-churn industry. Think about it – no one is in a bad mood after eating a cup of banana pudding ice cream! “Making gelato makes me happy,” says Atlanta-native […]

Georgia Trend. April 2021. On these warm sunny days, some of us are inspired to venture out into the backyard more often. Perhaps you are dusting off the lawn chairs, planting a vegetable garden or firing up the grill. It is a promising time to reap seasonal produce and refresh weeknight menus with lighter recipes […]

Georgia Trend Magazine. February 2021. Lunch hour is no longer a brief escape from the office that we once looked forward to. Instead of catching up with colleagues at a delectable restaurant, now we juggle between video calls, checking in on the kids, taking the dog out and grabbing a quick nibble. But a power […]

Khabar Magazine. Nov 2020. The hotel industry, like restaurants, has been battered during the pandemic. How are South Asian-owned hotels dealing with the crisis? What changes have they made to reassure guests and employees? As travel slowly picks up, what’s the new normal going to be like at your next stay in a hotel? Like […]

Cuisine Noir Magazine. July 2020. Georgia is the largest state in the U.S. east of the Mississippi River. Though most people think of Atlanta when they plan a trip to Georgia, the state also offers a variety of historic landmarks, remote hiking trails, evergreen golf grounds, pristine lakes and independent wineries. To explore the entire […]

Chowhound. May 2020. In Japan, school lunches are part of an overall education. Students are involved in serving wholesome menus to one another, eating together in classrooms, and cleaning up after themselves. There are no big kitchens or cafeterias with different menu choices. Everyone at school eats the same meal, like one family. This is the same […]

A comprehensive guide to Atlanta airport including how to have the perfect layover.

For Cuisine Noir Magazine. October 2018. The founder of Caribbean Smooth, a new brand of tropical spiced rum liqueur, shakes an unusually shaped black-colored bottle and pours me a taste of his guava-pineapple and passion fruit blends as we chat sitting at the bar of a Mexican restaurant near his home in Atlanta. “This is […]

For Creative Loafing Atlanta. November 2018 print issue.  Before I moved to Atlanta in 1997, I had a picture-postcard image of Thanksgiving — a Caucasian family wearing plaid shirts gathered around a big table covered with a dozen delectable dishes. There was always a whole pumpkin and orange tones to signify autumn. I knew there […]

For Creative Loafing Atlanta. September 2018.  “Get yourself a Persian friend. Just show interest in their culture, and the next thing you know, they will invite you over to their house,” says Samira Shakib Bregeth, an Iranian-American English teacher at Roswell High School and advisor for news and opinion website VOX. She and others I […]

For Cuisine Noir. July 2018 Japan is a small country with a deep-rooted culture. Aiyana Victoria Mathews first visited Japan as a 19-year old African-American student. After attending Benjamin E. May High School in Atlanta, she went on to pursue her undergraduate studies at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)  and found a way to study […]

For Creative Loafing Atlanta. April 2018. Chef Lotfi Chabaane spends each day at a retirement community called Parc at Duluth. At 60, he’s the place’s de facto spring chicken, telling stories, dancing, and cooking for the seniors who live there. What he’s cooking are Tunisian, Indian, French, Malaysian, and German dishes, but his patrons often […]

For Chowhound. February 2018.  You know you are in the South when you hear men and women screaming “what’ll ya have, what’ll ya have?” as they move you down quickly through the line. If you don’t respond quickly, you’ll be sent back to the line. Sounds like a high school cafeteria? This fast food restaurant […]

For Chowhound. February 2018.  An American girl travels to Italy, meets a charming Italian man, gets married, and together they live happily ever after. It sounds like a cliché love story, right? Well, it happened in January 2009 when Meredith Hall, a resident of Atlanta, met Luigi D’Arienzo (who goes by Gigi) during a milonga […]

For Chowhound. January 2018.  Khaled and Ruwaida had a deep-rooted life back in Damascus, Syria. They owned two apartments and a few electronic shops. Khaled worked, while Ruwaida took care of their two kids. But political unrest forced them to leave their home country and walk across to Jordan, where they lived as refugees for four […]