Hungry in Atlanta

After eating the last fried green tomato, I picked up a chicken thigh and learned that when cooked just right, even bones taste pretty good. Busy Bee Café, I love you.

Atlanta is serious about soul food, and I’d been narrowing down the considerable options since booking my flight to Georgia. I’m all for spontaneity, but there’s only so much fried chicken I can eat in three days, and I didn’t want to take any chances on flavorless breading or dry meat. There was a rare Internet consensus that The Busy Bee Café is where it’s at, so my sister and I headed across town at four in the afternoon, finally hungry after our southern-style breakfast of sausage and biscuits blanketed with pale sausage gravy .

Wedged between a barber shop and a convenience store, The Busy Bee’s frosted glass front is covered with some serious-looking iron bars. When we stepped through the front door, though, we found it homey and welcoming, with cozy booths and a friendly waitress. A specials board announced oxtail soup and peach cobbler, and the tiny room was lined with framed, signed photos of everyone from Jill Scott to Jay-Z. We slid into a booth by the wall and opened menus that read like a story: long-simmered neck bones, chicken giblets in gravy, ham hocks, okra, sweet potatoes... I couldn’t have been happier, though I suspect that in Atlanta, a Yankee is anyone who opens a menu at The Busy Bee Café and thinks “Wow, chitlins!”.

Not that we needed the menu. Fried chicken, corn muffins, collard greens, and fried green tomatoes were the order of the day, washed down with sweet iced tea. The chicken was sublime, piping hot and covered with a crackling, crisp layer of salty, spicy breading. The meat underneath was perfectly moist and so tender it slipped away from the bone if you breathed on it. The fried green tomatoes showed me where I’d gone wrong before (hint: more fried, less tomato), and when I finished mine I was left coveting my sister’s.

After demolishing a bowl of peach cobbler, we left the Busy Bee in a daze, wondering if we’d ever be hungry again. If we are, though... it’s straight back to the Bee.