How to Understand the Menu in a Spanish Restaurant

You will find starters under the heading "Entremeses or Entrantes" In this section you will often find subdivisions "Frio" or cold, "calente" or hot. Dishes that you could expect to find in the starter section are listed below:

Ensalada Mixta

A mixed salad, of leaves and tomato, onion, baby corn, and with as many a twelve ingredients in total including egg,pineapple,kiwi fruit,tuna,anchovies, seafood sticks,asparagus,olives,capers,artichokes and any thing else that comes to hand.

Ensalada Pollo

A chicken salad, consisting of leaves and cucumber and roast chicken pieces on a mayonnaise dressing

Ensalada Rusa

A Potato salad with carrots, peas, and tuna

Ensalada de Espinaca con Queso de Cabra

A spinach salad with goats cheese

Entrada frio

Jamon Iberico

Sliced Iberico ham produced from black iberian pigs fed on acorns, similar to serrano ham but higher quality so more expensive.

Lomo Iberico

lean slices of the same iberian pigs grilled.

Queso Curado de Oveja

Cured sheeps cheese

Anchoas en Aceite

Anchovies in oil

Entrada Calente

Morcilla con Pimientos Asados

Blood sausage with roasted peppers

Esparragos Verdes a la Parrilla

Grilled Green esparagus

Verduras a la Plancha con Parrilla

Grilled vegetables

Saquitos de Brick con Puerros y Gambas

Filo pastry parcels of leaks and prawns (shrimp)

Boletus a la Plancha con Ajitos Fritos

Grilled Boletus mushrooms with fried piquillo peppers

Revuelto de Morcilla, Pimientos y Patatas

Scrambled egg with blood sausage, peppers and potato

Revuelto de Boletus, Patatas y Jamón

Scrambled egg with Boletus mushroom, potato and ham

Boquerones en Vinagre

Whitebait (small fish) in vinagar

Soups

Sopa de Pollo con Fideos

Chicken Noodle Soup

Sopa de Pescado y Marisco

Fish and Shellfish Soup

Sopa de Lentejas

Lentil soup

Sopa de picadillo

A soup with shredded chicken, ham,egg, all in a broth

Gazpacho

Cold tomato soup

I hope that this has wetted your appetite for Spanish food, look out for the next article covering main courses.

Chef Liu - Atlanta Restaurant Review

On a lazy Sunday afternoon with a craving for Chinese food gnawing at our insides, my girlfriend and I decided to make a jump over to Buford Highway and try out yet another new spot for lunch (new to us).

So I took her to Chef Liu's. It's on Buford Highway, about a mile ITP.

As we got closer and I pointed out where we were going to be eating, my girlfriend made it clear to me that she did not want to eat at this shack in the middle of a parking lot! After some heated convincing, we opened the sliding glass door (sliding as in, like the one you have going your backyard) and sat at a table closest to the kitchen. Not that we could see through the bamboo shade hanging down and dividing the trailer.

Ambiance? It's so awesome here. With six or seven plain tables set inside a trailer and little decoration other than the strip mall you see on the other side of the parking lot through the glass walls, Chef Liu's is closer to what you might find in other countries that allow food to be sold from run down shacks on the side of the street - at least closer than most places you'll find here in Atlanta.

Cold Noodle dishes, dumplings and soups are the main offerings here, although we also ordered a leek pie - absolutely delicious and we ate it long before our actual meals arrived. The pan fried pork dumplings are beautiful and look exactly like the picture in the overhead wall menu. You won't find these at P.F. Chang's.

You can't compare Chef Liu's to a regular restaurant or most other places. It's simply different and unique. Of course they don't use the highest quality ingredients, of course it's not food you would find at a 'finer' establishment - this is food for the masses, cheap food done well. Your food comes out fast and hot and you feel like you're eating at some secret spot that only the best know about - no matter how many people eat here on a regular basis. About as quick as ordering food at Burger King or Wendy's, but not as bland and generic as Panda Express - this is good, different fast food.

Sitting there with your limited basic mandarin you picked up from pimsleur during your morning commute, you over hear the waitresses talking to each other and with the customers - people who aren't foodies obsessed with finding the most authentic any thing. Just a spot to get good food reminiscent of their homeland while living in the deep south. This place is great and will always be near the top on the list of choices when I get that gnawing feeling for some dumplings and a slightly different menu offering.

Review Summary: 4.6

5221 Buford Hwy NE

Atlanta, GA, 30340

(770) 936-0532