Refried Gluttony

Opened on Halloween, Pure Taqueria brings to Inman Park an upbeat, vivid dining experience in the space formerly occupied by Atlanta's lamest Grape. Well, bienvenido. Here is where you come to get your refried gluttony on for under $10. The burgeoning Highland Avenue corridor can use some lively, no-frills dining like this, a place where the seats are plucked from your elementary cafeteria. A place where Lil Jon booms overhead as you munch platefuls of carne asada. A place not to be confused with the much maligned ATL club of the same name. Enjoy generations-old recipes. Sip rare cervesas like Carta blanca, or grow some balls and brave the $1.25 Black Label, a Canadian cousin to Schlitz. There's Pure locations in the burbs as well, but the margarita-drunk haul from Woodstock or Roswell is treacherous, especially with your belly in the way.

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Restaurants • Inman Park / Little Five Points

Master of Mega Beers

So we were stumbling around Phillips Arena before a recent Metallica show when we found it: the 32 oz. New Castle for $6. It made Big Gulps look like sippy cups. Of all places, we were in the CNN Center food court, that cavernous, spacey temple to chain restaurants. In fact, an entire degenerate legion of metalheads was there. We writhed in the food court, a veritable convention of faded black T-shirts and Newsted-era wristbands. We drank openly and plentifully, a merry mass. Some guy told me it's the same deal before Hawks and Thrashers games, these giant beers for all. My advice is to skip the event. Once sufficiently lubed, plop $13 for a CNN tour, ride the heavenly escalator, and take a swing at the wax statue of Larry King, which is rumored to actually be Larry King. At least that's what some other guy said.

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Restaurants • Extended Coverage Area

Highs and Lows

Few are the suburban malls where you can bag discount Coach ankle boots, get your jousting fix and break your neck in a half-pipe in the same hour. Let's be honest--few are that quirky. But by and large, Discover Mills is a fine place for maxing out its namesake credit card. There's Saks Fifth Avenue's Off Fifth (Lacoste slacks for under $30, y'all), Spaha Skatepark, a Kenneth Cole Outlet, a three-story megabar called Jillian's and even a LEGO Outlet for the tikes. There's also a confounding number of shoddy, low-end retailers you might expect in a rundown shopping center, but a little variety never killed anybody. The wise shopper will avoid the naughty-kid infested food court on weekends.

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Shopping • Extended Coverage Area

Cheap and Porky

Go ahead, do a double-take. That logo is what you think it is. A hefty, moronic-looking fellow in a daisy-patterned apron. Presumably, that's Uncle Betty, the ace behind Snellville's best BBQ addition since Pizza Hut plopped sauce on their pies. The oddity that is the business' name is apparently just an attempt at being silly, dashing my hopes of finding good ole boys in Crimson Tide sequins in the kitchen. Whatever the case, somebody knows how to smoke meat and craft sides. The pork plate, which I last tried, is a best-around-these-parts $7.99, replete with a sugary cube of cornbread. You can't beat a pulled-pork sandwich accompanied by one "fixin" and a drink for $5.49. Combo plates (two meats) are sub-$10, which is unheard of Intown. My gut tells me to get back quick while the gettin's cheap.

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Restaurants • Extended Coverage Area

Be Free

Freedom Parkway can seem nonsensical to the uninitiated. If a strand of Atlanta's hair fell to the east and developed a wicked split-end, that would be Freedom Parkway. It jostles at first, and some connections can seem downright unsafe, but once you learn to maneuver "Freedom," you'll find it's a pretty smooth short cut. It beats having yet another mammoth, dingy freeway jutting from downtown, as was proposed in the 1960s. Instead of a wonderland for joggers and dog-walkers and graffiti scoundrels this could be I-485, an expressway hooking up with US 78 near Stone Mountain. Five hundred homes were sacrificed to GDOT bulldozers, but litigation and general bitching from residents eventually halted those plans, leaving a kudzu-eaten wasteland for two decades. With the Olympics coming down south, leaders realized their opportunity and eventually let Freedom, uh, prevail.

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Landmarks • Inman Park / Little Five Points