AMANDA PLUMB: So where do you guys stand on Oxford comma? Are you fans? 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Oh, pro. 

MARLEE GIVENS: Pro. Mm-hmm. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Militantly pro Oxford comma. 

AMANDA PLUMB: Yeah, I mean it's like who isn't? And actually I had to explain it to my friend's mom, because she didn't know what it was. And I kind of explained. And she's, yeah, yeah. I think most people are pro, but-- 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Well, you'd be surprised. 

[GUITAR PLAYING] 

CHARLIE BENNETT: You are listening to WREK Atlanta. And this is Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show. I'm Charlie Bennett in the virtual studio with Marlee Givens and Fred Rascoe. Each week on Lost in the Stacks, we pick a theme, and then use it to create a mix of music and library talk. Whichever you're here for, we hope you dig it. 

MARLEE GIVENS: Today's show is called Atlanta Eats. It's another in our occasional series on how to write a book. 

FRED RASCOE: The book for today is Unique Eats and Eateries of Atlanta, a collection of stories and profiles about restaurants in Atlanta, published by Reedy Press this year. 

MARLEE GIVENS: So how did this book get written in a pandemic, by a first-time author, published by a company out of Missouri? Well, we'll talk to the writer and find out. 

FRED RASCOE: And our songs today are about food, naturally, and also eating food, of course. And also the satisfaction and pleasure of eating really, really good food, starting to get hungry. Also I think all the music sets are going to be filed under the subclass TX, a little spoiler alert. 

And we start with a song about what happens when you eat all that food, you get a nice big satisfied belly. I am hungry. This is Fat Belly, by Homeboy Sandman, right here on Lost in the Stacks. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. 

That was "Fat Belly," by Homeboy Sandman. And this is Lost in the Stacks. Today's show is called Atlanta Eats. Our guest is Amanda Plumb, author of the book Unique Eats and Eateries of Atlanta. Amanda has worked at StoryCorps Atlanta, hosted a radio show on WREK, and co-founded Chow Club Atlanta in 2017. Charlie and Marlee talked to her about her book, a collection of stories about Atlanta restaurants. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: So the most important thing I want to get out of the way. The absolute most important thing about this book is you put the Oxford commas back in. Is that right? 

AMANDA PLUMB: Yeah. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Good. 

AMANDA PLUMB: Yeah, so my dad, Terry Plumb, is a newspaper editor. He's been in the newspaper game like his entire life. You know, reporter, editor, he's retired now. So when I got the book deal, I recruited him to be my first editor. 

So after I wrote each article, I sent it to him, and he gave me feedback. And for the most part, it was great. And this is what I knew going in. He, being a newspaper guy, he's all about AP style. And they don't use Oxford comma, because in the newspaper world, like space is money, right? 

So you don't want to-- you know, they use abbreviations instead of spelling out states. They've never used Oxford comma just because it's like one other space that's taken up. And I knew this because, you know, whenever he read papers of mine in high school or whatever, he always would take out the Oxford comma. 

And I'd be like, dad, like my English teacher says I need to have it. And he would like not hear of it. And so I knew, going into this, like, he would do it. And I tried to, I mean, I just like can't tell him not to, like it's so ingrained in him, to get rid of it. 

And so every time I sent it to him, I had to like add it back in. So I kind of had to do my own re-editing after his edits. Turns out, I didn't even know until I submitted the whole manuscript, that the publisher I'm working with uses the Chicago style manual, which I am not familiar with, my dad's not familiar with. So that was a whole other thing. We had to kind of go back in and figure out the style differences. 

Yes, so there are Oxford commas in it now, no thanks to Terry Plumb. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: I feel like your preparation for this book, before you even knew you were ever going to write it, was this Chow Club stuff. 

AMANDA PLUMB: Yeah. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: So can you tell us what is Chow Club? Why did it happen, and what did you do in it? 

AMANDA PLUMB: Chow Club is an underground restaurant that my friend Johanna Solomon and I started together. And the way it started was, I actually had a group of friends that we would go to Buford Highway every month and try a new restaurant, because, obviously, Buford Highway has such a diverse international food scene. So we try a new restaurant every month and there'd be like eight of us at a table. And we'd just order for the table and share everything. 

It was a great way to try new foods, because like I'm more likely to eat like tendon and stomach when it's not hopefully just for me, but I'm like sharing it with other people. So if there's something we don't like, it's like fine. Like at least we had to try it. And so I was doing that with some friends. 

And one of my friends, Alex, was moving to New York City. And it was like, you got to pick the restaurant this month. He's like, well, I want to get Ethiopian food. I was like, there's not really a lot of Ethiopian food on Buford Highway itself. So I called Johanna, who I knew from other food things, and she's Ethiopian and she's a chef. And I said Johanna, you know, where's the best Ethiopian restaurant in Atlanta. 

And she says, my house. And so we had this idea, like why doesn't she just come over to my house, I'll invite my friends and she'll cook. And we paid her as if we were at a restaurant. Well, people loved it. So we did it again, and we did Ethiopian brunch, and we invited more people. 

And that kind of gave us the idea for Chow Club, which is a monthly event, or at least it was pre-pandemic. And each month we feature a different chef. And I think that's what's really different about Chow Club than other pop-ups. It's that we have a different chef every month. 

They tend to have international roots. So we've had people from Venezuela, Philippines, Korea, Antigua, and Nigeria, all over the world. And they're often people that don't have their own restaurant or even food truck. Like maybe they're starting a catering business, or maybe they just like to cook for fun, and they have a full time job as an engineer. And people who are members of Chow Club can buy tickets online. 

The menu is, you know, we send out the menu ahead of time, so people know what it's going to be. And, during the dinner, you sit with strangers, and the chef comes out and explains each meal, each dish to you. So for some people, really, it's like we have a lot of adventurous eaters. We also have people that want to try new food, but maybe don't know where to start. 

And so it can be intimidating if you go to an Ethiopian restaurant. You've never eaten injira. You're not sure what to order, how to eat it. But at Chow Club we really walk you through it. And you get to meet the chef, which doesn't happen most of the time when you go to a restaurant. 

So, yeah, I've been doing that for a number of years. And, you know, I'm just a big fan of the Atlanta food scene. Like I love to go out to eat, not just some favorite hide-away, but like everywhere. And so I think, yeah, I mean I think I have been training for this job for a while. 

And the other part of that is my storytelling background. Working at StoryCorps Atlanta, I learned a lot about interviewing people and telling stories. And so a lot of that kind of factors in. Even having a radio show really helped. I see a lot of similarities there, because I had to figure out who I wanted to interview, reach out to them, research them, write the questions, interview them, edit it. It's the same thing as writing a book. 

It's just instead of audio, it was on paper, or on a computer. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Was a book always part of your dreams of doing things. Like have you wanted to write a book, ever since you were a little kid, have you wanted to write a book? 

AMANDA PLUMB: Absolutely not. I never thought I was going to be an author. Like that wasn't something I aspired to. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Yeah. 

AMANDA PLUMB: Yeah. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: So you were, if I read the introduction correctly, you were ambushed and recommended into the job. Is that completely true? 

AMANDA PLUMB: Yes, yes, so I got an email, and it was like from Reedy Press, and they were like, we're looking for someone to write a book about Atlanta restaurants. Do you know someone who would like to write it or would you write it? And I was like, at first I was like this is kind of sketchy. Like this just feels like a scam. Like what is this? 

And so it was a while before I reached out. But I scheduled a call. And it turns out I'd been recommended by a friend of mine who is an author with Reedy Press. His name is Jonah McDonald. He's written two books. His first was about secret forests of Atlanta. And then he wrote one called Secret Atlanta for Reedy Press. 

And that's all about these like underground kind of weird places in Atlanta, kind of like Atlas Obscura for Atlanta. And it turned out he had recommend me, and they had done their research, and I talked to Jonah, and it was a legit offer. And so I was really excited to do it. It's part of a series they have. 

So they have Unique Eats and Eateries of Chicago, of Philadelphia, of San Francisco, but they didn't have Atlanta yet. And whenever they do this book, they want to have a local person write it. But it's funny to be thinking of myself as an author, because I don't really identify as one. 

But now I'm like, the whole time I was writing it I'm like, well, I'm not really a writer. I'm not really an author. And now that I actually have it, I'm like, OK, I guess I'm an author now. It's also fun to say it's my first book, because that implies there might be future books. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Very nice. 

MARLEE GIVENS: We'll be back to talk more with Amanda Plumb, author of Unique Eats and Eateries of Atlanta after a music set. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: File the set under - Fred, you were right. TX 715.A89. 

[MUSIC PLAYING ] 

CHARLIE BENNETT: You just heard "I Like Bananas Because they have no Bones," by the Hoosier Hotshots. And before that, Beans and Cornbread by Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. Those were good old-fashioned songs about good old-fashioned food. 

This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called Atlanta Eats, one of our how to write a book shows. We're speaking with Amanda Plumb, author of the book Unique Eats and Eateries of Atlanta. 

What was the first thing you had to decide or come up with, after you agreed to write the book? 

AMANDA PLUMB: So I knew it was going to be about 84 to 90 restaurants. So I started a list. And I just started a Google Doc of list of places that I loved, that I knew about, that I thought should be in there. In that list, is not one ended up in the book. 

A lot of things were taken out for different reasons, or added. I definitely reached out on social media to get ideas of other places, because I didn't want it to be just places that I knew. So that was the first thing. One of the neat things about working with this publisher, though, is they didn't review my list. Like it was totally up to me to decide, because they're not from Atlanta, they're based in St. Louis. 

And so I really got to decide what went in. 

MARLEE GIVENS: How carefully did you define Atlanta? 

AMANDA PLUMB: Atlanta, I think of more regionally. So it's not all city of Atlanta. Obviously, I have Decatur, Chamblee, Roswell, Marietta, went up to Cumming. I didn't go too far south. So, yeah, it was kind of more the region. And the other thing I defined is what I meant by a unique eat, right? 

So I kind of set up my own definition of what it means to be a unique eat. So I didn't want to be like a chain restaurant that you can find in any city. I wanted it to be a place that was either unique to Atlanta, like it started here, or it's only here, or something that's unique within Atlanta. Like there's only one Gullah Geechee restaurant that I know of in Atlanta. 

So I really wanted to tell that story, because I think it's a really important regional cuisine. So that's why I did a vignette on Virgil's Gullah Kitchen and Bar, because I wanted to be able to talk about that kind of cuisine. There's others that are like institutions. Like how do you write this book without talking about the Varsity, right? 

Whether or not you love or hate going to get a hot dog and stand in line with a million other people, it is an Atlanta institution. And there's some rumors about how it got started. So it was fun to talk to the granddaughter of the person who started it, and really kind of hear the truth, or hear their family's version of that story. 

The other thing I realized in writing this book is, in some cities, the city has a dish that they're known for, like you think of Chicago, and the Chicago style pizza and the Chicago hot dog. And I really couldn't figure that out for Atlanta. Like what is the food we have that no one else has? Because we have tons of Southern food and soul food. 

But like that's all across the South. It's ubiquitous. You know, we have a lot of wings. There are things like four of them started here. But it's hard to figure out what is the Atlanta dish. And I think one of the things I landed on is Atlanta is the city of transplants. 

We have people that are native and grew up here. We have people that came from other parts of the country, and other parts of the world. And I really think that's what makes Atlanta's food scene so special. Because I grew up in Rock Hill, South Carolina, we did not have a lot of diversity of food, right? 

Like we had a Chinese restaurant, we had a Mexican restaurant. We did not have Laotian or Malaysian or half the types of things we have in Atlanta. And so that's really one of the things I try to celebrate in the book. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: You called them articles, when we were first talking about them, because they are these sort of self-contained portraits, right? Take us through one and explain how you came up with how you were going to do it. 

AMANDA PLUMB: For most articles I did it the same way, which is I first reached out to the restaurant. So sometimes that was on social media, or I'd find an email on their website. Other times I went to the restaurant. So for example, I'll think about Mi Barrio, which is on Memorial Avenue. It's a family-run Mexican restaurant, actually went there with a friend of mine who's a regular there, because she lives in the building next door. 

And we sat outside and we ate. And she introduced me to Maggie, or Magdalena, who works there. She's one of the daughters of the family. And I briefly explained like what I was trying to do with the book and got her number and texted her when she wasn't working, because, obviously, you can't interview someone in the middle of their shift. And we set up a time for me to go and interview her. 

And so I went to the restaurant, I think it was one morning before they were open. And I just kind of asked her to tell me the story of the restaurant and her family. I would normally do a little bit of research before I'd go in. But some were really hard to find. You have some chefs, like Hector Santiago, who was on Top Chef, who's given a lot of interviews. And then other places, especially many smaller family-run places, they haven't done that many interviews. There's not that much information out there. 

So I really didn't know what the story was. So I would just go and sit there and ask questions. And I think a lot of that comes from my background doing StoryCorps, having interviewed people on the radio. But I was always trying to ask open-ended questions, and lots of follow-up questions, and really just follow the story wherever it went. Sometimes when I got back home, I would do a little bit more research, especially if it's a type of cuisine I wasn't that familiar with, because I also want to kind of educate people. 

So if they don't really know about Gullah Geechee cuisine, or what makes Malaysian food Malaysian food, I wanted to be able to speak to that. So I sometimes add in my own research to give context. But really it was asking the right questions to learn their stories. And I never really went in knowing what I was going to write about. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: So I have to know, research, were you going into old files? Did you look up newspaper or magazine articles? Or is research code for going to eat at the restaurant? 

AMANDA PLUMB: [CHUCKLE] Well, there's a secret tool. I'm not sure if you've heard of it. It's called the internet. So I would optimize Google. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Interesting. 

AMANDA PLUMB: Yeah, so there's a thing called Google. You can search things. And so I'd often be looking at old articles from the AJC, Creative Loafing, or Atlanta Magazine. Sometimes they might be in Bon Appetit or someplace like that. But a lot of times this was local publications. But I will say most of the things I found online were reviews of the restaurant, like what is the food like, what is the decor, not what's the story behind the restaurant. 

And that's really what I focused on in the book. So it's not a review of the food. I mean I do give you some tips about what I think you should order, or I often ask the chefs what they suggested people to order. Some of my research was eating there, but, really, I think that's the stuff I did before I even got the book, you know. Like before I got the book contract I'd been eating out in so many places, which helped me make a list of so many. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: How long did it take to write each of these pieces? 

AMANDA PLUMB: So that's a good question. So I kind of set myself a pace of trying to do one a week, and because I was working full time. But I will say a lot of it is the pre-work, in terms of tracking someone down, setting up a time to do the interview. The actual interview itself was always 45 minutes to maybe an hour. I think as I got more used to it, it was like 45 minutes. 

And then ideally I would type it up the next day or that day, maybe revisit it once, and then send it off to my dad. When he brought it back, you know, I would play with it some more. And then I always sent it to the chefs to get them to sign off on it, because I don't want to be getting dates wrong or portray them in a way they weren't comfortable with. And so I will say the interviewing and writing was not all the work, you know. 

It definitely took longer for each one, because it was everything from first contact. So sometimes I had to hunt people down. Sometimes I had to go to the restaurant and try to find them, because I couldn't get anyone on the phone to talk to me, or I couldn't find an email on their website, all the way to making sure that they'd signed off on it, asking them to send me photos. So a lot of it was like project management skills, in addition to the writing. 

Writing the book was a lot of me being my own boss, and like setting goals for myself. And I didn't always meet them. Or like when I started a new job, I gave myself a month off from the book. So I'm like, I just need to focus on this job. And that became two months, right? 

And then at the start of the pandemic, I was working like crazy. And also all the restaurants were shutting down. It's very stressful. So I'm like, I'm not going to work on the book in March and April when everybody's-- when it's so chaotic. So I took a break then. But then I got furloughed in July. And so I had a three month furlough. 

And I was like, I'm going to finish the book. So I went from trying to do one article a week to doing four. And so I set that goal. I think I just missed it one week, but another week I'd done five. And so by the time my furlough was over, I had a first draft. I'd done all my interviews, turned a first draft in. Then I got laid off. 

So, but I'm still glad I did it, right? Like I'm glad it kind of made me speed up the process. Otherwise, it would not be out now. 

MARLEE GIVENS: We'll be back with more from Amanda Plumb about writing her book, on the left side of the hour. 

LILA JANE: Hi, this is Lila Jane. You are listening to Lost in the Stacks, the research library rock and roll radio show, on WREK. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Atlanta. 

LILA JANE: Atlanta. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Do you like Lost in the Stacks? 

LILA JANE: Yes, I do. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's Lost in the Stacks is called Atlanta Eats. And I'd like to take a moment to appreciate something that Amanda added to the WREK Atlanta interview show, the North Avenue Lounge. She brought the question that she and I tried to ask every guest. I hope you'll answer it yourself when I tell you about it. 

You ready? Here it is. Are you a whack-a-mole person or a skeeball person? Take it as you will, literally, figuratively, psychologically, aggressively, or psychedelically. And we will each find out something about ourselves, if we can declare what we are. A crazed, laughing, mallet pounder, whacking at the moles as they pop up and down, or a focused, silent wooden ball roller, trying to make something happen all the way down the lane. Marlee, are you a whack-a-mole person or a skeeball person? 

MARLEE GIVENS: Skeeball, both literally and figuratively. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Fred? 

FRED RASCOE: Also skeeball. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: As the only whack-a-mole person in the room, I'll just say, File this set under TX652.G374, and just try and keep calm as they keep coming at you. 

[MUSIC PLAYING]  

FRED RASCOE: You just heard Red Beans and Rice by Spearhead, and before that, Food, by the Chefs, appropriately enough. Those were songs about food strengthening our bodies, as well as our minds. 

MARLEE GIVENS: This is Lost in the Stacks, and today's show is called Atlanta Eats, after the book Unique Eats and Eateries of Atlanta. Our guest is the author Amanda Plumb. 

AMANDA PLUMB: I don't think I really thought of it as writing a book. Like I know that's a weird thing to say. But really it was like interviewing people and then telling their story. And I think the nice thing about my project was I never had to think of it as a whole book. So each of my articles stand alone. 

I didn't have to think of it as this story arc that goes all the way through. In fact, it's not even organized by types of restaurant or location, and that was done strategically, because, if some of these places close, when we do another printing, I can kind of just put in new stories, and they don't have to shift everything around because it's not in the right order. 

So I did want to make sure there was diversity, in terms of the types of people, the types of stories, the types of food. I really wanted-- even the parts of town. I wanted to make sure there was diversity. So I did, when looking at the lists, I tried to think about that. 

But each story was so self-contained that it never felt super-overwhelming. So all I had to do was write a short article. And, in fact, all my articles started out longer. And then I had to cut them down. And my dad would help me cut them down. I'm like, dad, I need to lose 30 words. And he was like, yeah, this part was boring. I'm like, cool, thanks. 

You know, because sometimes you need that other perspective, just to tell you what is not interesting, because it is hard to cut things, because I kind of fell in love with like everyone that I interviewed, in each of these restaurants. Even if it's not my favorite place to eat, I love the stories behind them. And I love the people behind them. 

MARLEE GIVENS: I'm curious to know, since your background is in oral history, radio, what's different about interviewing someone for a written essay? 

AMANDA PLUMB: When I've done things in terms of radio I often edited myself out, and really just tried to rely on hearing them as much as possible. So, for example, when I did a show called The North Avenue Lounge, I would do interviews for an hour and a half, and then I'd edit them down to an hour. And a lot of what I took out was me, my small talk, things like that. 

Whereas, I think in writing, it's a lot more of my voice. And there's quotes from people throughout the book, and it's their stories. But I think, since I wasn't just using their audio, I really kind of had to think about retelling it. And I would say, as much as possible, I tried to use their words and be truthful to the interview. 

But I think there definitely is more of me, although, I guess, the opposite is also true in some ways, because in these vignettes, it's all written in the third person. You don't really hear my voice, except in the introduction. I think one place, I think at Ria's, I tell you what my favorite dish was, since I think I do use "my" there. 

But, for the most part, I'm kind of the silent voice, but also the loudest voice at the same time, if that makes sense. And there's something about the permanence of it being on paper. And that's why I think I did some research. Like if someone said something in an interview show, I probably wouldn't go back and research and fact check them, right? Because like they're saying it. 

Whereas, if it's in the book, and someone tells me something that's factual, I'm going to probably go make sure that they weren't wrong, because I'm going to be putting it in paper and writing, and not necessarily attributing it to them specifically. So I definitely did more research for the book. Like for example, with the Gullah Geechee. For some people, Gullah is the older generation, like the original, and Geechee are their descendants. But others it's like Gullahs are from these parts, these states, and Geechee's from this part. 

So it's like one of those things were like the people I interview might have said one thing, but then I go online, and realize, oh, that's actually kind of controversial. Not everybody thinks that way. Like how do I say it in a way that doesn't give people false information, but also honors like this is how this person grew up, this is what their family understood. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: So now that you've written the book, do you find that you want to do more Atlanta history or more food history or something completely different? 

AMANDA PLUMB: I would love to find a way to kind of continue to marry my passion around food with storytelling. I do really enjoy that. And I think, I mean, I am a big fan of Atlanta. Like I can't imagine going somewhere else just to write about the food. I think it's just we have such a rich food scene. 

MARLEE GIVENS: I think restaurants and libraries have a lot in common. And I think that one thing that I will say about the Atlanta restaurant-going population is that we are very fickle. But you have a lot of old, established restaurants on your list, as well. 

What's the staying power, and what do you think, especially post-pandemic, where do you think we're all going to land, in Atlanta, as far as the kind of restaurants that we really want to go to? The way it relates to libraries is, I have the same sort of question about libraries. Like where, what kind of library are we all going to land on post-pandemic? 

AMANDA PLUMB: I mean, I definitely think the pandemic has changed so much about how we eat. I think so many more people are doing take-out. A lot of places have come up with really innovative take-out menus, so maybe a prefixed menu for two. It's a lot market that changes every week, and it becomes kind of exciting, because menus change a lot. 

I know that at Little Bear they started doing to go food. They opened right before the pandemic. And they were doing these to go menus each week. And it really changed the way they thought about doing their menu, because they realized like actually we'd rather just make one really cool menu a night and just serve people that, versus trying to have a whole slew of dishes, that have to have all these different ingredients for a lot of people to make different things. 

Why don't we just make a couple of things really well, and just give people that? And people trust that we know what we're doing. And so I think a lot of places are kind of moving in that direction, where they're kind of paring it down. Obviously, right now people are having a really hard time staffing restaurants, so that's changing. I know Empire State South went to a tasting menu. 

And I asked like why did you make this change now like in April of 2021? It's like, because we don't have the staff to do the normal way we would do it. But I think, I mean, I really hope that there is a resurgence in the Atlanta food scene. Like it needs it. Like the restaurants that have survived have suffered over the past year. 

The people that work in those restaurants have really struggled over the past year and a half. So I'm really hoping that we're all getting out there and supporting local restaurants, especially local restaurants. And I really hope that my book is part of that, that really just encourages people to try a new place or go back to an old staple and really kind of celebrate that they're there. And, you know, tip well and eat a lot of food, and really support the Atlanta food scene. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Amanda, thank you for talking to us today. 

AMANDA PLUMB: This was fun to think about, because I hadn't really thought much about the process of writing the book. So this is fun. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Our guest today is Amanda Plumb, author of the new book Unique Eats and Eateries of Atlanta, out from Reedy Press right now. You can find out more about the book and Amanda at her virtual book launch through Charis Books on Saturday, June 5th. Find out more at CharisBooksandMore.com. That's Charis with a C-H. 

MARLEE GIVENS: File this set under TX-945.L39. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] [NON-ENGLISH SINGING] 

You just heard "Mes Chinois" by Les Entregants. Before that "Chicken Nuggets for Me" by the Fish Police. And we started our set with "Eat Steak," by the Reverend Horton Heat. Songs about going out to get a food that you crave. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Eat a big old steak. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] 

Today's show is called Atlanta Eats. And I think we have to ask ourselves, what restaurant says Atlanta to you? Bonus points for a deeply weird personal reason. 

FRED RASCOE: OK, I'll go. I associate the restaurant Eats with Atlanta Eats. When I was in college in Knoxville, Tennessee in the mid-'90s, often would drive down to Atlanta with friends to see a rock and roll show. And my friends always insisted on stopping at Eats to get some food before the show. Most of the people I went with were vegetarian and they were really into the vegetarian spaghetti at Eats. 

So that was one of my earliest associations with food and restaurant culture in Atlanta. So that kind of says Atlanta to me. 

MARLEE GIVENS: I'm going to say Waffle House. It's not a deeply personal reason, but they're everywhere. They're enjoyed by everyone around town. They have a poet laureate, who is, until this summer, based at Georgia Tech. And it's funny, it used to be the restaurant that said Athens to me, but now it strongly says Atlanta to me. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Atlanta will always be in the late lamented Copper Kettle, which was one highway exit up from the Waffle House near Georgia Tech. And Copper Kettle is where I and my reprobate friends all drank coffee and ate breakfast platters at 2 o'clock in the morning, almost every night. And while I drift into a wistful nostalgic place, let's roll the credits. 

Lost in the Stacks is a collaboration between WREK Atlanta and the Georgia Tech library. Written and produced by Ameet Doshi, Amanda Pellerin, Charlie Bennett, Fred Rascoe, Marlee Givens, and Wendy Hagenmaier. 

MARLEE GIVENS: Today's show was edited and assembled by Charlie at home, just down the street from another Atlanta institution, Bell Street Burritos. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Legal counsel, and let me get this right. Two naked dogs sideways with strings and an F-Boat walking, were provided by the Burrus Intellectual Property Law Group in Atlanta, Georgia. 

FRED RASCOE: You could be a short order cook, Charlie. Special thanks to Amanda for being on the show, to Reedy Press for publishing the book, Charis Books for their porch, and thanks, as always, to each and every one of you for listening. 

MARLEE GIVENS: Find us online at LostintheStacks.org. And you can subscribe to our podcast pretty much anywhere you get your audio fix. 

CHARLIE BENNETT: Next week it's a rerun. And the week after that, we will be back with a super cranky episode about what's bugging us these days. 

FRED RASCOE: Time for our last song today. And even though I haven't been out to eat in over a year, after hearing about Amanda Plumb's book, I am feeling the urge. So while I contemplate whether I'm really ready to make the trek out to get some food, let's close with a song about a destination that I and a lot of listeners, I'll bet, are longing for. This is Restaurant by Los Cripis, right here on Lost in the Stacks. Have a great weekend everyone. Bon Appetit.