“You buy it, we fry it.”
Such was the promise at Nicky’s Sea Food — a Southside fish shack that for many years lured passersby on their way home to Adair Park, Mechanicsville, East Point and College Park. Fried fish without that smell that would linger in the kitchen all week if you made it yourself.
People would stop off; pick from such tasty and inexpensive choices as whiting, flounder, catfish or shrimp; wait to the sounds of sizzling oil; and wrap up their hot bundles to go home.
Atlanta has a long, if poorly documented, history of such fish joints. There remain both independent roadside spots like Merkerson’s near West End Mall, and small local chains such as Yasin’s Homestyle Seafood with five area locations.
But Southside streets are replete with the shells of former fish joints that gave up the ghost as people began buying more fish at supermarkets, then finding healthier ways to prepare it.
Recently, Nicky’s joined those ranks.
So the building’s owner, Reza Ashtiani, took a look at his suddenly tenantless restaurant and had an idea. “It has been my idea for years to do a fast-food Persian restaurant,” says Ashtiani, who is an Iranian immigrant. “I’ve been thinking of opening a few locations and thought, why not start here?”
Ashtiani runs Atlanta Marble — the firm next door that produces, fabricates and installs stone for such high-end properties as the Mansion on Peachtree and the Cloister at Sea Island. He would be around all day and could make a point to man the cash register at lunch and get to know his new customers.
So last month, Ashtiani opened Kabobee — a bright, colorful and wholly improbable kabob house that rises like a mirage in the dining desert of an industrial (verging on post industrial) and long-neglected corner of Atlanta.
Empty lots, warehouses and concertina wire mark the spot. The I-20 overpass rises to one side, and the back end of the Spelman College campus abuts the other. The historic residential neighborhood of Mechanicsville lies beyond the highway.
Kabobee must be the most unlikely restaurant in Atlanta.
A cheerful sign announces its presence inside a parking lot protected by chain-link fence. Inside the restaurant, a chef stands in the corner by a tandoor oven rolling out rounds of taftoon flatbread to cook on the oven’s clay-lined surface. The overhead menu offers a small variety of kabobs — either served with white and saffron rice and a roasted tomato, or wrapped with vegetable garnish in a flatbread.
The restaurant has been open for only a couple of weeks, so the concept is still in development. The small menu offers steak, ground beef (koobideh), chicken and salmon kabobs, along with a couple of salads and a daily Persian stew special.
I thought the food needed some fine tuning, particularly the drenched Shirazi chopped vegetable salad that should taste bright with lime juice and garlic, and the well seasoned but dry koobideh. That sandwich wrapped in taftoon was appetizing, but someone needs to tell the chef not to wrap the foil into the rolls of the bread.
But I can’t help but feeling all smiles about this restaurant that is trying so hard to brighten its corner. When Ashtiani brought small nubbins of handmade baklava to the table as a parting treat, I could feel myself becoming a fan.
Ashtiani did a lot to renovate the front space, which is now newly tiled, fluorescent bright and spotlessly clean. But he had the good sense to leave the mural in the back room alone. It depicts a kind of late-night jazz demimonde populated by swanky fish people. Fish ladies in ball gowns with cigarette holders; fish men in zoot suits with smart fedoras.
Kabobee, by the way, is the Persian word for a roadside kabob stand. You know, the kind of place that people would stop off on their way home to pick up something good for dinner. Reza Ashtiani is keeping it real.
Kabobee, 609 Whitehall Street, SW, 404-688-8885. Hours: 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Monday-Saturday.
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