Winterville hasn’t had more than one restaurant open for dinner since Wok Star closed, but Garfia’s [NOT Garcia’s, no matter what autocorrect thinks] Mexican Restaurant has taken its place at 225 Cherokee Road and is serving lunch seven days a week and dinner Monday through Saturday. Owned by the Garfias family, it features a large menu that includes birria, vegetarian plates, churros, tamales and a full bar.
The West Broad Farmers Market is adding a Tuesday evening market from 5–8 p.m. at Athentic Brewing Company in Normaltown, starting July 4.
Longtime Korean BBQ restaurant Iron Factory, in downtown Athens, has closed, as has the Carriage House on Atlanta Highway near the mall. Slutty Vegan, on Baxter, is “temporarily closed” for the summer, but you can be skeptical.
The Foundry, part of the Graduate Hotel downtown, is now doing Sunday brunch from 10 a.m. –1 p.m., with breakfast taquitos, fancy toasts, omelets, Benedicts, huevos rancheros and more.
A couple of new coffee places are open or planning to open in the near future. Ellianos Coffee, a drive-through franchise out of Florida, is doing a whole bunch of fancy creations and iced drinks made with Red Bull, plus smoothies and some baked goods, on Highway 29 near the Space Kroger. Sunroof Coffee Company, which recently completed an Indiegogo campaign, will open in the Southern Mill development, off Chase Street, later this year, and is doing some pop-ups in the meantime.
A restaurant called La Parrilla is opening up in Beechwood, in what appears to be part of the old Steinmart space, but it’s not the Athens LaPa. Instead, it’s a chain with locations in Alabama and South Carolina, as well as a whole bunch in Georgia. That definitely won’t create any confusion.
Beechwood is also adding a Playa Bowls, a chain that does smoothies, açaí and oatmeal bowls, fresh juices and coffee. Bowls can also be made with a base of pitaya, coconut, chia pudding, a kale blend or banana and topped with granola, other fruits, honey, agave, almonds and the like.
The William—the student apartment complex on Finley Street near downtown that is best known for delaying its move-in date numerous times for kids who had already signed leases—is adding a restaurant: BBQ Chicken. Rather than a slow-cooked purveyor of southern meats, it is, instead a Korean fried chicken restaurant, where BBQ stands for “best of the best quality.” It’s a chain, but Athens still doesn’t have nearly enough Korean restaurants, and this one serves ddeok-bokki (a chewy rice cake-based dish in spicy sauce) as well as breaded and fried chicken from mild to spicy. The same complex is also adding *another* bubble tea shop, Happy Lemon, a chain with locations across the U.S.
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