Fini's Pizzeria - Pizza and Garlic Knots

I know I've posted about the Fini's in Flowery Branch before, but I don't think I've touched on the original, and my most frequented location. We first stumbled on this small restaurant while living in an apartment in Duluth. The guy that started it was around all the time and it was neat seeing the owners and his family work the busy space on a Friday night. They've since expanded the empire, but the food quality is still great and the staff is always friendly and accommodating to the pickiness stylish specificity that we sometimes have. We opted for a 12" supreme with spinach instead of onions and a side of garlic knots first. (I was in the range of hunger where you feel like you are going to starve if you don't eat in the next 13 minutes.)

The pizza was great as always. The crust at Fini's is a thinner crust, but not like a cracker. There's enough dough to get the idea that you're eating pizza and then a crispy bottom that holds the slice together while you hold it up. I think I remember hearing the owner one time say he wishes he could just get rid of the forks in the restaurant so nobody would eat the pizza with a fork...I always thought that was so cool. It would be even cooler if he actually did it, but still pretty cool to say in front of a customers. My digression was to get to the point that you can just pick it up and eat it...no greasy floppy mess. The garlic knots were fine. Maybe a little overcooked and hard, maybe not enough butter and garlic, but I'm used to the greasy vampire bombs from Provinos as my garlic standard, so take that with a grain of salt.

Rising Roll in Lawrenceville

I first visited Rising Roll maybe 3 years ago. I thought it was fine for a sandwich place, but the bread on the sandwiches was too thick. A couple months ago I went back after hearing they had a mean buffalo wrap and I'll be damned they did. Since then Rising Roll has made it's way onto the weekly lunch rotation for our lunch crew at the office. This is the Cobb Salad I had there on Wednesday (pronounced winns-day for some reason, perplexes me).  Other things I recommend are the aforementioned buffalo wrap and the roast pork caliente - a pressed flatbread pork sandwich that I think has roots in the cuban sandwich genre.

I really should have taken a picture of this before I mixed all of it up. And probably should have put a dollar bill next to it for scale or something. This was a big ass salad and had 3 thick rows of chicken, bleu cheese and bacon across the top. Win. Win. Win.

I got Italian dressing which, in retrospect, was stupid. Should have gone with bleu cheese  (more is better cheese).

Rico's world kitchen

Gave this place the pepsi challenge for lunch today. Had the spicy BBQ sandwich special with sweet potato chips (desert-like).

Good stuff. I'll go back.