Date Night hits Canton Street in Roswell, where we spend some time in the jailhouse, catch trout in a salt factory, and top it all off with a cupcake. It’s a terrific trio of restaurants on the north side as Date Night gives you a three for one deal. Read on to find out who wins the gold, silver and bronze.

There are a lot of restaurants on Canton Street. Our mission is to have beer and appetizers at one, the main course at the next, and dessert at the last one. We have already eaten at four places, the Fickle Pickle, Nine Street Kitchen, Table and Main, and Pastis. Tonight, we start on the far end of the street at Slate Table and Tap.

Like most of the restaurants here, it’s a converted old house with lots of outdoor seating. Because it’s so humid, we opt to eat indoors in the small upstairs eating area. The ceiling is slanted at a funny angle, and tall people should probably not eat up here.

Our waiter is tall, and we can’t imagine how many times a night he bangs his head on that low ceiling. It’s loud upstairs too, with the noise from the bar below echoing off the hard surfaces. It’s not a good place to sit if you want a quiet meal, so sit outside if you want more intimacy.

We begin the festivities wondering where the beer menu is. Our waiter with the bumps on his head tells us that he thinks there is one downstairs, but he tells us most of the beers on tap from a list on his notepad. We choose a couple of local beers (Hampton, GA) from Jailhouse Brewery. Eve gets a Slammer Wheat, and I go with the other Jailhouse offering, the Misdemeanor Ale.

We have had them both on previous occasions, as well as our tour of Jailhouse earlier in the year. The Slammer is a good summer beer, with hints of refreshing citrus. The Misdemeanor is an amber ale that has a hoppy finish.

We order an interesting appetizer, the Itachos, which can only be described as Italian nachos.

They take forever to arrive, because, as it is explained to us, the oven is not hot enough. Itachos are sausage, pepperoni, tomato sauce and cheese, served over pita points. Some of the points are crispy, others are soggy. It tastes really good, but would have been better if all of the pita was crisped.

We settle up at Slate and ease on down the road to the Salt Factory. Salt Factory is located right in the middle of the busiest part of the area. They really should close this part of Canton Street to traffic, which would give it a Bourbon Street feel. Salt Factory is busy tonight, and there are no seats available at the bar. That’s fine, because we are here for our main course.

Since we have already had our beers, we order a couple of waters and split an entree, the crispy trout. They split the order for us in the kitchen.

The trout skin is, as advertised, nice and crispy. So are the onion pieces on the top. Underneath are moist trout, purple potatoes and a nice mound of spinach. The sauce on the outside of the plate begged for a piece of bread to sop it up. By the time we are done with our trout, it’s really crowded. We leave knowing that we got there at the perfect time.

We’ve got room for dessert, and we cross the street to Roswell Provisions, also known as Kelly Kakes.

You can buy nice meats and cheeses here, but we are only here for one thing: the cupcakes.

It’s really hard to pick one from the stack, but we finally choose the Oreo cupcake. They cut it in half for us (well, they screwed it up and made it about 67-33, and I got the bigger piece), and with it laid out on the plate like this, it was easy to have a bite of icing with each bite of cake. You can’t always do that if you are holding your cupcake.

And now, in honor of the Olympics finally ending, we give out our gold, silver and bronze medals for tonight’s date:
Gold–Crispy trout, Salt Factory. Crispy and delicious as advertised.
Silver–Oreo cupcake, Roswell Provisions. It looked as good as it tasted.
Bronze–Itachos, Slate. If only that pita bread wasn’t soggy.

Canton Street is jumping when we leave. Check it out if you are looking for a place to go on your next date night.