Date Night finally makes it to Krog Street Market. We may be the last bloggers to make it here. Krog Street is “geographically undesirable” for us these days as it’s nearly impossible for us to get to Inman Park from Marietta because of traffic in the ATL. The stars finally align for us as we arrive at Krog Street for lunch on our way back in town from south Georgia. Will it live up to the hype, or is it merely a glorified food court?

Let’s go inside to find out.

There’s a Hop City here. And a Hop City bar. My hopes are raised until I find out that the bar is closed on Sundays. You can still buy beer in the Hop City and drink it with your meal. The bar would have been more fun.

You can eat out in the market area or choose one of three much fancier, sit-down restaurants. The critically acclaimed Cockentrice is here. So are The Luminary and Ford Fry’s Superica. We go casual for lunch, opting with the common area. Want to see more of Krog Street? Watch our twenty-second Tastemade video and watch Krog Street come alive.

There are many tempting places to eat and the decision is hard. Dumplings at Gu’s Bistro? Barbecue at Grand Champion? We try two places, Fred’s Meat and Bread and Yalla. They are right next to each other, and owned by the same people that bring us The General Muir near Emory. We loved “The General” on our previous visit there. We could be in for a treat.

At Fred’s, you stand in line to order and wait for your sandwich. Everything that comes out looks great, especially the fries. Eve really wants some, but we pass, gawking at them as they come out. We wait about ten minutes for the sandwich, which I thought was a little long considering how many people were in line in front of us. Although the burgers here are in demand, we must be in a vegetarian mood and order the eggplant and cauliflower banh mi. It comes all wrapped up.

Open up the wrapper, and viola!

Up until today, I am not a fan of cauliflower, but if it tasted like this every time I ate it, I would have it at every meal. Both vegetables are fried, and the addition of spicy mayo makes this a sandwich with a kick. The bread is excellent, although the hot, moist veggies make it a little soggy. We ate it as fast as we could, but by the end, it had lost most of its crunch.

Meanwhile, next door at Yalla…

Yalla bills itself as a Middle Eastern food stall. Like Fred’s you order and wait for your food.

The wait at Yalla is not as long. You can get hummus, falafel or shawarma here as well as fresh-baked pita and luffa breads. We get the falafel bowl.

It comes with five falafels (say that fast a few times) as well as hummus, spicy pickles, tahini yogurt and a tomato-cucumber salad. This is an excellent lunch, but how we wished we had one slice of pita to go with it. We actually save a little bread from the Fred’s sandwich to spread the hummus on. Yeah, we probably should have gone and asked for a piece of pita, but who wants to stand in the line again?

The spicy food at lunch needs something sweet to cleanse our palates.

Behold, there’s a bakery in Krog Street. And you can watch them make the sweets.

It looks like the media doesn’t get dessert because this is the one Krog Street place that hasn’t been hyped to death.

There are five different kinds of cookies today. We get two.

That’s a double chocolate chip cookie, which my date takes a bite out of before she remembers she didn’t take a picture of it. The other is an oatmeal pecan currant cookie. The chocolate chip tastes like a hot lava cake. It’s soft in the middle and full of chocolatey goodness. The oatmeal cookie has oatmeal in it, so relax, it’s good for you. Both cookies help to put out the fire that’s still raging in our mouths from lunch.

The bottom line on Krog Street Market: Maybe it is just a glorified food court, or perhaps it’s more like an indoor food truck park with better seating. Either way, expect to wait in line, order, and then wait for your food. There is a little something here for everyone’s palate, and we enjoyed sampling the three different places for our meal. Parking is an architectural afterthought–it’s a hassle. You can valet, or get lucky like we did and find a space on an adjoining street. We’ll be back, and we will come on a day when the Hop City Bar is open. We really need to try Superica, The Luminary, and Cockentrice.