Date Night is back in our Marietta HQ after almost 3 months in California. It’s been an interesting time in the restaurant business. We can’t imagine what restaurant owners are going through right now, but fortunately many of them are open, albeit under some seating restrictions. We wish everyone the best as they get ready for “the new normal” in eating out.

Many of our readers have asked us our impressions of the Marietta Square Market. Well, we don’t do impressions (although everyone our age does Richard “I Am Not a Crook” Nixon), but we have eaten at the market many times and do have some opinions about the space and the food. Note: the pictures were taken pre-corona virus and that’s why you see no masks.

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It’s a big food hall, Marietta’s version of Krog Street. The corridors are full of places to eat.

The types of cuisine seem endless: barbecue, bubble tea, Cuban, burgers, pizza, ice cream, Japanese, Thai, crepes, Korean, Indian, middle-eastern, and lobster rolls just to name a few. The bakery and the taco shop are unfortunate victims of the coronavirus and are not going to reopen. We’ll get to most of them (we don’t do Indian!) in future reviews.

Because there is no sit-down table service, it’s a great place for lunch. You have to go one block over to the square for waiters in masks. Our biggest complaint is that you can only get alcohol at the pizza place in the center. So you have to wait for your beer there, and then go wait in a second line for your food. First-world problems for sure.

My favorite place for lunch is the Korean-themed Bullgogi.

The concept is simple: choose a rice (brown, white, or fried), spicy or bland meat (chicken, beef, or tofu) , a ton of vegetables, and make your own bowl. Maybe they should have called it Bowl-gogi.

Here’s my creation. This one has brown brown rice, non-spicy chicken, sprouts, pickled cucumber, avocado, edamame, lettuce and a few other goodies.

When you get the tofu, they fry it up for you while you wait, making it hot and fresh.

While I am designing my lunch, Eve is around the corner at the tiny D’Cuban Cafe.

There’s something from all parts of the world at the Marietta Square Market. The Cuban food is quite the departure from my Korean bowl. She gets the special of the day, which is the chicken ropa vieja bowl.

That’s shredded chicken for those of you who don’t speak Cuban Spanish. It comes with black beans and rice, plantain chips, and some fried plantains.

It is stewed chicken that’s full of unadvertised peppers and onions, so she tastes it for the rest of the day. She probably would have gotten something else had she known it was so full of those pesky peppers and onions.

COVID-19 update: The market is currently closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and has limited indoor seating. There are outdoor tables available.

As we continue to visit other Marietta Square Market vendors, we’ll keep posting our dining adventures.

Comedy of the Week

This week we present The Wrong Missy (2020, on Netflix), starring David Spade and Lauren Lapkus.

Most reviewers have given this film a big thumbs down, but there are actually some funny moments in the movie. It’s obviously not fine cinema and it’s not going to win any awards, but Lapkus (you might have seen her as a prison guard on Orange is the New Black) is quite funny. Almost as funny as the terrible wig that co-star Spade is wearing for the whole movie. No awards for the makeup department either! If you need a 90-minute escape (and who doesn’t these days?), check it out.