S IM P LY D E L I C IOUS
R E VIE W
Above: At Joy Café, in the former home of Cafe at Pharr, you can dine in, take out or sit on the patio. Left: Joy Café’s unique and tasty chicken burger is stuffed with spinach and feta and dressed with bacon, provolone, jalapeño aioli and chipotle mayo. It’s shown here with a side of tomato-cucumber salad and a fresh watermelon agua fresca. Below: Joy Café Chef-Owner Joy Austin Beber explains her philosophy of cooking this way: “Take good food and leave it alone.”
Joy of cooking Buckhead’s Joy Café a haven for fresh homespun food feature:
Wendell Brock Photos: Sara Hanna
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very Sunday at sunrise, Joy Austin Beber goes to her Buckhead café and makes a whopping pile of her great-grandmother’s Southern biscuits. Then she drives to Peachtree United Methodist Church to sing in the choir, with the blessed assurance that only her Maker can see the streaks of flour hidden under her robe. After church, Beber returns to Joy Café on Pharr Road (in the former Café at Pharr location), where she serves a hallelujah chorus of a brunch: fluffy buttermilk pancakes; eggs Benedict; and those famous biscuits topped with gravy, sausage and scrambled eggs.
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September/October 2013 | Simply Buckhead
Praise Jesus, and pass the butter. Beber—a self-taught chef who turned her passion for cooking into a catering company, and later her namesake restaurant that opened in October 2011—has little interest in culinary trends or fussy, precious food. But she and her partner-husband, Jon Beber, do adhere to a made-from-scratch gospel that borders on the fanatical. For their menu of salads, sandwiches, burgers and baked goods, the Bebers make nearly everything themselves. They don’t do Boar’s Head. If there’s a turkey sandwich on the menu, they roast a bird. Pastrami for the Reuben? Jon cures
and smokes it, as he does the salmon for the omelets and eggs Benedict. The Bebers make their own sausage, salad dressings, breads and English muffins, granola and herb-infused salt. The insistence on freshness is so firm, the charming and loquacious Joy told me, that there is not even a freezer on the premises. And by the looks of things on my two recent visits, Buckhead has certainly warmed to this casual lunch spot, with its consistently tasty homespun cooking, generous portions, welcome price point ($8 to $10 sandwiches and salads) and laidback vibe. Food may be ordered to go or eaten in the inviting, pale-green space decorated with a collection of framed butterflies. Though the Bebers previously offered a dinner menu with meatloaf, handmade pastas, enchiladas and so on, their B.Y.O.B. policy ran afoul of the city. So for now, dinner service is on hiatus until the restaurant known as “the Joy” gets its beer and wine license. Arriving at the 3 p.m. cutoff for the breakfast-y brunch items on a recent Sunday, I took my time with the menu as the