Johnny Cakes Restaurant

Voted #2 Best Breakfast Restaurant in Atlanta by The AJC.

They say to start each day with a healthy breakfast, but there's nothing healthy about the depression that comes from waking up knowing you're about to eat a bowl of twigs. For more satisfying morning healthfulness, hit Johnny Cakes.

From three NY/ATL transplants, Cakes is a Caribbean-influenced eatery that serves up dangerously wholesome (virgin olive oil; nothing deep fried, etc) breakfast and lunch in a setting that balances soothing peach-tan walls with a wackjob poster collage starring Billie Holiday, Reefer Madness, and SpongeBob. Straightforward but ample most-important-mealness starts with chicken sausage, turkey bacon, cheese grits, and seared salmon, then moves up to whole wheat French toast, omelets, hot oatmeal w/ fresh mango, "Chef Ty's Hash Browns" (sweet & Yukon gold potatoes, peppers & onions), and cornmeal flatbread "Johnny Cakes" -- colonial staples that, like their birthplace of Rhode Island, were once thought to no longer exist. The crustacean-heavy lunch starts at 11am, with items like "Kamal's Seafood Quesadilla" (lobster, shrimp, crab, lemon-dill caper sauce), "Chef Ty's Crab Cakes" (w/ regal-sounding "imperial sauce"), and the Lobster Grilled Cheese, with fresh Brie, plantain chips and, jarringly, a purple pansy blossom (a literary symbol of forbidden love -- in this case, grilled cheese).

For bevs, Cakes breaks out coffee, hot Stash teas, fresh squeezed juices (pineapple, orange, papaya), and Jamaican sodas (kola champagne, ginger beer). There's also an upstairs leather-couched mini-lounge with free wi-fi and a flat screen -- so even as your body's nourished, Tom Sullivan's gripping interview with some guy who teaches the bullwhip will turn your mind to good.