Call this a winning restaurant addendum. Nhan Le, owner of Vietnamese pho joint So Ba in East Atlanta, and Angus Brown, a chef who previously worked at Miller Union, devised a win-win brainchild: Brown, assisted by Le, takes over So Ba’s stoves at 10:30 every night except Sunday and cooks until 2:30 in the morning. Customers congregate on the restaurant’s enclosed patio, a funky den, for the after-hours fireworks. Brown concocted the heady menu of mostly small plates—rife with provocative, primo ingredients that mingle Asian and American flavors—to appeal especially to chefs and other restaurant pros kicking off work as Octopus Bar mobilizes. But with stunners like uni sashimi and homemade pasta with Jonah crab and lobster cream sauce, we can’t imagine this crew targeting such a limited audience much longer.
560 Gresham Avenue, 404-627-9911, octopusbaratl.com
