Restaurant Reviews

The General Muir

Bill Addison — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:00:00 GMT

Last October, my best eating buddy passed away unexpectedly. I could count on Leon to stomach four barbecue joints during an afternoon research blitz, don a jacket and tie for dinner at Quinones at Bacchanalia, and debate the fine points of artisan gins over late-night cocktails. A native Atlantan, Leon gamely explored the fringes of his hometown, accepting impromptu invites to try Oaxacan moles in Jonesboro or Korean monkfish stew in Duluth. We kept a running tally of foods we thought the city lacked; for Leon, who was Jewish, an exceptional deli-style Reuben sandwich topped the list. He thought the Star Provisions version got it nearly right—though the corned beef didn’t quite tower high enough and the Russian dressing was a tad too gloppy.

So it was with a rush of sadness and joy that I chomped into the Reuben at the General Muir. Thickly sliced beef, sinus- clearing sauerkraut, Gruyère rather than Swiss cheese for a nuttier edge, crisp rye bread, just enough dressing: I know Leon would have approved.

The General Muir’s co-owners, Ben and Jennifer Johnson, also run West Egg Cafe, where crowds waiting for tables at breakfast and weekend brunch often spill onto Howell Mill Road’s sidewalk. Cousins Properties, which operates the new Emory Point complex on Clifton Road, asked the Johnsons if they wanted to open a second location, but the two weren’t looking to exactly duplicate their first venture. They read an interview with Todd Ginsberg, then chef at Bocado, on the Jewish Daily Forward blog. Ginsberg grew up in New Jersey and confessed in the piece that he aspired to one day open a deli. The Johnsons approached Ginsberg: Was he ready to make that goal a reality?

With Shelley Sweet, West Egg’s general manager, also on board as a partner, the General Muir launched in late January. It takes its moniker from the ship that pulled into New York harbor in 1949 carrying Jennifer Johnson’s grandparents, both Holocaust survivors, and her mother, born in a displaced persons camp after World War II. The name informs the restaurant’s tone: familial, and respectful of the past but with an eye on new horizons.

It’s tricky to label the place, actually. “Jewish deli” doesn’t comprise the gamut of its ambitions. Yes, the counter in the back of the space sells “appetizing”—the word used to describe whitefish salads, lox, and cream cheese bagel schmears—as well as treats like sweet noodle kugel, a gloriously moist sour cream coffee cake, and lemony black and white cookies. And the dining room shines with white tile that evokes New York subway stations. The light streaming through the high windows, though, dispels any geographical illusions: That kind of pure sunshine would never filter down with such intensity amid Manhattan’s skyscrapers.

Though Ginsberg takes many of his cues from delicatessen fare, he’s really drawing from the whole of the Jewish diaspora: the chopped liver, matzo ball soup, potato latkes, and cheesecakes from the Ashkenazi style of cooking that developed in Eastern Europe, and also the Sephardic school that echoes the cuisines of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and even Asian Jews. The kitchen makes no overtures to obey the dietary laws of Kashrut—the Reuben, for example, combines meat and dairy, which is definitely not kosher—yet neither does it serve pork or shellfish, foods forbidden to an Orthodox regimen. It all makes for a fascinating, refreshing entry into a culinary culture that’s underexplored in Atlanta. And it’s all the more thrilling for how exquisite the food tastes right from the get-go.

Breakfast and brunch most eloquently convey the restaurant’s raison d’être. Bring a group and plow into the Maven, a platter splayed with drapes of pale orange lox (cured salmon) and nova (smoked salmon), squares of sable (delicately smoked black cod), and creamy salmon salad. The montage comes with only one bagel, so order extras—and request them toasted—to pile on fish layered with schmears (in flavors like horseradish-dill) and garnishes like tomato slices and capers for acidic pop. Bravo to pastry chef Lauren Raymond for executing such compact, glossy bagels, a rarity in Atlanta.

A dish like Fish and Potatoes reveals the evolution of Ginsberg as a chef. Slices of smoked salmon lie atop remarkably thin latkes (lacy potato pancakes) nestled over a splotch of sour cream as thick as icing. Atop the fish rests a thatch of arugula and tart matchsticks of Granny Smith apple—a substitute for applesauce latkes’ traditional sidekick. The soothing flavors and textures pull at the heartstrings, yet the interplay of ingredients displays uncanny engineering. For years Ginsberg worked the line in fine-dining kitchens (among them Alain Ducasse at the Essex House in New York and the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead) before becoming executive chef at neighborly, midscale Bocado. There he mastered small plates—this summer I’ll long for his salad of sliced peaches, pickled blueberries, duck ham, and pistachio-arugula pesto—and created a sensation with his double-patty burger. At the General Muir his background coalesces as the foods of his childhood gain polish without losing their essence. This is full-circle cooking; Ginsberg has found his true métier.

Also savor the Smoked Hash, a fetching hodgepodge of potatoes, eggs sunny-side up, caramelized onions, cabbage, and peppers with cubes of crisped pastrami—tempting morsels that also show up in the restaurant’s scarf-worthy riff on poutine (fries doused with gravy and cheese curds), served at lunch and dinner. The noontime and evening menus both include the stellar Reuben and a pastrami sandwich that delivers the same primal satisfaction as a forkful of smoked brisket.

Dinner showcases Ginsberg’s most subtle compositions. The masterstroke thus far is prune-filled gnocchi in oxtail ragu, a combination that alludes to the Jewish predilection for meat and fruit pairings with roots in both medieval Europe and ancient Persia. Ginsberg’s main course list is short and in flux, with experiments like lamb shank tossed with pappardelle and accented with North African flourishes like harissa and spiced yogurt. There is, of course, a variation on a double-stack burger, this one gussied up with Russian dressing and an onion roll. I remember how the dinner menu at Bocado grew more daring as Ginsberg settled in, and I expect the same here. Go for the no-brainer dessert: a wedge of Raymond’s cheesecake that is mystically dense yet fluffy.

Dinners can be relatively quiet. At breakfast and lunch, though, the crowds from Emory, the CDC, and nearby neighborhoods already fill the place with the familiar rhythms of a community haven: the clamor of voices and the click of spoons, the charge of caffeine and the appeasement of hunger. The General Muir is instantly a place I want to bring pals. It’s also where I’ll have an occasional solo meal at the long front bar, clutching a Reuben in both hands and remembering one particular friend with whom I wish I could still share my sandwich. —Bill Addison

The General Muir
RATING *** (excellent)
‪1540 Avenue Place
‪678-927-9131‬
‪thegeneralmuir.com‬
‪HOURS Breakfast Monday–Friday 7:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m; lunch Monday–Friday 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner Sunday–Thursday 5:30 p.m.–9:00 p.m., Friday–Saturday 5:30 p.m.–10:00 p.m.; brunch Saturday–Sunday 8:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m.‬

Photograph by Greg Dupree. This article originally appeared in our May 2013 issue.

Rumi's Kitchen

Bill Addison — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 12:00:00 GMT

The parking lot of Rumi’s Kitchen is bedlam on a Saturday night. A line of luxury cars stretches into the street, and the driveway is so slender that incoming vehicles can barely squeeze around those trying to leave. A valet pulls up in one roomy sedan and then leaps away at full sprint to retrieve the next. Departing customers wait by the entrance under a shell-shaped art deco awning, the kind a starlet in a 1930s talkie might huddle under in the rain. The flattering lighting around the doorway obscures everyone’s impatient expressions.

Atlantans expect this kind of weekend gridlock at a steakhouse in Buckhead—but at a Persian restaurant in Sandy Springs? It attests to chef-owner Ali Mesghali’s precisely calibrated formula for Rumi’s, which he relocated a half block over in December: swank, buzzy atmosphere; attentive servers; and a meat-heavy menu with a whiff of the exotic. Mesghali has been fine-tuning his approach for fifteen years. He opened his first venture, Shamshiri, in 1998, around the time a Persian dining culture was beginning to flourish in Sandy Springs. There Mesghali mastered the art of taftoun, crackly flatbread—similar to Indian naan—served as a welcome with a platter of radishes, feta, walnuts, and herbs like mint and tarragon.

In 2000 Mesghali and a partner launched Persepolis, a more ambitious endeavor that drew local Iranian ex-pats and curious food lovers with its sensual menu: silky yogurt dips flavored with sun-dried shallots or cucumbers and herbs, marinated kebabs that run the gamut of proteins, and khoreshes—stews layered with the sweet and sour flavors that typify Persian cuisine. The food succeeded but the room was fusty, a two-tiered layout with columns and candelabra chandeliers. (It looks the same today, though Mesghali is no longer involved.) He also owned the short-lived Shiraz in Alpharetta, which offered a buffet format and sported a too-bright color scheme resembling an unfortunate Miami hotel makeover.

All the elements clicked when Mesghali opened Rumi’s Kitchen in 2006: He taught the cooks his honed recipes, and the atmosphere—chocolate browns and red-hot cinnamon hues, modern but understated—drew a crowd that embraced Persian cuisine in a finer-dining atmosphere. The name was apropos: Jalaluddin Rumi, the thirteenth-century mystic and poet, incorporated everyday foods—spinach, chickpeas, cabbage soup—and wine into his writings on spiritual ecstasy. (“Cook in that fire!/Bake like bread!/Soon you’ll be the prize of every table, the life-giving food of every soul.”)

Rumi’s intimate, seventy-four-seat space turned cramped when it was busy, and eventually its steady popularity began to strain the small kitchen. Last year Mesghali started eyeing a former Midas auto shop, just down the street from his original location, wedged between a Mellow Mushroom and an IHOP. It was huge: 6,000 square feet. Could he make it fly?

The answer is yes—though he brought in some credentialed help just to be certain. Mesghali hired the Johnson Studio to give the long, deep dining room a casual opulence. Sky-blue tile flows through the open kitchen, which includes two barrel-sized tandoor ovens. Leather banquettes surround live potted orange trees. Skylights around the ceiling allow plenty of sunshine at lunch; the glow cast by subtle rows of fixtures is seductively buttery at night. The space holds double the seats of the previous location, so two industry pros are consulting to help Mesghali adjust: Micah Willix, the longtime chef at Ecco who most recently helmed defunct Latitude in Phipps Plaza, is bringing the kitchen crew up to speed. Front-of-the-house smoothie A.D. Allushi, who just moved on from the Buckhead Bottle Bar & Bistro, is running interference in the dining room. (You’ll know him by his signature cockatoo haircut.)

The menu, as the restaurant settles into its new digs, presents what Mesghali knows he does best. Flatbread, so hot your fingers dance around it, quickly arrives with its accompanying platter of radishes and other nibbles. Use the bread to savor dips like kashk badenjoon—fried eggplant drizzled with cream of whey, dabbled with fried onions, and sparked with mint—and mirza ghasemi, sultry smoked eggplant punctuated with tomato and garlic. You might start with a lemony, cucumber-heavy salad; vegetables are scarce with entrees. Mesghali sometimes plays with Americanized presentations of traditional ingredients. For example, he layers squares of flatbread with grilled ground lamb, pickled red onion, roasted tomato, mint, and a lashing of yogurt: Voila, lamb sliders. I’m not usually keen on this kind of tinkering, but I admit the collusion of flavors holds savvy appeal.

The entree section is largely a kebab-o-thon. Shrimp; three variations of chicken, stained yellow from fragrant saffron; four cuts of beef (filet mignon, sirloin, tenderloin, and ground chuck); and lamb either ground or in chops are all pleasantly charred yet delicate in texture. Each comes with a snowdrift of rice—some plain, some sprinkled with fava beans and dill, or lentils or raisins, or puckery dried barberries. You’ll never finish all of it, but shape a separate pile and gussy it up: Smash the roasted tomato that appears on every plate into the rice, sprinkle it with the tart sumac a gracious server provides, pour over extra yogurt dip, or mix in a side of torshi, a Persian take on chutney that includes green chile and mango.

Desserts are largely Westernized: pot de crème infused with black tea and cardamom, a chocolate tart, vanilla ice cream tinged with saffron and rose water and sandwiched between two wafers. I prefer the saffron-orange tart with a shattery crust; it’s currently sold in the adjoining market (which is disappearing in favor of more seating) but will soon make its way onto the restaurant’s dessert menu.

All this adds up to approachable, satisfying meals, but I do yearn to sample a broader range of true Persian dishes. Rumi’s, Persepolis, Mirage a mile up Roswell Road, Sufi’s in Buckhead: They all serve such similar, kebab-heavy menus. In particular, I hanker to try more of the herbaceous khoreshes, rich with fruits and vegetables. I mentioned this to Mesghali. “I’ll be slowly working in new dishes with the familiar ones, so I don’t shock our regulars,” he said. He referenced the lamb neck braised in an herb and potato broth, a fresh addition to the entrees. That was actually my favorite dish from recent visits—the meat was so tender it had already toppled off the bone by the time it reached the table.

“Also,” Mesghali said, “if customers are interested in exploring Persian cuisine further, they can book the chef’s table and I’ll cook stews and rice dishes that aren’t on the menu. It’s possible to do things like that now that I have a large enough kitchen.” Count me first in line. —Bill Addison

Rumi's Kitchen
RATING ** (very good)
6112 Roswell Road, Sandy Springs
404-477-2100
rumiskitchen.com
HOURS Monday-Thursday 11:30 a.m.- 10 p.m.,; Friday 11:30 a.m.- 11 p.m.; Saturday noon- 11 p.m.; Sunday noon- 10 p.m.

Photograph by Greg Dupree. This article originally appeared in our April 2013 issue.

Seven Lamps

Bill Addison — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 13:00:00 GMT

It’s 8 p.m. on a Friday night, and I’m huddled inside the entrance of Seven Lamps, a new restaurant in the northwest corner of Buckhead’s Shops Around Lenox, waiting for a place to sit. The snug, five-sided room incorporates the casual design elements du jour: Reclaimed wood (from a North Georgia mill) cover the floors; old bricks, stacked vertically in varying shades of red and white, make up one wall; porcelain subway tile gleam in the open kitchen. The number of large tables—two six-tops, two eight-tops (one a “chef’s table” by the kitchen counter)—surprises, considering the tapered, angled shape of the space. On a busy night you’re likely to get chummy with strangers, even if you made reservations. “Yeah, communal seating,” one hostess said on a previous visit. “It’s great in theory, but in reality it can be a mess.”

Tonight I’m solo, hoping to snag a spot at the bar that really isn’t a bar: It’s two tall tables pushed together in front of an alcove where bartenders frantically mix cocktails and pour wine. When it’s packed (like it is this evening), the hostess takes control of who sits in this area as well. I’m idling by a front window and watching the well-dressed, multigenerational crowd for about twenty minutes when two people surrender barstools. The hostess immediately ushers over a couple who came in after me. “Hey, what about me?” I say to her. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” she replies. “I thought you were seated already!” When I was standing five feet from you? M’kay.

After another fifteen minutes she finds me a bar vacancy. A mixologist-cum-server soon asks if I’d like a drink. I request a Toronto—Canadian whiskey, Fernet Branca, and gomme syrup, a variation on simple syrup made with gum arabic that renders a silkier texture. “I’ll just need your credit card,” he says. “Oh, I’m eating my whole meal here,” I reply. “Fine,” he says, “but I’ll still need a credit card to secure your bar tab.” Apparently if I wanted treatment like a dinner guest and not merely a tippler, I should have vied for a place at one of the communal tables . . .

Seven Lamps opened in mid-December, and all new restaurants need a few months to calibrate their service (and food, which I’ll get to shortly). Still, I didn’t expect such a disheartening reception from a venture led by executive chef and co-owner Drew Van Leuvan, a veteran of the Atlanta dining scene. Van Leuvan named the restaurant after a 186-page essay by Victorian-era art critic and watercolorist John Ruskin called The Seven Lamps of Architecture. It laid out guiding principles that Van Leuvan found equally germane to the restaurant industry: sacrifice, truth, power, beauty, life, memory, obedience. All that leaves room for a gracious sense of hospitality, right?

Van Leuvan’s employment history reads like a synopsis of Atlanta’s culinary evolution over the last dozen years. He spent time at fine-dining pantheons like Seeger’s and Asher in Roswell. He briefly operated a company that sold pastas to restaurants; became chef and partner at Toast on Fifth Street, serving agnolotti and fun burgers; married Southern and South African cuisines at Saga on Crescent Avenue; and dabbled in Tang-flavored jellies at Spice on Juniper Street. In 2007 he hopped aboard with Concentrics Restaurants, making pasta at Tap and then jumping over to One Midtown Kitchen as executive chef, which he left last year to open Seven Lamps with four partners, including Rob Caswick, Dave Pazienza, and Jeff Newsham, who operate Hearth Pizza Tavern in Sandy Springs.

The menu at Seven Lamps gathers the influences and highlights that span Van Leuvan’s career. The breadth of the cooking and the supper club atmosphere invite diners to construct a meal that matches their mood. I suggest concentrating on liquor and light bites. Start with one of beverage manager Arianne Fielder’s elaborate concoctions; my favorite is the Stiletto, a cocktail anchored by Rusty Blade barrel-aged gin that zigzags through herbal nuances from vermouth, bitters, and Suze, a French aperitif.

Sip as you munch on dishes from the menu’s right side, a collection of oysters, cheeses, charcuterie, and elevated bar-food nibbles called “savouries,” which offer the kitchen’s most noteworthy dishes thus far. Tender lobster chunks tossed in celery aioli arrive in a warm steamed brioche roll with the plush texture of bao, the Chinese steamed buns. Crisp, oval-shaped cottage fries come with a dip based on Duke’s mayonnaise. Fried oysters doused in a hot sauce that burns like lamp oil is a witty riff on the Nashville-style hot chicken currently adored by local chefs. It’s high oyster season, so I hope the kitchen begins to source more exciting varieties than familiar bluepoints and Kumamotos.

The menu’s left side—a roll call of ten small plates, four handmade pastas, and four entrees—wades into iffier territory, both in conception and execution. A few creations prevail. I remember how beautifully Van Leuvan made soups at Toast, and he proves it again with two recent efforts: a warming sweet potato variation spiked with cider and apple brown butter, and also a velvety potato and roasted garlic potage. Jalapeño vinaigrette heats up a salad of grilled baby gem and endive lettuces enlivened with the lovable trio of avocado, blue cheese, and pancetta.

But Van Leuvan’s sweet tooth has taken over his palate: Something honeyed or caramelized or fruity shows up in half of his dishes. Candied orange peel with duck confit, or a complex sherry caramel over a savory tarte Tatin with mushrooms and greens? Fine. But bacon jam in a beet salad or crumbled gingerbread over gnocchi with spinach, pear, and Gorgonzola takes it too far. The sugary jolts distract and eventually become redundant.

Van Leuvan might also leap from architecture to fashion for advice and heed the words of Coco Chanel: “Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and remove one accessory.” A pork chop doesn’t need two substantial starches: Choose the pommes macaire (fried mashed potato cakes) or roasted sunchokes. Skip the overbearing andouille sausage with the tagliatelle and clams. Lose the bacon jam with the beet salad already gussied up with dates, fennel, and Bûcheron cheese. No need to mar affogato—the classic Italian dessert of vanilla gelato with espresso poured over it—by blending ice cream with espresso pastry cream. It makes for an oily mouthful.

Van Leuvan is an old pro; I’m betting that in six months, Seven Lamps will be a finely tuned operation. And it’s heartening to find indie spunk among this stretch of retail stores that otherwise feels forsaken in the evening. But for now, my advice for patrons is to drink up, keep it small and simple, and consider dropping in on a weekday, when the greenhorn staff has the presence of mind to be welcoming. —Bill Addison

Seven Lamps
RATING * (good)
3400 Around Lenox Road
404-467-8950
sevenlampsatl.com
HOURS Daily 11–2 a.m.

Photograph by Iain Bagwell. This review originally appeared in our March 2013 issue.

Sushi Huku

Bill Addison — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:00:00 GMT

A friend and I were sitting at the bar at Sushi Huku—an unassuming Japanese restaurant off Powers Ferry Road near the northern intersection of I-75 and I-285—savoring the omakase, a word that roughly translates as “leave it to the chef.” Owner Jerome Oh, who introduces himself to customers as “Jey,” began our meal with an appetizer plate of three exquisite bites: a sliver of gently chewy abalone topped with a julienne of white mountain yam and sitting in a pool of earthy sesame sauce; octopus sunomono, a vinegary salad tangled with cucumber and other vegetables; and, the supreme treat, uni (sea urchin) on a lotus root chip, crowned with a small square of fat from bigeye tuna. Oh scorched the fat swiftly with a blowtorch so it melted into the uni, in the same way that many modern Southern chefs love to heat shavings of cured lard over a steak. Rhapsody.

Next to Oh, another chef was concocting a variation on oshizushi—a type of pressed sushi roll that originated in Osaka, Japan—with a distinctly Americanized deluge of ingredients. He layered tuna, yellowtail, salmon, and shrimp in a rectangular box, then covered the seafood with rice, masago (fluorescent orange roe), streaks of spicy aioli, crunchy shards of tempura batter, avocado, and another layer of rice before compressing the mélange and adorning it with more fish, dots of Sriracha, and hillocks of green roe. Squiggles of sauces were artfully arranged on the plate, finishing the edible carnival. A family of four at a nearby table wolfed it down and soon moved on to another roll filled with crab salad and shrimp tempura.

It’s the conundrum for ambitious Japanese restaurants: Do you specialize in true-minded, mysterious ingredients served with a side of ritual, or do you indulge popular tastes with psychedelic sushi rolls? To succeed, most places must please mainstream palates, often the bulk of their business, but they also hope to satisfy their traditionalist regulars with seasonal specials and options like omakase.

The culinary F-word—fusion—may be passé when it comes to pan-Asian aberrations like lemongrass quail over wasabi mashed potatoes, but the East-West sensibility still thrives in establishments with sushi bars. We expect it at Buckhead’s Twist, which flaunts a roll like the B52, stuffed with seafood, asparagus, and cream cheese before a dunk in the deep fryer. (Care for an appletini to wash that down?) But gimmicky adaptations are now mainstays in more serious Japanese restaurants too. Among the blend of classics and innovations on the menu at Buckhead’s glam Tomo, for example, is a cylinder-shaped fever dream featuring yellowtail, red pepper, micro greens, and roasted garlic, dressed with a sake-Gorgonzola sauce. Nearby Taka offers the Diet Coke roll, striped with red and white tuna, as homage to our hometown Fortune 100 marketing genius. Even Buford Highway’s Sushi House Hayakawa, a favorite of Japanese expats, serves your basic California roll, an invention of 1970s-era Los Angeles when sushi first started becoming a phenomenon there.

Sushi Huku straddles the divide between purity and faddish invention admirably. Oh, a Korean American who grew up in L.A., worked in several middle-of-the-road sushi joints in the San Francisco Bay Area. A colleague asked him to help set up a restaurant in Berkeley; his parents, who had moved to Atlanta, came to visit and were impressed with how efficiently he’d engineered the operation. They offered to help him find a place of his own. In late 2007, the family bought Huku—a squat brick building set in a small plaza anchored by a Publix—from original owners Kimio and Kiyomi Fukuya. (Their daughter, Jackie Fukuya-Merkel, opened Bishoku in Sandy Springs in 2009.) Huku fell off the foodie radar for a couple of years, but Oh slowly earned a new set of loyalists. Then bloggers began discovering on- and off-the-menu dishes made from time-honored Japanese ingredients that Oh had been mastering.

My first experience at Huku was a few months back. I stuck to the printed list my first dinner, ordering typical, correctly executed Japanese dishes like gomae (blanched spinach in a subtle sesame sauce), hamachi kama (yellowtail collarbone filled with sweet, supple meat), and miso soup studded with clams, a beautiful contrast of salinities. I fell into the groove with the Lambada roll, filled with spicy tuna and salmon and then draped with avocado and dotted with eel sauce, orange roe, and scallions. The colors reminded me of a tropical tree frog, but hey, it is hard to resist such mouthfuls of gloppy goodness. The classicist in me preferred the Battera, a simple, pressed oshizushi made with marinated mackerel, minty shiso leaf, white kelp (less chewy than other seaweed wrappers like nori), and pickled ginger. Kindly servers kept me supplied with chilled sake and brought my tablemate glasses of Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. At a subsequent lunch, I staved off the winter chill with nabeyaki udon, thick noodles that retain their texture in broth bobbing with mushrooms and egg and fish cake. Shrimp tempura, part of the dish, was thoughtfully served on the side so its batter wouldn’t go soggy.

It’s the omakase meal with Oh, though, that makes me long to return. I went with a buddy who’s a Huku regular, but from Oh’s enthusiasm I can tell he’s happy to usher any willing eater through a series of exquisite morsels. Just call ahead first and expect to come in when the crowd is slightly thinner—say, on the early or late side of a weekday. After the warm-up appetizer plate, Oh arranged platters of sashimi in front of us that included seared tuna belly, surprisingly mild horse mackerel with shimmery silver skin at the height of its season, and a condiment of fresh wasabi stem that’s like the Japanese answer to salsa verde. He chatted unobtrusively while he worked, giving us the lowdown on whether a certain fish came from Japan or domestic shores. Servers brought out hot dishes from the kitchen: tender beef tataki, barely seared and seasoned with black and white sesame seeds as well as salmon roe, with half a lime on the side to squeeze over. Chawanmushi, a steamed egg custard, soothed, though I would have loved to have seen more traditional additions like gingko nuts among the nuggets of shrimp and pork.

Oh next set down a simple uramaki roll, the rice on the outside, packed with salmon belly and tamago (silky Japanese omelet). Then, the most intimate part of eating at a sushi bar: Oh started cranking out nigiri, arraying tapered slices of fish, scallop, and shrimp over fingers of just-warm vinegared rice, one after another. We ate them as fast as he could make them. He looked at us and raised his eyebrows. Still hungry? He knocked out a more elaborate roll with sweet eel sauce (a deft stand-in for dessert) and then a couple rounds of nigiri before we finally groaned. “Man, you can eat,” he said, shaking his head at me. Yes, but only when I’m this impressed with the food. —Bill Addison

Sushi Huku
RATING ** (very good)
6300 Powers Ferry Road
770-956-9559
sushihuku.com
HOURS Lunch Monday–Friday, 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.; dinner Monday–Saturday, 5:30–10 p.m.

Photograph by Greg DuPree. This review originally appeared in the February 2013 issue.

678

Bill Addison — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 13:00:00 GMT

Korean barbecue restaurants—where meals revolve around ribbons of meat sizzling on individual tabletop grills—may well be the Japanese steakhouses of the new millennium. In the 1960s and 1970s, Benihana and its brethren seduced diners with Westernized teppanyaki—nubs of beef, chicken, or seafood and tangles of sprouts flung around countertop hibachi griddles by knife-juggling cooks. Minimalist sauces spiked with soy sauce, vinegar, and ginger prepped our palates for more faithful expressions of Japanese cuisine that eventually became American obsessions, like sushi and, more recently, true-minded ramen.

Korean cooking needs a similar conduit. Pundits have been predicting its ascent for decades. Ruth Reichl, ex–editor in chief of defunct Gourmet magazine (which I still miss), pronounced that sweet, salty, kimchi-peppered "Seoul food" would be the next crossover hit in 1997, when she was restaurant critic at the New York Times.

It’s only now really catching on, mostly through unintimidating gateway dishes. The Kogi BBQ food trucks in Los Angeles, for example, launched in 2008 and serve kimchi quesadillas and tacos filled with short rib and dressed with cabbage and pickled cucumbers. Those creations are now imitated across the country (you can find serviceable renditions in Atlanta at the Westside’s Hankook Taqueria).

I wager that the cuisine won’t reach mainstream adoration until a savvy entrepreneur figures out how to package the Korean barbecue house experience for the meat-greedy masses. Don’t wait for a dumbed-down interpretation, though: Korean barbecue culture already flourishes among the Asian populations in Duluth and along Buford Highway.

Chosun Ok in Doraville is a destination for the basics. Order kalbi (sliced short ribs steeped in a marinade that includes garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce, and sugar) and bulgogi (slivers of boneless ribeye tossed in similar flavorings), which servers cook at the table over a built-in grill powered by charcoal. As at every Korean restaurant, the meal is punctuated by banchan—side dishes that may include kimchi, pickled sprouts or chile peppers or daikon (a crunchy radish), and potato salad. Han Il Kwan down the street offers similar excellence with more family-friendly service than Chosun Ok.

Venture to Duluth for restaurants that specialize in a variation called "samgyeopsal," or pork belly. Honey Pig, which opened in 2007, may be the most widely known Korean restaurant in the metro area, with its accessible atmosphere accented with stone, lacquered woods, and cushy tan chairs. Bacony slabs sputter on a domed griddle, and then servers stir-fry rice and vegetables along with any leftover meaty bits for a splendidly greasy finale. Iron Age launched two years later, sporting a military theme with staffers decked out in dark uniforms, though I prefer the quality of meats at Honey Pig.

678, the latest entrant in the field, set up shop last spring. It fuses styles by featuring pork and beef equally, and it weaves in some fresh flourishes. Its long, rectangular building sits next door to a Waffle House—a quintessential East-West panorama in the area surrounding Gwinnett Place Mall. 678’s interior is fetchingly spare: cathedral ceilings lined with dark-stained woods, concrete floors, enormous vent hoods over each booth to suck up the smoke. Visual splash comes courtesy of giant wall-mounted screens, predictably replaying Psy’s video sensation "Gangnam Style" (with 834,481,172 views on YouTube as of this writing) throughout the evening.

And the husky dude with the mugging expressions showcased in life-sized cutouts? That’s Kang Ho-dong, a Korean pop culture fixture who’s a cross between Ed Sullivan, Hulk Hogan, and Adam Sandler. A former wrestler and comedian, he now hosts the variety program Star King and is a partner in this growing chain of barbecue restaurants, with locations across South Korea and also in Hawaii and Los Angeles. (The restaurant’s name isn’t a riff on the Atlanta area code; its digits add up to twenty-one, a lucky number in Korea.)

Ho-dong flashes you a double thumbs-up as a server grabs laminated menus and directs you to a table. The menu offers eight versions of pork, priced from $14.99 to $21.99 for generous single servings, and nine choices of beef that range from $18.99 to $24.99. Crowds might go for massive combo platters that cost up to nearly $120. And an all-you-can-eat option for multiple pork dishes comes in two ranges, $25.99 or $29.99 per person, but you have to possess the voraciousness of a python to swallow all that meat. I speak from experience.

Start with the pork belly and either the sliced ribeye, satisfyingly straightforward, or the sirloin steak for the contrast of its marinade. (Other noteworthy selections include pork belly doused in chile paste, boneless short rib, stringy but intriguing pork neck meat, and pork butt "seared" on a slotted grill cover rather than directly over the flame.) After you order, a busboy carts out a smoldering bucket of charcoal. Another staffer will fiddle with a dial under the table: Yes, these grills have gas burners to augment the heat when the coals start to flicker. Deceptive, but also practical.

Other waitstaff emerge from the kitchen with sides and condiments, including banchan like vinegary blanched broccoli, paper-thin slices of pink beets, and, of course, kimchi. They aren’t the most precisely seasoned banchan I’ve had, but I eat them gratefully to offset the unctuous proteins. A segmented metal ring is set over the tabletop pit, and one section is filled with beaten egg that resembles the mixture a line cook uses to make omelets at a brunch buffet. It sets slowly; scoop it into a small bowl to savor before it browns on the bottom.

Here come the headliners: Strips of pork belly hit the mesh metal net laid atop the grill, the meat’s striated reds and whites as bright as candy canes. It crackles and undulates over the flame, and servers remain vigilant, turning the pieces with tongs and then snipping them into morsels when they’re ready. Eat them plain, dip them in a concoction of soy sauce and sweet wine revved with garlic and jalapeños, or swipe them through mildly funky fermented bean paste. You can wrap them in lettuce leaves or drape them over a makeshift salad of romaine and scallion shards dressed in a chile-laced vinaigrette. After a few minutes, any remaining tidbits get pushed to the edge of the grill and on goes the next round.

You take this meal at your own pace. Families with young children may power through their dinner in forty minutes, while a gathering of older men can sit for hours, sipping beer or sakelike soju. Even before you reach the car you realize your clothes reek of meat and smoke and grease. It’s so worth it. —Bill Addison

678
RATING ** (very good)
3880 Satellite Boulevard, Duluth
678-417-6780
HOURS Monday-Saturday 11-2 a.m.; Sunday 11 a.m.-midnight

Photograph by Caroline C. Kilgore. This review originally appeared in our January 2013 issue.

Vin25

Bill Addison — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:00:00 GMT

No genre of restaurant may be trickier to pull off in Atlanta than the wine bar. It doesn't quite jibe with our character. In walking cities like New York and San Francisco, where wine bars flourish, they pop up as small, intimate hangouts—boozy versions of coffeehouses—or transform into cheffy showcases that glamorize charcuterie and dote on obscure wine varietals from France and Italy.

In driving cultures like Atlanta, where we tend to hunker down at one establishment for the night, light bites like salumi and cheese plates alongside glasses of Prosecco or Pinot Noir don’t suffice: We require heftier sustenance. Even Inman Park’s tiny Krog Bar, which serves forty to fifty wines by the glass, began in 2005 with a simple menu including chicken liver pâté and finger sandwiches but eventually wove stouter dishes like seared duck and garlic shrimp into the mix as well.

Then there’s the matter of taste. Right now we’re all about craft beer and bourbon cocktails. Wine, though not wholly rejected, often comes across as the foreign exchange student at a frat party. It needs a sympathetic translator.

Which is why, as a wine lover, I’m rooting for Phillip Cooper. He opened Vin25 at the end of August in the former Mittie’s Tea Room cottage just off Roswell’s Canton Street. Tall with a thicket of dark hair and an easy grin, “Coop” (as his regulars call him) has a J.Crew charm that can convince Chardonnay habitues to dabble in Austrian Grüner Veltliner or Sardinian Vermentino.

He began his restaurant career as a valet and bus boy at Ray’s on the River. But he’d always had a fascination with wine—his father is a Baptist minister, and as a child, he pretended the grape juice taken at communion was a fine Bordeaux—and he convinced owner Ray Schoenbaum to help pay for his sommelier training.

The chef at Vin25, Robert Rambo, was previously sous chef at Ray’s at Killer Creek in Alpharetta, where Cooper worked as wine director. The two would sit down after dinner shifts with plates of food and a bottle of wine to discuss ideal pairings, and Cooper knew he’d found the man to run the kitchen of the business he would soon open.

He also nabbed a smart location at the right time. Over the last five years, Canton Street has mushroomed into the metro area’s most boisterous restaurant row—think Virginia-Highland but with twice the foot traffic. The boom began with affordable drop-ins like Ceviche and Salt Factory pub. Slowly, though, more upscale efforts appeared, including Little Alley Steak, which opened this past February, and Southern-themed Table & Main, which launched last year. Crowds now fill their tables nightly too. Would there be enough interest in this already-congested scene for a wine bar?

The early answer is yes. Pull open Vin25’s knotty alder doors, embellished with ironwork that resembles treble clefs on sheet music, and you’ll find a cheerful gathering most any night of the week. A renovation removed all evidence of a Southern lunchroom: The space, which seats fifty-three including the welcoming bar, now evokes a wine-country hideaway, with a hodgepodge of woods and globe-shaped, bamboo chandeliers hanging over the center of the dining room.

Soon one of the professional but entirely unpretentious staffers will ask you what you’d like to drink, and the fun begins. Friendly options fill out the list of two dozen wines by the glass: Pinots from California and Oregon, Chardonnays from Russian River and Burgundy, Cabs from Napa, Sonoma, and, if you’re up for a more adventurous sip, Lebanon. Cooper also slips in some geekier Old World options like a minerally 2010 Chateau du Trignon Roussanne with aromas of peach and pineapple, and a 2005 Dehesa la Granja Tempranillo that tastes the way a blackberry patch smells after a summer rain.

My one initial complaint is that there’s not yet any bubbly by the glass on the list. Most of the wines by the glass go for $8 to $14, though the restaurant also houses a small Enomatic system for preserving and dispensing pricier wines. You buy a card from the restaurant with a set amount of money (like a gift card), insert it into the machine, and then sample from among eight bottles—say, a juicy Merlot blend from Bourdeaux sold for $3 for a 1 ounce splash, $9 for a half-glass, and $18 for a full pour. It makes for an entertaining DIY tasting flight and a table crammed with stemware.

Cooper knew that succeeding at a wine bar would mean offering a full menu of small plates and entrees. Ironically, the snacks—the classic couplings with vino—are the kitchen’s weak point. A couple of tidbits excel: Crisp, molten bacon and cheese arancini (fried risotto spheres) pair satisfyingly with sparkly, and a revolving selection of oysters matches the refreshing crispness of a Sauvignon Blanc.

But the cheese and charcuterie plate bores: A typical assortment includes two slices of duck ham, a scoop of fresh chevre, some cubed cheddar lightly smoked in-house, and several mild slivers of chorizo. At a time when Georgia purveyors are curing suave versions of ham and salumi, and local dairy owners are aging poetic, bloomy rind cheeses, this platter needs some regional verve to rescue it. Ditto the daily spreads, served on wan crostini that taste like grocery store baguette topped with snoozy pimento cheese or listless pâté.

The meal improves with a frisée salad topped with a poached egg, its yolk warm and runny, and draped with tequila-cured salmon. It gets even better when the entrees arrive. Steer toward meatier choices like a thick boneless pork chop, tender but with a desirable bit of chew, flanked with sauteed endive and, to contrast the bitterness, a chutneylike apple mostarda. Flatiron steak (a shoulder cut) arrives sliced, with a pile of fingerling potatoes pan-fried in duck fat nestled next to it—the model of a comforting bistro dish. I hope a recent special of lamb shank with astounding creamed cabbage, the flavors mellow and rich and unified, makes it onto the main menu.

Let Cooper suggest wine with dinner. Out of a list of nearly 120 bottles, more than half of them fall in the sweet spot between $40 and $70, and a dozen dip under that price. The man scrupulously avoids upselling: Every time I asked for a recommendation, he started with wines in the high forties. When I did splurge—on a fascinating, schizophrenic $80 Pleiades Lot XXI blend of nine grapes from California—Cooper told us about the eccentric winemaker, Sean Thackrey, and promised to buy it himself if we didn’t like it. We loved it. But it was a Tuesday on a busy week, and after he decanted the wine, I asked him to pour nearly half back into the bottle so we could take the rest home. “Just a bit more?” he asked. “It’ll go so nicely with the bacon-pumpkin doughnuts you ordered for dessert.” Sure, twist my arm. One more splash. —Bill Addison

Vin25
RATING ** (very good)
25 Plum Tree Street
770-628-0411
vin25.com
HOURS Tuesday–Thursday 5–10 p.m.; Friday–Saturday 5–11 p.m.; Sunday 5–9 p.m.

Photographs by Greg DuPree. This review originally appeared in our December 2012 issue.

Watershed on Peachtree

Bill Addison — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 13:08:00 GMT

At 5:50 p.m. on a Wednesday, I've sidled up to the four-sided bar at Watershed on Peachtree to wait for a plate of fried chicken. Several couples and solo diners already have the once-a-week special in front of them: We know to arrive early before the chicken runs out (usually long before eight o’clock). Many of us mastered this routine at the original Decatur Watershed, which closed last August after a thirteen-year run. There the chicken, which earned so much press it practically needed its own agent, was served on Tuesday evenings.

Its mystique endures at the restaurant’s new south Buckhead location, at the base of the Brookwood Condominium building. But don’t expect nostalgic allusions to the old spot. The move is part of a deliberate reboot of the Watershed brand.

Decatur’s converted-garage funkiness has been traded for a polished space designed by Smith Hanes, who’s made his reputation by giving Ford Fry’s restaurants (particularly his latest, the Optimist) understated elegance.

Watershed’s dining room—with its high ceilings, beige color scheme, and rows of lights covered in bell jars—exudes the studied neutrality of a museum cafe. The bar has spunkier character. Hanes evokes a rustic, nautical feel through varied use of woods: Pecan planks with subtle gradations of pinks, tans, and grays stretch across an angled ceiling; grainy oak covers the floors; tables are made of ash with a smoky hue; and the bar itself is fashioned from one big fissured sycamore, its edges buffed but undulating.

The only visual acknowledgment to the past is a hanging quilt embroidered with an abbreviated version of the chicken recipe—bathe in brine and buttermilk, simmer in lard and butter flavored with country ham—created by longtime Watershed executive chef Scott Peacock (who departed from the restaurant in 2010) and his late mentor Edna Lewis, the African American chef, cookbook author, and Southern food preservationist.

Peacock’s presentation of the fried chicken included four white and dark pieces with mashed potatoes, green beans, and two small biscuits; it cost $19. The Buckhead iteration includes four pieces and two biscuits for $14.50. Vegetable sides like grilled radicchio or sauteed kale can be ordered separately.

The new biscuits are larger, more dense and flaky than Peacock’s powdery rounds. These remind me of homier versions of what you’d get from Popeye’s, and I don’t mean that as an insult. The chicken has the texture I remember—the coating sheer and crackly, not overly battered—though the flavor, while rich, lacks the porky undertone from the ham-infused frying fat that used to come through so clearly. Still, this undeniably remains among the area’s finest fried chicken.

None of these shifts in style or address surprise me. I miss the heartfelt purity of Peacock’s Southern cooking, so rare in our dining scene, but it was time for Watershed to reinvent itself. Owners Ross Jones and Indigo Girl Emily Saliers hired Joe Truex as executive chef and partner after Peacock’s exit, and the transition wasn’t easy. Truex’s experimental, globally influenced approach, which worked so well at his previous restaurant, Repast, clashed with the Peacock holdovers; it made for a schizophrenic dining experience, and it confused customers.

In fresh digs, free of the lingering shadows and with all but a handful of the old standby dishes expunged, Truex’s talents finally shine. He’s hardly a regional traditionalist: Hawaiian tuna poke was a special one recent evening. And though Austrians first settled in Georgia in the 1730s, I doubt those immigrants would have recognized their culture in a breaded jumbo sea scallop “schnitzel” topped with a fried quail egg. But his pan-Southern cuisine has charisma and connects with the Atlanta audience, as steady, enthusiastic crowds in the new space confirm.

Start with shareable snacks and appetizers. Nibble catfish goujonettes—essentially gussied-up fish sticks with a side of spicy slaw—while sipping a glass of Champagne or sparkling rosé from the succinct but diverse wine list. Embrace the calories with hunks of pork belly painted with cane syrup, which you wrap in Bibb lettuce leaves and then swipe through a mixture of Dijon mustard and soy sauce. Slurp roasted oysters given a pungent, sophisticated bump from anchovy-lemon butter.

Truex and his chef de cuisine, Julia LeRoy (who most recently ran the short-lived LeRoy’s Fried Chicken), execute a menu that effortlessly glides between uptown and down-home. Sapelo clams sit submerged in a tomatoey broth with soft, earthy lady peas and floating threads of meat from smoked ham hocks, a humble but brilliant interplay between sea and land. Salmon tartare in soy vinaigrette comes across much tonier, dressed with chives, jalapeño, and, for crunch, Indian pappadams.

A Berkshire pork chop is no-nonsense pleasure, surrounded with sauteed okra, a sprinkling of crushed peanuts, and bacon jam whose texture reminds me of deviled ham. Chicken-fried steak is an unpretentious slab of pounded beef with a crust that properly adheres and a side of collards that taste honest and right. Joe’s Jambalaya takes a classic dish out of Truex’s native Louisiana and puts it in finer-dining context: Each element—plump shrimp, fried oysters, grilled Andouille sausage, blackened sea scallops, a crawfish etouffee slicking the bottom of the bowl—is cooked separately and then carefully arranged together. Where’s the all-important rice? Paired with crab, fried into a croquette, and posed among the seafood as nattily as Sinatra in a fedora.

Tellingly the only real missteps are efforts that harken back to the former Watershed. The vegetable plate—once a simple, seasonal glory accompanied by custardy cornbread—can be muddled and fussy, a collection of frequently changing sides often creamed or over-seasoned and topped with crumbly, pimento cheese–shellacked cornbread. And in a move that seems nothing short of passive-aggressive, the kitchen takes the signature Very Good Chocolate Cake and crams it needlessly into a glass jar. What exactly was wrong with a beautiful, glossy wedge? Such a presentation is much more appropriate for the Mess, a trifle-like concoction of wine-soaked sponge cake, custard cream, pecans, macerated cherries, and bits of meringue that two of us scraped clean.

The message is clear: Truex has proven himself a success on Peachtree Road. Let the past be the past. Owners, cooks, customers, and even critics are content to move forward . . . unless, of course, there’s fried chicken involved. —Bill Addison

Watershed on Peachtree
RATING ** (very good)
1820 Peachtree Road
404-809-3561
watershedrestaurant.com
HOURS Lunch Tuesday–Friday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.; dinner Tuesday–Thursday 5–10 p.m., Friday–Saturday 5–11 p.m.; brunch Saturday–Sunday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

Photographs by Greg DuPree. This review originally appeared in our October 2012 issue.

The Optimist

Bill Addison — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 19:07:00 GMT

Ford Fry has a knack for creating likable, trend-driven restaurants that I've found capable but overly safe. His first, JCT Kitchen & Bar in the Westside Urban Market development, opened in 2007. Its tame versions of shrimp and grits, chicken and dumplings, and deviled eggs draped with ham helped usher in the era of that now-cliched genre, Southern farm-to-table, but they lack gutsy soul.

No. 246—Fry’s snazzy Decatur venture with executive chef Drew Belline—launched mid-2011 when fresh hot spots were a rarity amid the draggy economy. It satisfies its nightly crowds with busy pastas, Neapolitan-style pizzas charred in a wood-burning oven, and other Italian comforts. There, too, I hanker for more gusto, for more reach and spark to the cooking.

But with his third undertaking, the Optimist, Fry and his team at last deliver culinary oomph. It arrives as restaurant openings have finally begun to accelerate in Atlanta, though its popularity outpaces all others so far this year: Weekend waits without reservations at this 180-seat behemoth can reach two hours or longer. (You could also find a spot at the sidekick oyster bar for a standout meal; more on that later.)

Fry—who worked at several Ritz-Carlton properties around the country, as well as the high-end carryout chain Eatzi’s, where he no doubt picked up pointers on corporate strategy—shrewdly scanned the dining scene and noticed a dearth of sophisticated seafood. I field near-daily requests from readers looking for stellar fish and shellfish, so I’m not surprised to see the dining room filled with a cross section of the city: the requisite gastronomes and the Buckhead glitterati, but also black and white families, gaggles of twenty-somethings, even octogenarian couples.

Atlantans like their high-volume restaurants themed, and how refreshing to find a space that whisks us off to the beach rather than Studio 54. Fry and Smith Hanes, the designer who also crafted the farmhouse-chic looks for JCT and No. 246, outdid themselves with an elegant, subtly nautical redo of a Westside warehouse crowned with an evocative vaulted ceiling. You enter through the cozy oyster bar and then turn right into the vast main room, anchored by a glittering wall of backlit bottles on one end and by the semiopen kitchen gleaming with white tile on the other.

To helm the restaurant’s wood-fired ovens, Fry wisely hired from within his own ranks. Executive chef Adam Evans grew up fishing with his family in northern Alabama. He came to Atlanta via Buckhead’s now-defunct Craftbar, after four years at Tom Colicchio’s flagship Craft in Manhattan.

Fry first hired Evans as chef de cuisine at JCT, but he recognized a talent rangy enough to orchestrate the menus at the Optimist (which, by the way, is named for a type of dinghy). Evans’s philosophy mirrors Craft’s winning formula: Prepare quality proteins simply, then enhance them with spare but often disarmingly bold ingredients in a way that tastes distinctly, proudly American.

Jump in with a glass of white wine—a flinty Spanish Albariño perhaps, or a minerally Australian Verdelho—or one of beverage director Lara Creasy’s spunky cocktails like the Truth As We Know It, an herbaceous riff on a martini. Leave the knife and fork alone for now: Start by slurping down oysters, focusing on the creamier and more unctuous specimens from the West Coast, such as Naked Roy’s Beach out of Washington’s Puget Sound. Work your way through the condiments: a judicious squirt of lemon, a mignonette with just the right vinegar kick, a few shakes of cloudy, homemade hot sauce.

Sully your hands with plump peel-and-eat Georgia white shrimp swiped through an uptown version of "come back" sauce, a tangy mixture based on mayonnaise and ketchup. Your fingers will be even messier if you order the same white shrimp cooked "a la plancha" (griddled) and doused with a creamy tomato sauce revved with arbol chile and lime. Now bite into a fried clam roll, the crisp, briny morsels enlivened by the rat-a-tat-tat of kimchi vinegar and sour-sweet pickles. Suddenly Atlanta doesn’t feel so landlocked.

Entrees started as the menu’s weak spot (undersalted flounder and halibut on early visits, and a silly breaded skate wing "schnitzel" that happily disappeared), but are gaining in confidence and skillful execution the longer the restaurant is open. An odd but daring duo of seared rare tuna and charred octopus succeeds as an essay on contrasting textures, with pickled mustard seeds and a mild version of harissa, the spiced North African chile sauce, binding the flavors. I love the bone-in monkfish, its lobstery flavor tasting so summery against pureed and sauteed corn and the licorice nip of basil leaves.

Don’t overlook the seafood-friendly sides. Most include revolving seasonal produce, but my favorite is a jumble of basmati rice with smoked fish, crushed peanuts, and egg, gently accented with curry powder, that’s a play on a British dish called kedgeree (which in turn is a take on an Indian lentil-and-rice staple known as kitcheree).

The Optimist’s lobster roll—served at the adjoining oyster bar during dinner, and both at the bar and in the dining room during lunch—may be the finest in Atlanta. No flavored mayo or other shenanigans: A buttery roll cradles sweet, fleshy lumps, and a side of translucent, satisfyingly greasy chips completes the seashore reverie.

The seventy-seat oyster bar and its shaded patio hold their own as a separate draw. Down a few raw and roasted oysters and then savor pastry chef Taria Camerino’s sundae with vanilla ice cream, pound cake, fried peanuts, and chocolate sauce while chilling out on a weekend afternoon (the bar opens at 3 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays). I hope its eight-option wine list grows in scope, but in the meantime I’ll content myself with the rummy, not-too-sweet fish house punch.

In the last two years, Fry has emerged as the decade’s most ambitious chef-restaurateur. He’s already at work on his next project: a Colonial America–themed tavern, due to open early next year, in the space of Buckhead’s long-standing Nava, which is closing this month.

Before the Optimist, I might have groaned over the prospect of Fry’s aesthetic spreading across the metro area. Now I’m fascinated. Is his support of Evans a fluke or a sign of expanding vision? I pray it’s the latter: We need more culinary leaders who can entice the masses, but who aren’t afraid to let young, promising talent blossom. —Bill Addison

The Optimist
RATING *** (excellent)
914 Howell Mill Road
404-477-6260
theoptimistrestaurant.com
HOURS Lunch Monday–Friday 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner Sunday–Thursday 5–10 p.m., Friday–Saturday 5–11 p.m. Oyster bar hours Monday–Friday 5 p.m.–close, Saturday–Sunday 3 p.m.–close.

Photographs by Patrick Heagney. This review originally appeared in our September 2012 issue.

The Spence

Bill Addison — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 12:00:00 GMT

A strange, witty, occasionally confounding, and often wonderful mix of eccentricities defines the Spence, the year's most anticipated opening. Its name carries an unofficial subtitle: "The restaurant where Richard Blais finally returns to the kitchen."

The first bit of idiosyncrasy is evident before you even enter the place. On the corner of Fifth and Spring streets, in front of the congested valet stand, sits a small wooden planter holding an overflow of herbs and flowers, with a chalkboard at the top that has "The SPENCE" written in neat, steady penmanship. It recalls a sign beckoning guests to a country bed-and-breakfast. But if it puts you in the mind-set of cottages and farmlands for a moment, the techno thumpity-thump vibrating in the restaurant’s door handle brings you right back to Atlanta.

The air in this dim room—with its floor-to-ceiling windows; dark walls; and collisions of wood, metal, cement, and painted brick—ripples from currents of raised voices, moving bodies, and wafts of cooking meat. Feel familiar? It’s the frenzied atmosphere of two other restaurants you might know: One Midtown Kitchen and Two Urban Licks, which led the thronged, style-over-substance blockbusters that ruled the city’s dining scene during the first half of the 2000s. (They still draw crowds, though I’m not sure why.)

Concentrics Restaurants—One and Two’s owner and a partner in this new venture—has focused on consulting the last several years, and it hasn’t launched a restaurant with this much momentum since defunct Trois opened in Midtown in 2006.

Every time I walk into the Spence, so transformed from when the effervescent Globe inaugurated this space in 2005, the vibe slightly unnerves me. I’m not eager for garish behemoths to return to culinary fashion, and the awkward, jutting bar near the entrance provides little welcome.

Then I look up at the odd shelf suspended over the center of the dining room, secured to the ceiling by thick steel support brackets. This floating ledge is as much an altar as it is actual storage (spence, by the way, is a British term for larder): Its contents include a pageant of red Le Creuset pots, spice tins, a can of Italian tomatoes, a squat jar of fiery sambal chile sauce, and the five hefty volumes of "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking."

The guy who perched that strangely reassuring mishmash up there also hovers over the stoves underneath. He’s the one whom all the guests strain their neck muscles to glimpse.

Richard Blais still displays the spiky coif and diagonal smirk that made him a fan favorite on season six of "Top Chef" and last year’s winning performance on "Top Chef: All Stars." This restaurant—and the partnership with Concentrics, for which he worked in 2005 as executive chef at One Midtown Kitchen—is a homecoming. Yes, Blais still lives in Atlanta, but we haven’t tasted his most ambitious cooking since the sous vide pork belly and panna cotta served with Coca-Cola frozen in liquid nitrogen at Midtown’s short-lived Element, which closed unceremoniously in 2007.

No matter how wacky, offbeat, and occasionally stunning the mind-benders that he helped create at the Flip Burger Boutiques and their hot dog sibling, HD1, he basically was (and remains) a consultant. Now here he is, back in the trenches, darting by the wood-burning rotisserie, bending over plates with a creased brow, and then stopping to pose for pics. Amazing how the tables closest to the kitchen counter suddenly resemble front-row seats at a cooking demo.

But enough Blais-gazing: How’s the food?

The Spence’s menu evolves daily, with the three dozen or so dishes changing according to the melting-pot inspirations of Blais and his staff. Shareable small plates take up the largest chunk of real estate—smart, because that’s where you’ll find the most consistent payoffs. Start with the latest incarnation of a Blais signature, oysters and pearls: saline Washington State shigoku oysters, with their deeply cupped shells, scattered with dots of horseradish ice cream (using liquid nitrogen, natch).

Comb the list for creations that highlight stark protein contrasts, an early specialty. Perhaps pork belly fried to the consistency of crisp carnitas, then cloaked in velvety smoked sturgeon, all brightened by a ruddy soy-based sauce that combines the sweetness of Japanese eel sauce for sushi and the dried-seafood funk of Chinese XO sauce. Or maybe bone marrow, spread with tuna tartare and topped with two fried quail eggs—a surf-and-turf wedlock that doesn’t seem like it could possibly work, but ends in bliss, the raw and unctuous flavors complementing each other rather than feuding.

I love the uni (sea urchin) spaghetti, a retooling of an idea popularized by Mario Batali: Familiar lobster and comforting pasta assuage the uni’s mineral pong and the otherworldly hint of mint from Japanese shiso leaf. And the front-runner among pastry chef Andrea Litvin’s desserts is the pineapple upside-down cake, glossed with foie gras caramel (a wink to Blais’s infamous specialty, the foie gras milkshake) and sassafras ice cream that I can appreciate but that also reminds me of my grandmother’s Pepsodent toothpaste.

These kinds of ballsy and well-executed novelties will please food lovers bored with the never-ending parade of shrimp and grits, charcuterie, and pan-seared trout on so many Atlanta restaurant menus. More accessible dishes appear as well, though. In the mood for a burger? The Juicy Lucy, admired by Blais but dreamed up in Minneapolis restaurants, comes with white American cheese stuffed inside the patty, so every bite gushes molten goodness.

The chef calls a revolving dish smoked under glass (using hickory wood chips loaded into a handy-dandy smoking gun, a favored gadget among the molecular gastronomy set) his restaurant’s answer to the billowing fajita. One night it was duck—beautifully scented with licorice and cherry, but cooked a little too rare for my taste. When our server lifted the dome, a perfumed cloud ringed our heads with haunting Eau de Campfire.

Creating a wine program against this whirligig of tastes could be daunting, but Justin Amick is equal to the task. The son of Concentrics founder Bob Amick (who frequently works the floor of the Spence, sporting his trademark untucked shirt and shock of white hair), he was one of eleven in the entire country who passed the arduous advanced sommelier exam in California last October.

His list already ranks among the most engaging in the city, a concise and ever-changing assembly of tried-and-trues (affordably priced Cabs and Chards from both sides of the pond, wisely chosen Pinots and Sauvignon Blancs) with oddities from Spain, Uruguay, Switzerland, and Lebanon that make wine geeks giddy. With his exuberant tableside charisma, rattling off suggestions rapid-fire and removing any pretensions from the wine experience, Amick emerges as the Spence’s breakout star.

Now if only we saw a little more of the headliner. Richard Blais could not possibly juggle any faster: He’s filming a new show in the "Top Chef" franchise, he’ll release a cookbook next year, and he continues with his consulting gigs. (Read his Twitter feed; it’ll make your life feel calmer.) Blais told me that he’s trying to curtail his travel schedule. From my observations, you’re most likely to catch him on the weekends and least likely to see him on a Monday or Tuesday.

And the Spence does require his presence. My best meal out of three, without question, was the one when Blais was in the kitchen. Nuggets of General Tso’s sweetbreads and the triple-cooked fries alongside the burger, as two examples, were previously soggy and tepid but showed up crisp and hot under his watch.

His partnership with Concentrics, at first blush, feels like a success: The space’s bustling flashiness gels with the brainy-meets-zany complexities of Blais’s cooking. But I can’t imagine the restaurant sustaining its raging popularity and uninhibited creativity without him actually being there regularly—or daily, even. You have a lot of local fans, Richard Blais, and this could become one of Atlanta’s defining new restaurants, but you’ve got to stick around: Commit to the Spence and we’ll commit right back. —Bill Addison

The Spence
RATING ** (very good)
75 Fifth Street
404-892-9111
thespenceatl.com
HOURS Sunday-Thursday, 5:30-10 p.m.; Friday-Saturday, 5:30-11 p.m.

Photograph by Alex Martinez. This review originally appeared in our August 2012 issue.

STG Trattoria

Bill Addison — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:00:00 GMT

Luxury dining is a given in Buckhead, where you can't throw a Bentley hood ornament without hitting an expense-account steakhouse, a mall or hotel that houses white-tablecloth heavyweights, or one of Pano Karatassos's 1990s holdouts still serving Southwestern Caesars or seafood Newburg (looking at you, Nava and Atlanta Fish Market).

But what about quality midscale options—the casual haunts that won't decimate your credit line, where you can linger over food made by cooks who value individuality? Lunchtime lines trail out the doors of Jennifer Levison’s fast, informal hits, Souper Jenny and Cafe Jonah. Devouring lemony salads and lamb kebabs doused with yogurt on the wobbly tables at hidden Cafe Agora on East Paces Ferry feels like a secret thrill. But more refined, middle-of-the-road independents are scarce.

Which is why STG Trattoria comes as a revelation. Its combination of smart cocktails, breezy design, deftly seasoned small plates, and ambitious pizzas and pastas (priced in the teens) helps fill the glaring hole in the Buckhead jigsaw.

Brian Lewis shrewdly strategized his second Atlanta restaurant. His first, Bocado, opened in Westside in 2009, when that area—which now overflows with dining options—was still a culinary tabula rasa. Bocado snagged the role as Westside’s first true neighborhood hangout with its winning formula: clever sandwiches at lunch, affordable appetizers and mains that showcase the seasons at dinner, a burger worthy of cult status, and eventually a destination cocktail program.

Having mastered the art of the neighborhood draw, Lewis noticed the void in Buckhead. He decided to differentiate his second baby by giving it an Italian bent that features the dish of the moment: Neapolitan-style pizza baked in Acunto ovens, the same infernos that give Antico Pizza Napoletana its ballyhooed char.

I wouldn’t blame trend-trolling gastronomes for muttering, "That’s sooo done." But Lewis has staffed the kitchen with marquee talent who take STG far beyond the typical pizza joint. (The restaurant's name sounds unfortunately close to STK, the Midtown steakhouse, but it stands for the names of Lewis's three sons.) Executive chef Josh Hopkins, formerly of Abattoir, and chef de cuisine Adam Waller, previously at Sotto Sotto, signed on early. Lewis found a bonus hire in pasta savant Bruce Logue, who left La Pietra Cucina and is maintaining his chops at STG while he plots his own restaurant.

I expect this place to soon attract crowds that will keep it perpetually thronged—but first they have to discover it. Nearly every person I arrange to meet here calls my cell exasperated and asks, "Where is this place?" It’s at the far end of a new shopping center, a former Mercedes-Benz dealership, on West Paces Ferry Road, next to the St. Regis Atlanta and across from 103 West. Look for the sky-blue sign of the Flywheel cycling gym at the center’s entrance.

When you walk in, the restaurant’s eccentric foyer resembles an age-worn cellar with a curved brick ceiling, flanked with rows of mounted wine bottles. The effect is a little cheesy, honestly, but then the space opens into a fresh, minimalist expanse. Attractively cracked, polished concrete floors (this was once the mechanic's garage) and a wall covered with what looks like chain-linked fence, an art installation of sorts, lend gritty urban contrast to soothing walnut paneling and the semiopen kitchen’s marble tile backsplash. A square bar of communal seating with stools on either side of the counter anchors the room, but most people gravitate to individual tables until the restaurant fills.

Perhaps the entryway put you in the mood for vino; hold off and order a cocktail first. David Durnell, Bocado’s ace young bartender, designed a drink list around amari—Italian herbal liqueurs traditionally consumed as aperitifs or digestifs. That sounds esoteric, but trust me, these beauties come laced with the familiar zest of citrus and a splash of soda, and they make ideal summer sipping. The Cynar Lime Soda (Cynar is a liqueur fashioned in part from artichokes) has a mild, alluring bitterness that marries well with salad, one of the most daunting dishes to pair with booze. If you’re skittish, wade in with the limey My Amaro Cola, a next-gen rum and Coke. And when you are ready for wine, one of the cheerful servers proffers an iPad (early visitors, note: They’ve worked out the bugs) with helpful links to demystify Italian varietals and regions.

With cocktails or wine, I want to start my meal with newfangled bruschetta. No oily chopped tomatoes breathing garlic over soggy toast here: A springy creation when the restaurant opened in April featured a fluffy spread of pureed English peas atop crackly bread that also held drapes of prosciutto, homemade mozzarella, and minced rosemary. The variation crowned with veal tongue and anchovies, a menu standard, has a beguiling pungency that reminds me of vitello tonnato, the classic Italian dish of chilled, sliced braised veal tenderloin with a creamy sauce that includes tuna.

Salads of soft lettuces and gentle vinaigrettes in the menu's small plate section are lovely, but gravitate to seafood for the most provocative flavors. Braised octopus teeters pleasingly between chewy and buttery, and smoked paprika gives it a flash of heat. Black bass rests in a broth charged with the salty, sweet, and sour nip of preserved lemon, a canny foil to cut the bitterness of the accompanying rapini.

As for pastas: I’ve tasted sublime lamb agnolotti in the shape of rectangular packages, dulcet tortelloni with spring vegetables in mushroom broth, and a rich tangle of linguine and shrimp in a white wine–butter sauce speckled with herbs. Though they are beautifully composed, I notice that most of the sauces on the pastas are surprisingly tame: They speak more to the predilections of Hopkins, who takes the lead on dough recipes and ingredient combinations, than Logue, who comes from the Mario Batali school of Italian pyrotechnics. With such a creative force in the kitchen, why not let Logue, arguably the finest pasta maker working in Atlanta restaurants, take the lead occasionally and deliver some spicy, garlicky dynamism?

The pizzas certainly speak out. Hopkins aims to separate his efforts from the competition’s by taking a traditional approach to crust—aged for thirty hours to achieve a sourdoughlike tang, formed with a fulsome lip, baked until the edges are handsomely singed—but then adorning the pies with toppings that veer more to inventive than classic. A version with tomato, ricotta, and meatballs, for example, also includes oil-cured olives for a sodium surprise attack. Fresh mint takes the usual place of honor from basil on a pizza with lamb sausage and crumbly ricotta salata. I love the potent jumble on another that includes anchovies, capers, olives, and arugula, but I wish the Taleggio also mentioned in the description gave off more of a whiff: If we’re ordering this bad boy, we want maximum funk.

I remember that when Bocado opened, I yearned for a bit more punch to the cooking as well. It came with time. Lewis likes to start cautiously with abbreviated menus and friendly flavors, gradually winning customers over. He's already taken the biggest risk, though, by invading the land of Bone's and Houston's and introducing a happy medium of cost and free-minded cooking. May it spark an insurgency of midpriced Buckhead revolutionaries that shakes the old guard to the core. —Bill Addison

STG Trattoria
RATING ** ( very good)
102 West Paces Ferry Road
404-844-2879
stgtrattoria.com
HOURS Lunch Tuesday–Friday 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m., Saturday noon–3 p.m.; dinner Tuesday–Saturday 5:30–11 p.m., Sunday 5:30–9 p.m.

Photograph by Greg Dupree. This review originally appeared in our July 2012 issue.