Every week, we give you an in-depth calendar of upcoming dining events to help you navigate the weekend’s culinary festivities. In addition to ghouls, goblins, and gatherings, this weekend’s Halloween events entail a pumpkin-carving competition, costume contests, holiday treats, and more.
Thursday, October 29
PUMPKIN CARVING CONTEST
Atlanta Botanical Garden holds its annual Great Chefs Pumpkin Carving Contest today from 7 to 8 p.m. Atlanta chefs have only twenty-five minutes to cut up their pumpkins into pieces of art, and the audience will choose the winner by applause. Top Chef contestant and Woodfire Grill head chef Kevin Gillespie will be one of the competitors.
AQUA VINO
The Georgia Aquarium’s fourth-annual wine-tasting fundraiser will begin pouring at seven tonight, and last until ten. Happening in the world’s largest aquarium’s Ocean’s Ballroom, Aqua Vino supports the Correll Center for Aquatic Animal Health.
Saturday, October 31—HALLOWEEN!
BOO BASH
Ra Sushi will usher in the holiday with Boo Bash 2009, replete with spooky specials, a costume contest, and monster mixing by DJ Scott. The bar will serve up “Potent Potions,” featuring Vampire’s Kiss, Bloody Brain, and Skullini, each for $7. And the kitchen will get into the spirit with “Boo Bites,” including Creepy Cali Roll, Voodoo Roll, and Spider Roll, each for $7 or less. Food and drink will keep coming until 1 a.m., and the first-, second-, and third-place winners of the costume contest will receive gift certificates to the restaurant ranging from $25 to $100.
MURPHY’S COSTUME CONTEST
Virginia-Highland’s Murphy’s gets self-referential with its costume party. The best Tom Murphy “look alike” will receive a complimentary dinner for two and a bottle of wine, while two other best-costume winners will receive either dinner for two or a bottle of wine. The restaurant will have cocktails specials and piles of candy, in case you don’t win.
MONSTER FEST
Aqua blue offers OTP residents an alternative to the night’s Midtown scene with its eighth-annual Halloween Monster Fest. A la carte dining begins at 4 p.m., with DJing starting at nine. As always, there’s a costume contest, and $3,000 in cash and prizes will be given out to a gaggle of winners.
FIGO’S SPOOKY PASTAS
Kids can celebrate the holiday, too, with FIGO Pasta’s two dishes catering to the young at heart: Worms in a Bloody Sauce with Meaty Eyeballs and Slimey Mac and Cheese, each for $3.95.?
ALON’S HALLOWEEN TREATS
Alon’s offers some standard, high-quality, often-homemade treats, including caramel candy apples, orange marshmallows, pumpkin-spice chocolates, decorated chocolates, and glazed cookies.
Monday, November 2
BEER TASTING DINNER
Chef Tom Colicchio opened the first Craft in New York thirteen years ago, and this Monday the Top Chef head judge will venture down South to prepare Craft Atlanta’s five-course, autumnal menu, which will pair with beers selected by Brooklyn Brewery’s Garrett Oliver. The $155 dinner will commence at 7 p.m., and it will include smoked hamachi with Local 1, roasted monkfish with Local 2, pancetta-wrapped local pheasant with Wild 1, stout-braised pork cheek with Reinschweinsgebot, and apple-bacon ice cream with Black Ops 2008.
Wednesday, November 4
SHAUN’S ANNIVERSARY
Chef Shaun Doty celebrates Shaun’s Edgewood Social Club’s third anniversary with James Beard Award–winning chef Louis Osteen, mixologist Jerry Slater of One Flew South, and President of the Southern Foodways Alliance Angie Mosier. This culinary cohort will create a prix-fixe, five-course dinner, for $65 per person with a $20 wine pairing. Plus, National Grain will serenade patrons with some of their recent album’s hits.
