Atlanta Magazine - September 2010 - Best New Restaurants
 

Cover Story

Best New Restaurants 2010

Ten worthy of praise

Atlanta's Dining Scene
How do you define Atlanta’s dining scene? You don’t, really—not with any permanence. This is a city of self-inventors who reject pigeonholing, and the mercurial restaurant community mirrors that. One year we dig cheap sushi and Cosmopolitans sloshed with well vodka; the next we’re on to pork belly and Manhattans laced with artisan bourbon. I’ve lived all over, always coming back to Atlanta, and I say with confidence that we are the most fickle bunch of diners in the country.   Customers direct the ebb and flow of restaurants with their dollars. Right now the consensus disdains fine dining. Or at least the old idea of it: hushed rooms, precious ... Read more
There's no way around it: Atlanta is in a rut when it comes to restaurant openings. Sure, new places launch every week, but the creative sparks that recently blazed through local kitchens have noticeably dimmed. Praise be, then, to these ten restaurants. They showed imagination and gumption over the last year, and they illustrate that even in economically challenging times, it's better to take risks and surprise diners than to bore them with safe, dull menus. With fine dining on a hiatus, the spotlight falls on modest and midscale upstarts serving outside-the-box salads, Southern vegetable plates, sublime pizza, and unusual specialties from all around Asia. May their example kindle Atlanta's next culinary revolution.
—Bill Addison