Tag: Clifford Harrison

After 25 years on Zonolite Road, Floataway Café will close on December 23, but that doesn't mean it's the end of for some of the restaurant's most-loved dishes.

Bacchanalia has defined the way we eat (and where).

“You must embrace change to be a really good chef or restaurateur,” says the Bacchanalia chef. “You have to be flexible, and then you also have to always be positive that the change is going to be better than it was before.”

Dorothy Copenhaver walks into the underground kitchen at Star Provisions every morning at 4 a.m. to prepare bread for Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison’s numerous restaurants.

Restaurants in Atlanta have a knack for latching onto trends and clutching them furiously--much longer than in other cities--until the vitality completely withers. So many tapas palaces opened last decade that I can still barely face a martini glass brimming with ceviche without wanting to replace it with straight gin. I’m beginning to have a similar reaction to Neapolitan pizza.

ATL Food Chatter: October 4, 2010 (To receive the Chatter and other culinary tidbits directly in your inbox, sign up for our weekly dining newsletter)On Sunday, October 31, Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison will host Sunday Supper South at Westside Provision, a charity dinner featuring a Who’s Who of Southern chefs (check out the list of names on the website). Modeled after the successful Sunday Supper event held in New York’s Chelsea Marketplace, the dinner raises funds for the James Beard Foundation and the James Beard Foundation Scholarship Program. In an email Q&A, Anne Quatrano gave us a quick rundown of the event details:

A server at Bacchanalia set down an orb of crabmeat bound in a bronzed coating of breadcrumbs, arranged over splayed avocado slices, and stippled with orange and grapefruit sections. Vanilla beans speckled a shallow pool of vinaigrette at the bottom of the bowl; the maternal warmth of their aroma and flavor calmed the precocious jolts of Thai pepper essence that bounced among the ingredients. Every sweet, hot, mellow, and tingly nuance harmonized with the crab. The effect of the dish was akin to the reprieve after an evening thunderstorm that dissipates the Atlanta summer heat. My heart felt lighter afterward.

I walked into Quinones at Bacchanalia, glanced around, and realized I was the only fellow wearing a suit. This surprised me. After all, Quinones is the most formal restaurant experience left in Atlanta. Situated on the lower level of the Westside complex that houses Bacchanalia and Star Provisions, the hushed Southern Gothic dining room holds only eleven tables. It serves a nine-course set menu (no choices, but it changes weekly and includes several bonus noshes) that costs $125 per person—$195 if you opt for wine pairings with seven of the dishes. It is a restaurant engineered for lavishness. Why not dress for the occasion?

To Anglo ears, the word "abattoir" has an almost spiritual chime. Without knowing its meaning, one might guess that it refers to a labyrinth of monastic cloisters, or the dwelling of a particularly devout ascetic. But it’s French for "slaughterhouse," the term being derived from the verb abattre, meaning to shoot, knock down, or demoralize. Abattoir is one of the least onomatopoeic words ever adapted into the English language.