9. Kimball House

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75 Best Restaurants in Atlanta: Kimball House
The oyster program is the best around.

Photograph by Caroline C. Kilgore

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Yes, the oyster program is the best around, down to co-owner and bivalve evangelist Bryan Rackley’s impressively specific tasting notes (“green beans & cantaloupe . . . for real”). And Miles Macquarrie’s cocktails absolutely deserve that outpouring of national praise. But there’s more to Kimball House than Kumamotos and Sazeracs. The composed dishes at this dapper former train depot are playfully conceived and seriously delicious—and don’t receive enough of the spotlight. Executive chef Brian Wolfe’s decadent spin on cheesesteak includes Brie, bordelaise, and foie gras. The vegetable sides—such as a $10 stir fry of mushroom, turnip, broccoli, radish, and greens, glammed up with ají amarillo butter—get as much respect from the kitchen as the $110 steak dinner. From grouper collar to bar steak, lemon-pepper chicken skins to caviar and Carolina Gold rice middlins, there’s nothing Kimball House can’t do. 303 East Howard Avenue, Decatur, 404-378-3502, kimball-house.com

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