Pinning down optimum dim sum is a never-ending hunt: The chefs at Chinese restaurants constantly hop from one kitchen to the next without warning. Right now we’ll put our money on Duluth’s East Pearl, oddly lodged in a faux Alpine chalet. Beyond standards like har gow (plump shrimp dumplings) and shumai (crinkly, open-faced pork bundles), look for variations stuffed with scallops and chives or a rich combo of pork, shrimp, and peanuts. And for a memorable finale, keep an eye out for a wooden bucket parked in a corner of the dining room: It contains silky homemade tofu that a friendly server spoons into a bowl and covers with spicy-sweet ginger syrup.
Home 2014
Archives
Tomo
For those of us who loved the original, intimate Tomo sushi bar in a Vinings strip mall, the move to a vast, glam space in Buckhead proved jarring initially—as it did for the restaurant’s staff, who also needed a few months to adjust to the new scale and volume. Rhythms have synced, and Tomo is again one of the city’s best destinations for Japanese cuisine. Inquire after the freshest sushi selection; you’re rewarded with sublime pleasures. Dishes like lobster a la musso—lobster sashimi and uni awash in yuzu ponzu, extra virgin olive oil, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, and scallions and capped with a raw quail egg—highlight the polished East-West creativity of chef-owner Tomohiro Naito. The omakase remains the supreme Tomo experience: Name the price (often between $100 and $150 per person) and nine or ten courses of luxe ingredients, riffs on menu dishes like sashimi with jalapeño, and original creations appear in a dazzling progression.
Best of Atlanta 2013: Japanese
Tomohiro Naito’s Buckhead show palace juggles two personalities. One indulges in flash: It draws the beautiful crowds with an airy space paved with black slate floor tiles and a menu with plenty of anarchic riffs on sushi rolls, like garlic yellow-tail roll with sake-Gorgonzola sauce. But the quieter side of Tomo lures the chowhounds. Settle into comfortable chairs for a lunch of simple, highest-quality nigiri and sashimi on Tuesday and Thursday (the day the best fish arrives from Tokyo’s Tsukiji Market). Or agree with the staff on a budget (often between $100 and $150), and they’ll prepare an exquisite meal of chawanmushi – a savory custard topped with uni – and ending with an aromatic black sesame flan made by Naito’s wife, Kimiko.
Sotto Sotto
When Riccardo Ullio opened Sotto Sotto in 1999, it redefined Italian cooking locally. Suddenly we knew that risotto could be cooked properly creamy yet al dente in a restaurant (it so rarely is) and that lasagna could be artfully subtle rather than a gut bomb. Salads with acidic pop and the enduring chocolate soup bookend meals, but the consistent, intense pastas reveal the kitchen’s true soul. In winter, standout warmers include fresh pappardelle with braised duck ragu and tortelli di mele—apple- and sausage-filled ravioli that Ullio served when he was chef at Pasta da Pulcinella in the mid-1990s. Sotto Sotto’s wine list always proves an education in Italian vino, and without fanfare, the bar concocts some of the most progressive cocktails in town.
Best of Atlanta 2013: Italian
Here’s the key to a memorable meal: Share a generous spread of pastas and risottos, the splendor of Riccardo Ullio’s flagship restaurant. Most of the dishes can be ordered in appetizer-sized half portions, all the better for sampling. In cool weather, chow through tortelli di mele with apple and sausage (a favorite from when Ullio cooked at Pasta Da Pulcinella in the nineties), the free-form lasagnette creamy from béchamel, pappardelle tossed in braised duck ragu, and risotto either with mushrooms or saffron and shrimp. Ask for a raisiny American from al the all-Italian wine list.
Restaurant Eugene
No local restaurant has evolved with as much mind and soul as Restaurant Eugene. Nowadays the mainstay on the menu is the deceptively dull-sounding “tasting of seasonal vegetables,” a joyful cornucopia of ten or more just-harvested dazzlers that may be as everyday as glazed carrots or as esoteric as fried lily blossoms, all bursting from a handled pan. It speaks to the adoration chef-owner Linton Hopkins has developed for local farmers and growers over the last eight years, and how their products have helped ground his cooking style in the regional vernacular. And Aaron Russell is the city’s most intellectual pastry chef: A recent creation showcased chunky peach marmalade and herbaceous wood sorrel sorbet rising out of cocoa “soil” crumbles.
Best of Atlanta 2013: Quiet Conversation
Dining these days is as much about the buzz as the food. For those times, though, when you seek téte-å-téte, plan an evening at Linton Hopkins’s south Buckhead fortress of quietude. Eugene has always appealed to a calmer, more mature clientele, and the waitstaff knows how to be solicitous but not overbearing. For a spontaneous night out sans reservation, head to the small back bar, where you can sit shoulder-to-shoulder, sip bubbly or bourbon, and share Southern-inspired plates like a blue crab galette and guinea hen with spoonbread puree.
Aria
Chef-owner Gerry Klaskala builds menus with familiar comforts—crab cakes, smoked salmon, pork shoulder, short ribs—and heightens them with a melting pot of seasonings and accompaniments. His masterstroke is the butter-braised lobster floating in a lagoon of black-truffle-scented mashed potatoes and a ring of broccoli puree. He salutes the South with warm-weather entrees like herb-crusted sole with bacon, brown butter vinaigrette, and a succotash of white corn and lady peas. Pastry chef Kathryn King has always been Aria’s secret weapon. Like Klaskala, she composes winners—warm chocolate cheesecake, seasonal creations like upside-down black plum cake—that satisfy more than astound. General manager Andres Loaiza, a polished charmer, directs a front-of-house staff with one of the lowest turnover rates in the business. On busy nights, the dining room takes on a glittery Buckhead frisson.
Best of Atlanta 2013: Personal Endorsement, Restaurant for an Anniversary Dinner
An editor once asked me to suggest a fitting restaurant where he could propose to the woman he was dating. I recommended Aria; she said yes. My partner and I also celebrate at this Buckhead bastion. Front-of-house manager and wine director Andrés Loaiza greets customers with the warmest smile, and he always keeps one or two elegant Champagnes on the by-the-glass list. Gerry Klaskala’s New American cooking is precise and consistent. He rotates in trendy ingredients on nightly specials, but I return for long-running favorites like butter-poached lobster with broccoli mousseline and whipped potatoes. We always save room for Kathryn King’s suave desserts. When the warm chevre cheesecake arrives and we see “Happy Anniversary” written in chocolate on the plate in King’s ornate penmanship our night is complete. —Bill Addison
Sushi House Hayakawa
Atsushi “Art” Hayakawa’s low-key bar is a purist’s retreat for Japanese cuisine. Too much cream cheese gimmickry and loud techno blight many of the city’s sushi emporiums. What a relief to sit in a plain room and savor simple dishes like ikura don—salmon roe marinated in homemade soy sauce, gilded with sea urchin, and served over rice and seaweed—or a plate of sashimi arranged so meticulously you wonder if the staff moonlight as photo stylists. More a fan of cooked food? Try the crunchy fried oysters with a wedge of lime and homemade tartar sauce or the sublime hamachi kama (yellowtail collar).
Best of Atlanta 2013: Sushi Bar
No place in Atlanta brings back memories of Japan for me like chef Atushi “Art” Hayakawa’s jolly sushi counter: The staff members banter with the clientele, and oversized bottles of sake (from which servers pour individual glasses) sit temptingly on display. Among his many fine raw and cooked dishes, Art’s salmon roe—marinated in soy, sake, and mirin, though it’s also savored plain—is the finest in town. Try it atop uni ikura don with sea urchin, rice and shimmery seaweed slivers. Make reservations for the counter, lest you walk in to find every seat taken by the tight-knit community of rabid fans.
No place in Atlanta brings back memories of Japan for me like chef Atushi “Art” Hayakawa’s jolly sushi counter: The staff members banter with the clientele, and oversized bottles of sake (from which servers pour individual glasses) sit temptingly on display. Among his many fine raw and cooked dishes, Art’s salmon roe—marinated in soy, sake, and mirin, though it’s also savored plain—is the finest in town. Try it atop uni ikura don with sea urchin, rice and shimmery seaweed slivers. Make reservations for the counter, lest you walk in to find every seat taken by the tight-knit community of rabid fans.
The Porter Beer Bar
At first glance, the Porter appears to be merely a handsomely scruffy bar favored by the Little Five Points crew. But take a gander at the menu. The drink list is a world tour of booze—not simply pages and pages of beers, but a dashing assemblage of cocktails and some serious bourbon options. While the regular offerings consist mainly of affable pub grub, Nick Rutherford (who owns the Porter with wife and fellow Seeger’s alum Molly Gunn) raises the bar when it comes to the specials list and the brunch menu.
Best of Atlanta 2013: Standard Setter
In their lovably scruffy Little Five Points digs, husband-and-wife owners Nick Rutherford and Molly Gunn preside over the city’s largest selection of beer. Their list surpasses 800 options, with an especially impressive roster of American stouts, Danish lambics, and other stunners that age gracefully.
Holeman and Finch Public House
Oink. At its essence, Holeman and Finch exists to serve you pork. Sure, you can scarf down rabbit livers, lamb heart, lamb testicles, or veal brains—and a whole menu section revolves around vegetables. But the restaurant excels at perfecting the pig, be it cured or preserved in half a dozen forms, including smoked lardo (that’s fatback to you, Bubba), and paired with rare cheeses on a fetching platter; made into pork rinds punched up with salt and vinegar; twirled into pasta carbonara as guanciale (aged pork jowl); or as beloved bacon paired with poached farm egg, nestled into a salad, or added as a jolt of salt to caramel popcorn.
There is, of course, that famous burger, served at 10 p.m. and at Sunday brunch. But don’t discount the housemade beef hot dog, available anytime.
Greg Best and Regan Smith, two of the gastropub’s founders and guiding lights, departed in September, but the capable crew they left behind continues to stir and shake some of the city’s most outside-the-box cocktails. Try the Foolish Heart built on Alma Blanco tequila and dry amontillado sherry.
Bacchanalia
In the midst of Atlanta’s decimated fine-dining terrain, Bacchanalia, sturdy in its converted Westside meatpacking plant, rules as monarch. Chefs-owners Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison safeguarded its survival by connecting to a broader audience than did lofty, defunct sovereigns like Seeger’s and the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead. Locals embrace the restaurant as Atlanta’s premier special-occasion destination, but it also acts as a gracious ambassador for the city. The five-course prix fixe menu—a celebration of the seasonal and a local reinterpretation of the American culinary revolution ignited in California—makes a knockout first impression. Go classic with foie gras au torchon styled with peach, honey, and brioche (paired with a Sauternes, natch), then move into gutsier territory with a salad such as Flat Creek Lodge’s nutty Georgia Red cheese tangled among pole beans, hazelnuts, flecks of country ham, and pickled shallots.
Best of Atlanta 2013: Overall Restaurant
How does the Westside’s crown jewel remain at the top year after year? Extraordinary hospitality, for starters. Service is balletic, yet the staff never comes off as too starchy or aloof. And no restaurant in town delivers fine-dining dazzle like Bacchanalia. In 2011, chef-owners Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison and their executive chef David “Andy” Carson decided to switch the prix fixe format from four courses to five. Doing so added a third savory dish before a cheese plate and dessert, spurring the kitchen to more intricate creations. One recent highlight: a slice of rosy, steaky magret duck hat sidled up to a grain pilaf shot through with duck confit. Chestnut puree and artful dribbles of sour cherry just added depth and contrast. Like the whole meal, it was heady without being fussy. Bonus points for the expanded, meticulous wine list, and, as always the glorious cheese cart.
Zen Tea
Owner Connie Miller imparts her extraordinary knowledge of tea without a hint of geekiness. She stocks more than 140 varieties that cover the spectrum of greens, blacks, whites, herbals, and a few organic rarities. Relax with a cup at the small bar or at a table in the cozy front room, or buy loose-leaf teas—and a selection of tea packed on the premises in high-quality mesh bags. (Miller also sells plenty of tea-brewing supplies.)
NEWSLETTERS
