Atlanta’s Best New Restaurants 2017

Noble Fin

Photograph by Heidi Geldhauser

It’s rare that a restaurant delivers more than it promises. Drive past Noble Fin’s Peachtree Corners location and on first glance you might mistake the beige facade and swinging glass doors for a Barnes & Noble. But as former Atlanta magazine restaurant critic Corby Kummer put it in the November 2016 issue, “Noble Fin turns out to be the city’s most assured and satisfying fish house since Ford Fry’s infinitely more stylish the Optimist.” Chef and owner Jay Swift masters a wide range of dishes: a well-calibrated clam chowder, neither too thick nor too thin; firm, pan-seared grouper flanked by nests of onions dolloped with aioli; and a Maine-style lobster roll almost overstuffed with sweet meat and celery leaves. (Most New England seafood shacks aren’t so generous.) Even the New York strip, served with a red wine–veal reduction, is as good a steak dish as can be found anywhere in Atlanta. Sophisticated without being pretentious, Noble Fin checks every box that a traditional fine–dining restaurant should while making you feel completely at home.

Illustration by Valero Doval

Must-order: Crab cakes
Swift, originally from Baltimore, knows that crab cakes should be held together with minimal mayo—and no bready filler. He serves them hot, fresh, and greaseless; it’s worth the drive to Peachtree Corners for these alone.

5260 Peachtree Parkway, Peachtree Corners, 770-599-7979