Facebook Instagram Linkedin X
Home 2010

Archives

Empire State South

Bill Addison
-
0
Empire State South
How do you describe Southern food? Pursuing that answer is as much the daydreamer’s indulgence as the academic’s conundrum. It’s a workman’s meal of sugarless, butter-smeared cornbread, swiped through a bowl of potlikker and crumbled into the mouth. It’s an antebellum fever dream: she-crab soup, shad stuffed with roe, and the sherry-soaked dessert called tipsy squire consumed using weighty silverware on snowy linens. And it is, of course, an unconquerable buffet of fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, baked ham, candied yams, black-eyed peas, and small plastic bowls filled with peach cobbler sweet enough to give you the sugar jitters.
Pork belly over creamed kimchi with smoked peanuts, a recent special at Midtown’s new Empire State South, owns a place alongside those other dishes. It captures this moment in the evolution of Southern food, particularly in Atlanta. The pork belly isn’t one of those jiggly specimens: It’s a fist-sized hunk of dense, striated bacon. Southerners love creamed vegetables, and dairy tempers the kimchi’s fire and ferment without extinguishing its character. All those Korean restaurants on Buford Highway and in Duluth? They’re now influencing Southern flavors the way that Mediterranean and Indian spices, via coastal ports, have seasoned our foods for centuries.
Hugh Acheson, chef-owner of Empire State South, revels in this kind of commingling. He opened Five and Ten in Athens a decade ago and helped re-ignite enchantment with our regional cooking.

But he didn’t accomplish it by mastering the perfect biscuit or deifying caramel cake. A Canadian who worked in some of San Francisco’s most ambitious kitchens and then moved to Georgia for love, he fuses European and Southern ideas with clever respect. Skate wing with brown butter and capers may be straight from the French lexicon, but Acheson paired it with a mound of Red Mule grits at Five and Ten, and it resonated in the soul of any local who’s partial to a simple plate of fish and grits. He married sweetbreads and succotash with unexpected harmony, the union strengthened by tarragon jus that bridged their flavors.

After partnering on another restaurant, the National, and a wine shop in Athens, Acheson felt that Atlanta was ready for his brand of individualism. He announced Empire State South last year, and public expectations simmered as the opening date was pushed back from early spring to late summer.

Yet when you walk into the restaurant, housed in the back of the 999 Peachtree building, all the antsy anticipation dissipates. The room has the relaxed air of a saloon—a sprawling come-hither bar, navy walls, knotty heart pine and pecky cypress that cover the floors and border the doors, light fixtures that resemble inverted woks. A wash of milk paint in the private dining area (often available for regular seating) colors the paneling an otherworldly gray, a hue that conjures the moss-covered trees that grow around dilapidated plantation houses in the Louisiana swamp. It puts one in the mind for whiskey.

All this—and an outdoor bocce court to boot—is a much more stylized atmosphere than Acheson’s funkier Athens ventures, and the diverse Atlanta crowds have arrived to show their approval. On any given night, a gay couple will be comfortably holding hands while a Buckhead matriarch holds court two tables away. The twenty-somethings tend to eat at the bar. Everywhere, fingers hover over smart-phone keypads, recording each course for soon-to-be-texted bragging rights.
Like the Southern food it serves, Empire State South is in a continuous state of evolution—all for the better. Just a month after the restaurant launched, executive chef Nick Melvin bowed out, and Ryan Smith, most recently chef de cuisine at both Holeman and Finch and Restaurant Eugene, replaced him.

Smith’s changes, with Acheson’s blessing, were swift and unflinching. Out with the sentimental, in with the ballsy. An “antipasti platter” of tea sandwiches, deviled eggs, spiced pecans, cream cheese, and pepper jelly disappeared, replaced by a cheeky collection of jarred lamb rillettes, chicken liver pâté, and boiled peanut hummus (major cool points for that last one), along with palate-reviving pickles. A roasted baby carrot salad gave way to smoked sturgeon, fanned like sashimi over herbed yogurt and flanked with fingerling potatoes and wax beans. Smith’s fine-dining take on shrimp and grits—heady with roasted peppers, pickled Fresno chiles, and earthy snatches of celery—beautifully counterpoints Acheson’s signature Frogmore stew, a laid-back bouillabaisse of shrimp, andouille, and summery vegetables in tomato broth.

The biggest early change comes in the approach to entrees. Acheson originally billed Empire State South as a riff on the meat-and-three: Diners selected, say, sauteed okra and field-pea cakes from among eight or so sides to pair with their fried catfish or smothered pork chops. Smith, a chef who likes structure in the kitchen, made the decision to match sides with proteins on the menu.

If you ask, any server is quick to say that you’re welcome to sub in other sides for the printed “suggestions.” But they don’t advertise that option, and it’s no loss, really. For pan-roasted redfish glossed with sherry buerre blanc, for example, I couldn’t pick more appropriate pairings than the turnip greens and wonderfully soupy butternut squash risotto that Smith chose.

 
One area that succeeded from the get-go: the wine program. You’ll drift away from dinner conversation while reading the detailed, impassioned footnotes that wine director Steve Grubbs wrote for the list. He and his team heed your likes and dislikes, and they seem as pleased to deliver a $32 bottle of an obscure Spanish mencia as they are a $105 Beaune premier cru—described on the menu as “meaty, meaty, big and bouncy.” The staff in general has become warm and professional; if you experienced early service disappoints like I did, give the restaurant another shot.

Since ESS views itself as a work in progress, I offer a short wish list: I hope the brined Berkshire pork chop becomes less of a jaw workout. While the buttermilk chess tart dissolves liltingly on the tongue, the sweets overall lack whimsy and daring. Perhaps some fruit-driven desserts?

Also, the breakfast menu needs attention. The coffee bar rocks, but while the humdrum array of chicken biscuits, hanger steak with scrambled eggs, and quick breads may quell office workers’ hunger, the city is desperate for a morning meal destination. Surely two fireball talents like Acheson and Smith can grapple with these challenges. No matter how you define Southern food, these guys have already begun cooking up the future. —Bill Addison


Empire State South
RATING ***
999 Peachtree Street
404-541-1105

HOURS Breakfast Monday–Friday 7–10 a.m.; lunch Monday–Friday 11 a.m.–3 p.m.; dinner Sunday–Thursday 5:30–10 p.m., Friday–Saturday 5:30–11 p.m.; brunch Saturday–Sunday 10:30 a.m.–3 p.m.

 

Photograph by Alex Martinez. This review originally appeared in our December 2010 issue.

Davio’s

Bill Addison
-
0
Davio’s
In the late 1980s, my parents and I visited Boston for the first time to check out colleges. We naively booked the trip in January. A half foot of snow blanketed the city on the day we arrived. The concierge at our hotel encouraged us to trudge the few slushy blocks to a Northern Italian restaurant called Davio’s. It was on Newbury Street, a hub of posh shops and eateries. Davio’s had a relaxed cafe upstairs that served pizza and pasta; we descended to the more formal dining room below street level.

I needed to literally inhale warmth, so I ordered risotto. I’d heard of risotto before, but in that cold, unfamiliar climate, a bowl of hot, creamy rice appealed like never before. How did each grain of rice remain distinct yet also meld into a cloud of savory pudding? I felt thawed—and awakened to a new delight. I ended up spending my college years in Boston, and when the long winter felt especially unbearable to my Southern soul, I would gather the earnings from my job as a bed-and-breakfast cook to go savor a bowl of sustaining risotto at Davio’s.

 
Fast-forward over two decades: I’m sitting in the newly opened outpost of Davio’s in Phipps Plaza, munching on . . . spring rolls? Four differently flavored rolls have been cleaved in two, with the matching halves propped close together on a sectioned platter and adorned with all manner of swirling, squiggly embellishments. They look more like miniature models of futuristic skyscrapers than enticing appetizers. The Philly Cheese Steak spring roll comes topped with an orbit of smoked onion rings and is placed over squeeze-bottle drizzles of homemade ketchup and mayo. It also carries a registered trademark, as does the Chicken Parm spring roll with marinara sauce. Buffalo Chicken with blue cheese dressing and Shrimp Cotija with citrus aioli complete this peculiar, multiculti quartet. They all taste fine, in the way that fried morsels with vague sauces passed at cocktail receptions can absentmindedly satisfy.
 
Where are the al dente specialties I remember so fondly? The risotto and pastas do still survive, executed with skill but buried in a menu that reflects owner Steve DiFillippo’s cumulative ambitions since he bought Davio’s in 1985. He pulled the original restaurant out of financial distress, shifted the cooking from Southern Italian, drew crowds and raves, and opened and closed other locations of Davio’s around the Boston area. In late 2002, he moved his flagship off Newbury Street, by which time the concept had officially morphed into a “Northern Italian steakhouse.”

As for those Philly Cheese Steak spring rolls: The executive chef at Davio’s Philadelphia branch, which launched in 1999, invented them. They became so madly popular that DiFillippo began producing frozen versions—sold in Northeastern supermarkets—and serving other fusion mutations in his restaurants.

 
Which brings us again to the latest Davio’s, housed in a transformed space with pillars, hardwood floors, and sedate lighting that was formerly the rear section of Phipps’ Niketown. DiFillippo is, without question, a shrewd businessman. He knew that to make a success out of a fine-dining restaurant opened in an upscale mall during dubious economic times, he needed a secret weapon. And he snagged one: Claude Guillaume, the former maitre d’ of the deeply lamented Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead.

While chefs bask in celebrity glory, fewer front-of-house personalities garner their own fanbases these days. But Guillaume has fierce loyalists, and he deserves them. His paternal grin and casual, confident elegance epitomize hospitality. Just the way he pulls out a chair can fill you with reassurance. He assembled a staff—many of whom have worked with him before—that instantly makes Davio’s one of the best service experiences in the city. This crew works as a team, reading tables masterfully and navigating between chummy and graciously professional.

 
Sommelier Robert Evans, another Ritz-Carlton Buckhead alum, shepherds you with polish through a wine program rich with unfamiliar but lovely Italian options. You need to be specific about price, though. “Can you recommend something adventurous, not too tannic, that will go well with steaks and won’t break the bank?” I asked Evans on my first visit. He brought out a Super Tuscan that paired beautifully with the meat. When the bill arrived, I wheezed: It cost $90.

Everyone’s definition of affordable is different, I suppose. At a subsequent meal, I specified price much more succinctly and was directed toward a $36 bottle of Sicilian Nero d’Avola that matched the entrees eloquently.

 
The menu is one of those sweeping documents at which you blink for a while before your mind slowly begins to absorb it. Do you go the New American route with tuna tartare, followed by organic salmon with sun-dried tomato-
mascarpone orzo? Rock the steakhouse vibe with a chopped salad, a rib-eye, and sides of mashed potatoes and spinach? Or do you embrace Davio’s Italian essence, starting with fennel-spiked sausage before disappearing into a fortifying mound of tagliatelle Bolognese?

Obviously you can mix and match, but the Italian items and the steaks deliver the most consistent pleasures. Too many of the New American creations taste like throwbacks from ten years ago. Atlanta, blessedly, has moved past balsamic glazes and the chemical funk of truffle oil defiling mac-and-cheese.

 
Better, then, to concentrate on those plucky sausages, served over cannellini beans and roasted tomatoes, or a fluffy meatball doused with balanced, gentle tomato sauce. I’m partial to the pastas—such as spaghettini with plump shrimp, chunks of smoked bacon, peas, and garlic olive oil—that touch down on the bombastic flavors and good-natured soul of Italian American cooking. (Avoid the pappardelle with shreds of short rib that bob in oil, though.)

It won’t come as a surprise that my favorite part of the menu is labeled “Classici.” These are dishes from the original Davio’s. Lobster and asparagus flavor the risotto, and if it doesn’t ascend to the majesty of the risotto at Inman Park’s Sotto Sotto, it feeds my nostalgia capably. So does a monstrous grilled porterhouse veal chop, sauced with a subtle port reduction and a walloping side of creamed potatoes.

 
It’s been years since I craved done-to-death tiramisu, but I remember Steve DiFillippo’s recipe as the reliable bookend to a comforting meal. It doesn’t disappoint. Spooning the mascarpone and espresso-scented ladyfinger cake slowly into my mouth and watching beaming customers shake Claude Guillaume’s hand with gusto, I revel in that old reassuring sense of warmth. —Bill Addison
 
Davio’s
RATING **
Phipps Plaza, 3500 Peachtree Road
404-844-4810
HOURS Dinner Sunday–Thursday 5–11 p.m., Friday–Saturday 5 p.m.–midnight; lunch Monday–Saturday 11:30 a.m.–3 p.m.; Sunday brunch noon–3 p.m.
 

Photograph by Iain Bagwell. This review originally appeared in the November 2010 issue.

The Sound Table

Bill Addison
-
0
The Sound Table
There is no sign out front to announce the location of the Sound Table, the new restaurant-club from the owners of Midtown’s Top Flr. “The Sound Table” is etched on the side of its building, perched at the intersection of Edgewood Avenue and Boulevard in the Old Fourth Ward, but the words pale next to a stately mural of Martin Luther King Jr.’s visage. Park in the scruffy lot next to the building, then walk around to the front and pull open the black door flanked by large windows.
Your ears register the place before your eyes adjust to the dimness. A lush seventies groove may shimmy in the air, or perhaps a tight synthesizer drumbeat circa 1984.

Stairs lead to a second-floor dining area that accommodates the weekend throngs, but on weekdays all the dinnertime action happens in the room straight ahead. A long bar fills the right side of the space. Bottles glint with labels of titillating liquors that go way beyond the standard Bombay Sapphire and Jim Beam. Opposite is a raised platform with tables and a softly backlit wooden bench against a craggy brick wall. Light fixtures that resemble glowing test tubes dangle in the air. Toward the rear is an open DJ booth, its back panel painted the bright green of a golf course fairway.

I’ll admit, the first time I strolled in here, I thought, “Is this place just a little too funkadelic for Tuesday night supper?” Then I ordered the Horse’s Neck, a cocktail that mingles bourbon, three kinds of bitters (Peychaud’s, Angostura, and Regans’ Orange), and ginger beer. Its sophisticated flavors bounced among sweet, spicy, and herbal without straying too far in any one direction. I grabbed creamy, crispy Belgian-style frites, swiping one after another through silky homemade mayonnaise. My doubts began to subside.
After four visits, I’m an enthusiastic convert, particularly when I think back to the predecessors of this kind of scenester haunt—the cacophonous monsters that dominated the Atlanta restaurant landscape five years ago. Buckhead’s Twist, Midtown’s Shout, and Two Urban Licks on Ralph McGill are model examples. Mobs would descend on them so furiously that waits could stretch past an hour and callers requesting reservations would have to scream into the phone to be heard. Servers slung fruity martinis and fried calamari with crazed speed. The experience usually felt indifferent amid the madness.
 
Those party venues remain, and they have their loyalists. How gratifying, though, that when the splurge mentality began to fade a few years back, an overdue breed of smaller, more individualistic restaurants began to emerge. Top Flr, owned by Darren Carr and Jeff Myers, helped lead the way when it opened in 2007. Staunchly affordable, the menu remains quirky but smart. (Tuna tartar with miso pesto, avocado, and lime aioli over Sardinian flatbread? It works.) The place appeals to hipsters, and it flaunts distinctive elements—a mod layout, an engaging staff, tranquilizing sound tracks that mesh genres, a provocative wine list with far-flung options—that forge a sense of intimacy.
 
The Sound Table follows a similar philosophy. Carr and Myers run the place with a third partner, DJ Karl Injex, and though the spinning of tunes does play a key role in its dynamic, the decibels don’t typically climb to distracting levels until prime dinner hours are past. The cocktail list here is longer than at Top Flr, and the menu is shorter and more focused on small plates, but the Sound Table’s close interplay between food and drink makes for a sexy tango—particularly because both aspects impress equally.
 
Subheads on the cocktail list help you decide among the twenty-five or so optionss. “Sours, Citrus & Coolers,” for instance, guides you toward concoctions such as the Gemini Handshake, made with cachaça (the sugarcane liquor used to make Caipirinhas), lime, Angostura bitters, and a jolt of pineapple-habanero jam. If drinks are like personality tests, I seem to fall in the “Strong, Rich & Strange” category. A favorite is The Only William, a variation on a Manhattan with the addition of absinthe to keep things psychedelic. And then there are the tiki drinks. Mystic River, a blend of three rums with house-made rum punch and grenadine, is sheer danger in a glass. Take a cab if you intend to drink more than one.
 
These mad-scientist libations—as well as the wine selection, which is concise but gilded with affordable Old World champs—meld seamlessly with the nibbles that dominate much of the menu. Don’t think of this as merely bar food, though. Executive chef Shane Devereux (who also oversees Top Flr’s kitchen) and chef de cuisine Brendan Keenan look to world cuisines and their own imaginations for inspiration, but most dishes showcase surprisingly refined qualities.

Alongside those frites, I typically start with a bowl of crunchy-soft fried chickpeas. The chefs constantly tinker with the offerings: Previously, the chickpeas were tossed with lemon and capers; recently, the kitchen added sweet, dusky curried spices to the dish. Counteract the fried heaviness with a spread of white anchovies and olives marinated with coriander seed and orange zest.

 
Several plates take smart liberties with Asian and Latin American themes. A riff on goi ga (Vietnamese chicken salad) includes plenty of shredded cabbage and slivers of chicken tossed in a citrusy dressing with mint and the familiar sweetness of Georgia pecans. The kitchen’s take on Vietnamese pho first incorporated oxtail, and the broth turned out a little too salty. Now the pho includes roasted pork, and though it doesn’t taste as traditional as the more customary beef, it satisfies soulfully. Oaxacan hanger steak—marinated with arbol chiles and sauced with pico de gallo—isn’t as complex or smoky as the food I associate with Oaxaca, but the cooks render that hanger cut more tender than most I encounter around town.
 
I only tried two dishes I’d not order again: seared scallops on a bland bed of green papaya, and a dry chocolate truffle cake (go for the sticky toffee pudding with honeyed yogurt instead). But don’t let minor mistakes deter you. The Sound Table’s stylish, of-the-moment vibe marks another notch in the slow revolution toward neighborhood restaurants that reflect the diverse personalities of the city. Let’s keep that groove going. —Bill Addison

The Sound Table
RATING **
483 Edgewood Avenue
404-835-2534
HOURS Dinner Monday–Saturday 6–11 p.m.
 

Photograph by Christopher T. Martin. This review originally appeared in our October 2010 issue.

Tasty China

Bill Addison
-
0
Tasty China
Four years ago, local food fanatics discovered the Szechuan cooking of Peter Cheng in a scruffy Marietta strip-mall joint called Tasty China—an innocuous name that became synonymous with nuclear meltdowns of the mouth. Cheng, who had two food writers chasing after him for the New Yorker and the Oxford American this year, possesses a culinary charisma that is two parts Pied Piper and one part Marquis de Sade: He wrangles devotees, hurting them so good with his “hot and numbing” beef rolls and his fried eggplant riddled with chiles, and then he leaves them for a restaurant in another town.

Cheng departed Marietta for Kentucky in 2007, but Tasty China remains a benchmark of Szechuan combustion. Its wontons in red chili oil is a disturbingly scarlet soup, like something grisly glimpsed in an emergency room that you only allow yourself to take in peripherally.

 
How surreal, then, to be sitting in a restaurant—in Norcross—also named Tasty China, not eating hot and numbing beef but savoring mild and soothing tofu flecked with spinach. And fragile soup dumplings filled with delicately seasoned pork. And bright green fava beans tossed with gently pickled vegetables.

Shirley Shih, who runs this restaurant with her parents, explains the menu with the earnestness of a rookie museum docent. “This is the only restaurant that specializes in Shanghainese food in Atlanta,” she begins. “The taste is lighter and a little sweeter than other regional Chinese cooking. Our menu represents a range of dishes from eastern provinces around Shanghai.”

 
The name replication is happenstance. “We have no affiliation with the Marietta restaurant,” Shih told me in a phone interview. “The previous owners called this place Tasty China and ran it as a buffet restaurant. They sold it to us earlier this year, and we kept the name.”
 
Despite the potential confusion and the deep irony that these counterparts serve exceptionally dissimilar cuisines from the same vast country, there is room for two Tasty Chinas in the metro area. Szechuan cooking may induce more of an endorphin rush, but the Shihs offer a cuisine that kindles its own mellow euphoria.

The menu requires some deciphering, though. Ignore the back pages that list the “special dishes” and the “chef’s specialties”: That is where the Americanized Chinese standards have been relegated. (And those warhorses—chicken with broccoli, beef lo mein, and such—do show up on the restaurant’s lunch buffet, which has fans among the local office workers.) Pinpoint instead the dishes whose descriptions begin with “Shanghai” or “Ningbo” or “Nanjing.” These are the jackpots that emphasize the talents of the family’s patriarch, Steven Shih, who mans the kitchen.

 
Shanghainese meals often start with simple, protein-focused small plates typically served cold. Suzhou smoked fish may be a misnomer (the carp is actually cut into small pieces, deep-fried, and glazed with a sweet sauce), but these intense, bronzed morsels calibrate the palate to the nuances of this type of cooking. Strips of pork belly in wine sauce include chile flakes that only nip the taste buds with heat. Shirley Shih tried to warn me that this section of the pork belly is a chewier cut than the bacony hunk everyone adores these days, but I enjoyed the al dente texture. Drunken chicken, a Shanghai classic, tastes a bit too strongly of cooking sherry for my taste; I prefer the similarly prepared duck, whose slight gaminess better stands its ground against the alcohol.
 
Cold meats splashed with fortified wines might nudge some diners past their comfort zones, but dumplings and noodles will lull them back to contentment. Xiao long bao, or soup dumplings, are a specialty of Shanghai, and these grew better each of the three times I tried them—plumper, juicier, yet daintier. Be sure to splash them with ginger-flecked black vinegar, which coaxes out the flavors of the pork filling and hot liquid. The pan-cooked buns are much sturdier, but a hard sear from a few moments in the wok gives them the satisfying crispness of fried pot stickers.
 
“Rice ovalettes” may sound strange, but it’s an accurate enough description: These oblong bites, somewhere between a noodle and a dumpling, are not unlike the flattish rounds of dough in some versions of Southern chicken and dumplings. Made from rice flour, they come tossed with crunchy bamboo shoots, a bit of pork, and either spinach or salt-preserved vegetables. Eat them quickly before their texture turns gluey.
 
“Ningbo wonton and yellow croaker clay pot” takes wonton soup to higher levels. The wontons float in a large bowl as majestically as jellyfish in the ocean far from shore, and the dumplings remain silky. The fish adds faint pungency to the broth, which, to be honest, at first sip seemed bland. It was only when its temperature cooled that I perceived its muted richness. That’s how Shanghainese cooking can be: It sometimes takes attention and a little patience to appreciate its fine subtleties.
 
And like most of the world’s cuisines, occasionally the exotic can verge on the strange. “Hangzhou-style fish topped with pine nuts” is a labor-intensive effort that, unfortunately, ends up tasting like candied fish. Had I ordered it as my sole main course, I would have left unhappy. But I actually enjoyed it as one element in a collage of dishes, which is the best way to eat Chinese food.

If I were on a budget and could only afford one entree (most of which range from $9 to $13), I’d choose the “Yangzhou giant meatball with crab meat pot.” Also known in Shanghai as a “lion’s head,” the whopper sphere is a meatball out of Roald Dahl’s imagination: freakishly large and utterly scrumptious. Covered with cabbage leaves and glass noodles in gurgling broth kept at a simmer using Sterno, it certainly qualifies as a one-pot meal. If you have room for dessert after that, request the refreshing, brown-sugary shaved ice topped with mangos, kiwi fruit, and strawberries.

 
The Shihs introduced their specialties in March, and the spare, brightly colored dining room held increasing numbers of customers on each of my visits. As word spreads about the second Tasty China, I’m wondering if doubleheader meals at both restaurants in one night may come into vogue. A word of advice: Start in Norcross, lest the glorious hellfire of Marietta’s blazes scorch away your ability to relish the gentleness of Shanghainese delicacies. —Bill Addison

Tasty China
RATING **
5390 Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Norcross
770-729-8555
tastychinanorcross.food.office­live.com

HOURS Sunday–Thursday 11 a.m.–9:30 p.m., Friday–Saturday 11 a.m.–10 p.m.
 
Note: This article has been updated on 5/21/2013.
 

Photograph by Christopher T. Martin. This review originally appeared in our September 2010 issue.

Bacchanalia

Bill Addison
-
0
Bacchanalia

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.

That was my first taste of Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison’s cooking in 1998, when Bacchanalia still resided on Piedmont Road in a cottage hidden among Buckhead’s car dealerships and prodigious law firms. Even in my overfed life, so much of the meal remains starry in my mind.

Bacchanalia was destined to outgrow that cloistered space. Opened in January 1993, Quatrano and Harrison’s flagship nimbly bypassed the style-over-substance clamor of the nineties’ Atlanta dining scene. They championed seasonal foods earlier than most local chefs—an appreciation nurtured in San Francisco, where the couple met while in culinary school.

Emboldened in part by the success of Floataway Cafe—their more casual Cal-Ital restaurant, launched in 1998 in a clandestine industrial redo down Zonolite Road near Emory—they gambled and shepherded Bacchanalia out of Buckhead in 1999. The converted meatpacking plant on Howell Mill Road and Fourteenth Street where they reopened the restaurant (fronted by their new gourmet market, Star Provisions) was in the middle of commercial badlands. A decade later, we can label their move to the area we now call the Westside as pioneering. Back then, it was just plain ballsy.

And it paid off. Howell Mill ripened into a traffic-jammed corridor of retail businesses. The new location sparked a zeal for the industrial-chic restaurant settings that the city still favors. Bacchanalia now rules as the queen of Atlanta fine dining, having outlived ultraluxe Seeger’s and the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead. (Only Restaurant Eugene, with its slightly more relaxed atmosphere and style of service, operates in the same stratosphere of rarefied cuisine.) Quatrano and Harrison have won practically every national culinary accolade there is to win—including the James Beard award in 2003—and last year they opened their fourth restaurant, Abattoir, in the White Provision complex across the gully from Bacchanalia and Star Provisions.

Their firstborn’s celestial reputation is so entrenched that its success can be taken for granted, so it was heartening to find that it remains a masterfully calibrated dining experience. Much of Bacchanalia’s longevity stems from its low intimidation factor. You smell roasted coffee beans and the bewitching funk of the market’s cheese shop as you walk into the restaurant. It’s hard to feel uptight about the modern art and the fine linens when mustard-colored concrete blocks, reminiscent of a public high school cafeteria, line the walls. Service always begins very starched and professional but loosens up as staffers read the table and develop a rapport.

The menu format stays constant: Choose four courses (appetizer, entree, cheese/salad, and dessert) from among eight or so frequently changing options in each category, and then surrender to the meal’s midtempo rhythm. Opt for wine pairings for each course, or select glasses or bottles from a nicely edited list that could use a few more daring, non-American varietals.

Nibbles appear soon after ordering—perhaps hot, cheese-filled gougères, followed by a sip of cucumber gazpacho with Marcona almonds, then warm, thick slices of sourdough bread with a crock of salted butter. Before dessert, there will be an intermezzo—a strawberry smoothie made from fruit picked on Quatrano and Harrison’s Bartow County farm, maybe, or lemon panna cotta dotted with blueberries.

When selecting dishes, go bold. Extend beyond your default preferences. Certainly, timid palates can assemble a sequence that will please them: dulcet Georgia shrimp in a gentle mélange of heirloom tomato, cucumber, and crème fraîche; rainbow trout with wholesome summer squash and a tomato-horseradish vinaigrette; plump dates with tasteful wisps of Parmigiano-Reggiano; and Valrhona chocolate cake with a demure scoop of mint ice cream alongside. All capably prepared and safe. And, in this arena, a little dull.

Instead, let the chefs—in particular, chef de cuisine Andy Carson, who runs the kitchen when Quatrano and Harrison are minding their other ventures—show you how they elevate sweetbreads. Artichokes barigoule (an herbaceous, aromatic stew), meltingly soft spring onions, and vinegary cherry gastrique surrounded a starter of sweetbreads, the organ meat cooked so the edges became crisp but the interior was creamy. The pounce of sweet, sour, and earthy contrasts shorted out my analytical brain, leaving me to sigh and simply enjoy the waves of flavors.

Meatier dishes displayed the most bravado. Boneless medallions of quail were stuffed with boudin sausage and set over an early summer succotash of corn, lady peas, and young butter beans flecked with country ham. Two cutlets of veal schnitzel, slightly thicker than traditional German versions and coated with lightweight panko, were poised over a vinegary potato salad punctuated by pickled ramps. I loved the most overtly Southern dish: roasted pork loin and hard-seared pork belly gussied up with white grits, a clump of greens, a small link of fresh andouille sausage, and potlikker jus.

Of the many difficult decisions to make when ordering, I find the cheese course the most torturous. Do I want something sweet, such as Sweet Grass Dairy’s Camembert-like Green Hill with blueberry compote? Do I want savory, such as a semifirm tomme with a rough-and-tumble salad of pole and filet beans, hazelnuts, and bacon? Do I want to challenge the palate with manchego tossed with celery leaves, white anchovies, and egg vinaigrette? Or, for a $10 surcharge, do I want to choose from the cheese cart?

Star Provisions’ passionate cheese monger, Tim Gaddis, has lately been curating a stunning, diverse array of fromage culled entirely from the South. Honestly, I cheat and order two cheese courses, then repent with a lighter dessert—a trio of sorbets, a delicate blueberry brown butter tart, or a fried peach pie (it’s small).

If the idea of this much of a blowout seems daunting or too much of an investment (the prix fixe is $75 per person), wade into Bacchanalia’s world via the bar. You can order a la carte there and still experience the dining room’s charisma. I took a friend who was visiting from out of town for his first Bacchanalia meal a few weeks back. We sat at the bar and started off by splitting a blue crab fritter—still a beloved staple after all these years. He yelped and rolled his eyes in glee and gushed over the interplay of the crab, the citrus, the avocado, and the spices. I sat there, beaming proudly. I knew exactly how he felt. —Bill Addison

Bacchanalia
RATING ****
1198 Howell Mill Road
404-365-0410
starprovisions.com
HOURS Monday–Saturday, 6–10 p.m. (closed Mondays until September 14)

Photograph by Alex Martinez. This review originally appeared in our August 2010 issue.

Quinones at Bacchanalia

Bill Addison
-
0
Quinones at Bacchanalia
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?

I’m a holdout for fancy duds in temples of gastronomy. My friend had laughed earlier in the day when I asked if he was wearing a tie to dinner, and the table of four that sat down after us included two men wearing jeans and shirts with psychedelic prints. Hey, I wear jeans and T-shirts out to eat all the time, but I also savor the ritual of pulling out the finery when it feels appropriate.

Quinones’s pricey level of extravagance makes it a holdout of sorts as well. Economic doldrums have naturally cut into its customer base, and the casualization of American dining continues unabated: Way fewer big-ticket destinations open these days, and haute chefs now invest their skills in burger joints.

But this restaurant—named for James Quinones, the manager of Floataway Cafe who was killed in a car accident in 2004—has always struggled with its identity. When it opened in 2005, it initially aimed to elevate Southern cuisine into the high-end milieu. But it basically ended up being a protracted journey into Bacchanalia’s Mediterranean and California cooking. Quinones needed its own personality, its own raison d’etre.

Inspired by the farm-to-table phenomenon that started a few years back, Anne Quatrano (who owns the restaurant with Clifford Harrison) strived in 2007 to push the menu in truly Southern directions, offering dishes such as Lowcountry Frogmore stew and short ribs with spoon bread and collard greens. Then the recession came, and last year Quatrano and Harrison opened Abattoir, with its demanding, revolving mix of small plates. Quinones went from operating five nights a week down to Fridays and Saturdays. During the summer, it is now open only on Saturdays. And the set menu, disappointingly, is once again an extension of Bacchanalia.

At a recent meal, the food didn’t always deliver—a shock, given the cost, the exceptional service, and the mannerly room filled with smoky mirrors and lambent chandeliers. Certainly, moments of brilliance blazed: an amuse-bouche of silky corn soup with pickled red onion, capped with a single chicharrón (fried pork rind, a signature dish at Abattoir). Maine halibut seared with gusto and served with gossamer spring onions, slivers of artichoke, and tiny, crisp tomato chips. A tasting of lamb that included medium-rare tenderloin, a luscious round of herbed forcemeat made from leg of lamb, and a link of lamb sausage redolent with cumin.

The kitchen cribbed five of the evening’s courses straight from Bacchanalia’s menu: foie gras terrine; boudin-stuffed quail; Sweet Grass Dairy’s Camembert-style Green Hill matched with tiny, elegant portions of peach chutney, peach gelée, and a slick of peach puree; lemon-buttermilk panna cotta studded with blueberries; and a final dessert that included a nifty version of white chocolate roasted until it developed a caramel hue and flavor. Is this repetition a bad thing? If I’d not been in the rare position of reviewing both Bacchanalia and Quinones simultaneously, I wouldn’t have been so familiar with these preparations—all of which were precisely executed. Still, it clearly broadcasts the lack of individuality at Quinones.

And two of the dishes unique to the restaurant fell flat. Tuna crudo (the Italian version of sashimi) with radish, fennel, and avocado needed a more acidic pop than a splash of soy sauce to brighten the combination. And fried Kumamoto oysters in a refreshing bath of tomato water with cucumber, dill, and caviar arrived room temperature and nearly soggy. Oysters fresh from the fryer would have made this dish sublime.

So consider this a down cycle in the constant evolution of Quinones. Once the economy truly rebounds, and expense accounts and disposable incomes surge, the restaurant may rouse itself to reveal a unique personality. I’ll check back then—still in my finest pinstripe. —Bill Addison

Quinones
RATING ***
1198 Howell Mill Road
404-365-0410
starprovisions.com
HOURS Saturday 6–10 p.m.

Photograph by Alex Martinez. This review originally appeared in our August 2010 issue.

Nam Phuong

Bill Addison
-
0
Nam Phuong

I sat in the foyer of Nam Phuong in Norcross, hunched over my iPhone and madly Googling the names of Vietnamese dishes I’d never heard of before. On the restaurant’s back wall, a glowing white screen broadcast the restaurant’s daily specials. The program running the projection rhythmically underlined the words over and over again—the PowerPoint equivalent of a broken record. The dishes were listed only in Vietnamese.

Over the years, I’ve developed a paranoia specific to food critics: When I’m in any type of Asian restaurant and find menu items that aren’t translated into English, I’m convinced that they represent the zenith of the kitchen’s talent and am certain that if I don’t somehow decipher these specials and persuade a sometimes-reluctant waitstaff to serve them to me, I’ll have missed the truest, most indigenous aspects of the restaurant’s cuisine and culture.

We tested my compulsive theory on one of the special appetizers called banh tom co ngu, which I knew from my online search translated simply as “shrimp cakes.” These weren’t akin to crab cakes, though: Single, plump shrimp were cradled atop nests of shredded, deep-fried sweet potato. Next to these bundles, like a forest backing up to a beach, loomed the riot of lettuce and herbs that makes Vietnamese cuisine so distinctive. For every fried morsel, there’s almost always something leafy alongside. We nestled the shrimp and sweet potato in a lettuce leaf with herbs, dipped it in clear sweet-and-sour sauce, and dug in. Mmm. The combination of tingly mint and earthy sweet potato particularly delighted. (Southerners should play more with that combination.)

I felt immensely self-satisfied with my discovery until I took a good look around the sprawling room. My tablemate and I were the only non-Asians, and none of the other customers nibbled shrimp cakes. Most were instead constructing their meals from a large platter neatly arrayed with glossy proteins. “That’s the Ba Vi,” said our server, pointing to the menu. “Three Delights. It’s our specialty.” Perhaps this wasn’t a restaurant that saved its best efforts for insiders after all.

Our Ba Vi arrived moments later. The three delights were chao tom, shrimp paste fried and then simmered with sugarcane; nem nuong, pork strips that register as a cross between pork meatballs and light sausage; and bo nuong la lot, seasoned beef wrapped in la lot—also known as wild betel leaves and similar to grape leaves—and grilled. Fluffy clumps of vermicelli noodles and the requisite vegetables filled the remainder of the broad metal platter.

Another server dropped off a stack of plastic-looking disks. These were rice paper wrappers, the same ones used to make fresh summer rolls often stuffed with seafood or pork and julienned vegetables. We soaked the disks in a bowl of hot water until they softened, then spread them out and began composing—a tuft of noodles on the bottom, slivers of pork and a la lot roll, and finally some greenery. The crowning touch was palate-arousing sauce based on nuoc nam, the ubiquitous fish sauce in Vietnamese cooking, mixed with pineapple and mam nem, a fermented anchovy paste. The collage of flavors ricocheted differently with every mouthful.

Two dishes in and I was already grateful that Nam Phuong had opened. Vietnamese cuisine is in a rut locally. The metro area offers plenty of options for well-made pho, the aromatic beef soup, and Buford Highway houses several worthwhile stops for banh mi, the sandwich of meats, pâtés, and vegetables stuffed into baguettes.

Wonderful though these iconic dishes may be, they’ve pigeonholed Vietnamese food in Atlanta. There’s a kaleidoscope of other sophisticated dishes worth exploring—rice noodle dishes, stews, seafood and meats cooked in clay pots, boldly seasoned salads. Only a few other places delve into these realms, including first-rate Nam (owned by Alex and Chris Kinjo of the MF Sushi restaurants) and two locations of Com Vietnamese Grill, which don’t have the finesse they once did.

Owner and executive chef Tieng Nguyen surely noticed the lack when she launched the Norcross restaurant—her first Nam Phuong outside Philadelphia—last August. Nguyen had three successful restaurants in Philly, sold two a few years back, and moved to Atlanta with her family to focus on her new venture in Oakbrook Square Shopping Center off Jimmy Carter Boulevard. Nearly a year into its inception, this affordable restaurant (most entrees cost under ten dollars) is an obvious hit with the Vietnamese community, and I’ve recently noticed more non-Asians delving into the restaurant’s exotic vistas.

Summer is the ideal time to chomp your way through Nam Phuong’s salad list. Two classics—juicy lotus root salad with shrimp, and papaya salad with sheer, chewy snippets of beef jerky—revive the taste buds with their stunning freshness, but the duck salad reigns as my current darling among these choices. Slightly warm slices of duck mingle among shredded cabbage, carrots, banana blossoms, herbs, and lettuce, all tossed in ginger-infused dressing. This is all sharing food, of course, and the duck salad paired with banh xeo—a crisp, eggless crepe enfolded with pork, shrimp, and vegetables—is one of the most satisfying warm-weather lunches I can imagine.

When the days grow shorter, venture into the menu’s more warming options. Beef stew, steeped in an anise-scented broth reminiscent of pho, demonstrates France’s influence on Vietnam’s cuisine. And I’m fascinated by Nam Phuong’s version of congee, the rice porridge more typically found (in our country, anyway) in Chinese restaurants. Versions of congee proliferate all along the coastal, rice growing areas of Southeast Asia, and this one is thinner than most Chinese versions I’ve tried but heartier in proteins. Fish congee, which I like to spike with soy sauce and chili oil, will dispel any January chill.

Speaking of Chinese cooking, there’s a fair amount of it slipped into the mondo menu. Dishes are never specifically identified as such, but if you come across a description that reads “chicken sauteed with black bean sauce,” you aren’t getting your Asian cuisines muddled. It’s Chinese. And on the whole, the Vietnamese offerings taste more finely tuned.

Pho is also on the menu, but not many customers seem to order it. Noodle soup isn’t the restaurant’s strong point, anyway. I’m heartened that patrons gravitate toward Nguyen’s nonconforming specialties. Maybe other Vietnamese chefs and restaurateurs will observe this success and decide to branch out into underexplored culinary territories themselves.

Nam Phuong
RATING **
5495 Jimmy Carter Boulevard, Norcross
770-409-8686
namphuongatlanta.com
HOURS Sunday–Thursday 10 a.m.–10 p.m., Friday–Saturday 10 a.m.–11 p.m.

Photograph by Christopher T. Martin. This review originally appeared in our July 2010 issue.

Canoe

Bill Addison
-
0
Canoe

It was a Friday evening commute spent in classic, nerve-jangling Atlanta traffic. The speed-stop-speed-stop flux of cars extended straight from Downtown into the parking lot of Canoe in Vinings, where valet attendants conducted drivers with Wagnerian fervor. My dining comrades were still stuck on the highway; the woman at the hostess station suggested I wait for them at the new outdoor bar.

Canoe’s recently renovated garden looked so idyllic it felt almost farcical, though the dozen shades of spring green (plus a gin and tonic) began unwinding my clobbered senses immediately. The circular, uncovered bar sits on the edge of the Chattahoochee River, with a placid view of the baby-blue bridge that spans Paces Ferry Road. Pebbled walkways ramble through the landscape, lined with trees, shrubs, benches, and Adirondack chairs. Patrons were scattered around the lawn, drinks in hand, listening to local singer Juliana Finch. The couple next to me debated what to do about dinner: Without a reservation, the restaurant couldn’t seat them in the dining room until 9:30. As dusk fell, Canoe’s rooftop sign lit up as bright as a 1930s theater marquee, and the river darkened to a rolling glimmer.

It’s hard to picture this pastoral stretch submerged under muddy, rushing water. On September 21 last year, during the worst of the floods that did an estimated $500 million worth of damage to the metro area, the Chattahoochee swelled and engulfed Canoe in six feet of overflow. It decimated the building’s interior, though staffers pitched in to help revive the restaurant in a remarkably quick two months.

“Over the years, the landscape had flooded from time to time. It was more of a nuisance than anything else,” said general manager Vincent Palermo in a phone interview. “After last year’s events, we were visited by representatives from the National Weather Service. They told us this was something that happened once every 200 or 300 years, which is one of the reasons we chose to reopen.”

At this point, a first-time customer could walk into Canoe and never sense what happened. The space has been gently updated with fresh carpet patterns and fabrics that line booths, but it retains the same clubby rusticity (exposed brick, wrought iron vines, a handsome copper hood over the semi-open kitchen, dusky lighting) that regulars embrace. And the restaurant, which opened in 1995, has cultivated a moneyed core of loyalists who keep the place booked. Given that a tent erected for special events was packed with revelers during each of my meals, and that the garden is a magnet for outdoor wedding receptions, I’d say Canoe is one of the few truly recession-proof restaurants in Atlanta.

Carvel Grant Gould, who has been executive chef since 2005, understands her audience. She maintains some of the restaurant’s long-standing idiosyncrasies while also subtly pushing the cooking in up-to-date directions. The menu is wordy, with ingredient-heavy descriptions that hearken back to the nineties, when New American restaurants delighted in verbiage detailing every overwrought dish.

Under Gould’s watch, though, the food doesn’t taste busy—it tastes sensibly calibrated. Gould rounds up the usual inventory of upscale restaurant proteins (smoked salmon, pork belly, short rib, rack of lamb, diver scallops), but she frequently combines them with clever, seasonal sides and sauces that reveal some creative moxie.

Just as importantly, her kitchen consistently produces model versions of modern classics. Smoked salmon with potato cake and goat cheese is one played-out combo. Yet the potato cake is so crisp and lacy, it offers seductive, irresistible contrast to the salmon and the slick of whipped goat cheese painted across the bottom of the plate.

Same deal with a beet and goat cheese salad: It arrives in a precise circle, the goat cheese cradling morsels of red and golden beets that have the right toothy texture. Walnuts and dots of basil oil add understated spark. Both molten sheep’s milk cheese and not-too-sweet cranberry-pecan vinaigrette bring entertaining new dimensions to an otherwise basic, bacon-spiked spinach salad.

Fusion is a trend that’s deader than Bill Compton on HBO’s True Blood, so let’s just say that Gould likes to slip Asian nuances into her largely American-European compositions, and she does it effectively. She adds the distinctive pucker of yuzu, the Japanese citrus, to salmon ceviche with cilantro and cucumber, as well as to specials such as a fluffy, meaty crab fritter. Barbecued quail with star anise–scented boiled peanuts and collards zigzagged with East-West flavors (specifically, China and the American South), but the skin needed to be way crispier, and those peanuts could have been more aggressively spiced.

Occasionally, Gould lures you in with an embellishment that impacts the dish less than you expect, but the results are wonderful nonetheless. Foie gras sausage accompanies chile-glazed duck, and though the sausage lacks the liver’s come-hither unctuousness, a canny play of textures and bold flavors still makes it a successful entree. Chocolate vinegar is an intriguing addition to a slow-roasted short rib; I couldn’t detect a specific chocolate note, but the undercurrent of vinegar nicely brightened the slab of beef and the cabbage on which it was served.

Such a whirligig of flavors spinning through one menu can make wine pairings a challenge, but if you let wine director Matt Bradford have some fun, he’ll deliver on a bottle that bridges the disparities. (And I’m happy to see the wine list moving toward more diverse, less strictly American options.) Bradford is in demand when he’s working the room, but he’s worth the wait: The service staff, though thoroughly professional and knowledgeable about the food, could use a bit more education in the vino department.

They know their desserts, however, and they’re adept at talking you into ordering more than one. You won’t regret the coercion. Thomas Numprasong, one of the city’s unsung pastry talents, incorporates the kind of wit into his creations that makes them a genuine finale. Pray he’s made his buttered popcorn ice cream with homemade Cracker Jacks the night you visit. His chocolate and caramel “Grotto” begins as a dome of chocolate, but crack the brittle shell and out flows sexy salted caramel. “Whiskied Chattahoochee Mud,” a gossamer mousse pie with espresso-scented dark chocolate and Irish cream, proves that the restaurant and its staff haven’t lost their sense of humor, despite the trials of the last year. Here’s hoping this is the only kind of mud that ever sees the inside of Canoe again. —Bill Addison

Canoe
RATING ***
4199 Paces Ferry Road
770-432-2663
canoeatl.com
HOURS Lunch Monday–Friday 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.; dinner Monday–Thursday 5:30–10 p.m., Friday–Saturday 5:30–11 p.m., Sunday 5:30–9:30 p.m., Sunday brunch 10:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

Photograph by Alex Martinez. This review originally appeared in our June 2010 issue.

Vingenzo’s

Bill Addison
-
0
Vingenzo’s

Driving thirty miles north to Woodstock from Downtown Atlanta seemed like a short trek when sensational pizza was the payoff. I was in the midst of a metro-wide pizza hunt in February, and glowing Internet reports had lured me to Vingenzo’s, which sits near the railroad tracks in Woodstock’s historic commercial district, where buildings erected in 1879 still stand. It was an early Saturday afternoon following a wintry night of snow and ice, yet the dining room hummed with business. The restaurant has obviously found an audience in this growing town of nearly 25,000 people.

Then again, finely calibrated pizza is a self-sustaining business plan—and a rarity—no matter what its location. We ordered three pies: a basic margherita with the restaurant’s handcrafted buffalo mozzarella; a variation with roasted red peppers and house-made sausage; and the Vesuvio with mozzarella, ricotta, black olives, and wild mushrooms, overlaid with swaths of sheer prosciutto slices.

When they arrived, scents of campfire and freshly baked bread permeated the air. Speckles of char dotted the thin crust, which was pliant but crisp and retained its texture as it cooled. (For local pizza aficionados, I’d say the crust more resembles the style of Varasano’s or Fritti than the voluptuously lipped pies at Antico.) The sauce danced between sweet and tangy. Circles of cheese melted evenly across the surface. Toppings seemed like bonus embellishments rather than crucial injections of flavor. This was, unquestionably, some of the best pizza I’ve eaten in the South. “You should come back at night,” said the server. “The chef also makes his own pastas for the dinner menu.”

Vingenzo’s, I can affirm after subsequent visits in milder weather, is indeed worth the trip for more than just the pizza. And let’s face it: 2010 has thus far been one of the slowest years in the last two decades for ambitious, independent Atlanta restaurant openings. A modest jaunt to an exuberant meal can help lift intown dining doldrums.

Vingenzo’s is the kind of place many Atlantans would love to have in their own neighborhoods but don’t: a reasonably priced restaurant energized by a chef with a sustained obsession for the cuisine he loves. Michael Bologna, a New York native, has worked in restaurants and taught cooking for thirty-five years. After trips to the Campania region of southern Italy, Bologna longed to emulate the sense of hospitality and freshness he encountered there. He found a space in Woodstock not far from his day job as lead instructor at Chattahoochee Technical College’s Center for Culinary Education.

Inspired by the margheritas he’d savored in Naples, he built a tiled, wood-burning oven in the restaurant’s open kitchen to bake pizzas. He and business partner Gary Slivenik opened Vingenzo’s in December 2008. (I asked Bologna about the idiosyncratic “g” in the restaurant’s moniker, an old family name. “It’s spelled phonetically so people can say ‘Vincenzo’s’ correctly,” he said.)

Bologna delivers on his goal of warmhearted hospitality. His head is a salt-and-pepper blur as he zips between the kitchen and the large, light-filled dining room, where he greets regulars and introduces himself to newcomers. And his background as an instructor pays off: He’s trained his young servers to carry themselves with an air of assurance and graciousness that belies their ages.

One of the staff will probably recommend that you precede pizzas and pastas with a tasting of the restaurant’s three house-made mozzarellas, a wise suggestion. Approach the platter by starting with the firm latte fresco, which pairs well with the accompaniments—roasted peppers and cherry tomatoes, capers, and olives. Move on to the burrata, a cylinder of mozzarella with a buttery, semisolid core infused with heavy cream. Save the buffalo mozzarella for last. Juicy and dulcet, with a jot of peppery olive oil for contrast, it’s a treat to taste it unbaked and a harbinger of the wood-fired goodness to come.

Refresh the palate with a clean-tasting salad such as the arugula with lemon oil and balsamic vinaigrette. An appetizer of pureed white beans served with “pizza bread”—akin to pita—is soothing stuff, but you really want to save your appetite for both pasta and pizza.

Pastas require mix-and-match decisions: The menu lists nearly a dozen sauce options, and servers will describe the pasta shapes available each day. Spaghetti and fettuccine are staples, as is a sturdier variety such as fusilli or rigatoni. Bologna largely eschews richness in his pastas to instead achieve a gossamer texture, particularly in the noodles he makes using egg whites instead of whole eggs. And the sauces, too, are light and generally unfussy—a tumble of artichokes, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, and basil glossed with olive oil, for example.

If you hanker for a richer preparation, choose the Al Forno: fennel sausage, mozzarella, tomatoes, and ricotta all baked with one of the more robust pasta options. (Weekend specials, such as a wild boar ragù offered in March, also tend to be more complex.) I’m inclined to request the Al Forno alongside the Frutti di Mare—shrimp, mussels, and clams in a white wine–garlic sauce—with fettuccine. The seafood jumble perhaps needs a bit more salt or garlicky punch, but it flatters the weightlessness of the noodles so satisfyingly.

Consistency can be an issue with restaurants that serve Neapolitan-style pizza, but I’ve found Vingenzo’s pies to be steady, particularly in the crisp crust department. Bologna even tackled the challenge of gluten-free pizza (and pasta). That pizza possesses the off-kilter mouthfeel of a soft cookie, but I bet the customers who can’t eat wheat are mighty grateful regardless.

No matter the diet, his flourless almond-chocolate torte is a moist, fragrant masterpiece of Italian baking. The elusive fruitcakelike essence that first hits the taste buds comes from a splash of limoncello. To gild this rewarding finale, ask for the torte with a side of bracing grapefruit gelato (homemade, of course).

“Customers tell me all the time, ‘We ate so much but we don’t feel full,'” Bologna said in a phone interview. Given the rustic yet buoyant quality to his food, that’s easy to believe. I’ve personally gorged to the point of discomfort during every meal. But then again, if Vingenzo’s operated in my community and I didn’t have to drive forty-five minutes to reach it, I’d eat pizza and almond-chocolate torte once a week and learn moderation. Perhaps. —Bill Addison

Vingenzo’s
RATING **
105 East Main Street, Woodstock
770-924-9133
vingenzos.com
HOURS Dinner Monday–Thursday 5–9 p.m., Friday–Saturday 5–10 p.m. Lunch Friday–Saturday 11 a.m.–3 p.m.

Photograph by Amy Herr. This review originally appeared in our May 2010 issue.

Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft

Bill Addison
-
0
Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft

Thai cuisine, in its truest form, riles the senses. Be it a classic green curry or a jumble of shrimp tossed in a scorching wok with fermented shoots and buds of plants mostly foreign to Western palates, the aromas inundate before the first bite. Smells from the most pungent dishes may slightly repulse before the flavors enchant—the culinary equivalent of how destined lovers behave in a Shakespearean play. Garlic, herbs, chiles, and lime ripple over the taste buds. Coconut calms the heat in spicy preparations from the coastal south. Hearty sausages and salads from the rugged, mountainous north bolster appetites.

In Atlanta, exciting regional Thai food is scarce. Most of our numerous Thai restaurants serve the same generic menu: spring rolls, pad thai, tame curries with your choice of protein, entrees that strongly resemble Chinese stir-fries tweaked with a hint of Thai-style seasoning. Sure, these Americanized standards have their place, but there are such fertile worlds to explore beyond these limited glimpses.

And so a whisper of hope ran through the food community when it learned that a restaurant specializing in Bangkok street food was being opened by the Niyomkuls, the royal family of Atlanta Thai restaurants. Charlie and Nan Niyomkul run the lavish Nan Thai Fine Dining and its little sister, Tamarind Seed Bistro.

Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft, the family’s new venture, is in the hands of daughter Dee Dee Niyomkul and her fiance, Thaddeus Keefe. Its location—on the third floor of the Brookwood Place shopping center in the space formerly occupied by Taurus, Gary Mennie’s glitzy riff on chophouses— feels at first like an improbable spot to sample Thai street food. One walks into the small lobby to find a real tuk tuk, the nickname for the auto-rickshaws that putter passengers around cities in Southeast Asia. Two elevators papered with black-and-white Thai characters lift diners to the restaurant. When the doors open, a hostess greets arrivals with a slight bow and presses her palms together in a wai, the gesture of welcome.

Pause to appreciate the sweeping silhouette of the city’s skyline out the window—such a rare sight in Atlanta restaurants. Frustratingly for guests, the little hostess corner is blessed with the most dazzling angle of the view. The dining room, stripped of Taurus’s glam ostentation, resembles a small amphitheater. Lights twinkle on the dark ceiling like constellations, and banquettes and tables have been arranged in a spare but elegant manner. When the restaurant fills to capacity on weekend nights, the space crackles with the kind of this-is-the-place-to-be energy that Atlantans crave. On a slow Tuesday night, the echo can make this a lonesome place to dine.

A few clever touches spark a Thai mind-set. The staff recently set up projectors that cast images of Bangkok’s street-food scene on the back wall. A quirky pageant of Thai snacks, resembling multishaped varieties of Chex Mix packed into bins, sits on display next to the semiopen kitchen.

What really jump-starts the lust for Thai flavors, though, is a dish called mieng kum. Order it while you peruse the rest of the menu. Spinach leaves, rounded like petals, cradle clusters of roasted peanuts, coconut, onion, bits of lime (rind and all), and slivered ginger, all bound by palm sugar melted into caramel. Shazam! Jolts of sweet, piquant, and earthy ricochet around the palate like an overactive cartoon character bouncing off walls. At long last, a taste of Thailand that departs from the multitudes.

Happily, there are more pleasures like the mieng kum to be discovered at Tuk Tuk. Niyomkul and Keefe have been planning this concept for years as a tribute to Niyomkul’s grandmother, who once worked as a street vendor in Bangkok. Niyomkul, who oversees Tuk Tuk’s kitchen, juggles a challenge typical for mainstream ethnic restaurants: How can she prepare dishes in a manner that appeals to diners unfamiliar with regional specialties while appeasing serious chowhounds who know these foods and long for aggressive Thai seasonings such as dried shrimp and fermented fish sauce?

She strides the middle path as best she can, and she often succeeds. The menu—divided into small plates, soups and salads, “Bangkok street noodles,” and big plates—is designed for sharing. For the more adventuresome, there are small plates such as hoy tod, a crisp pancake-omelet hybrid stuffed with mussels, sprouts, and scallions. The dish is prepared with a surer hand now than it was when the restaurant opened in December, and it’s an extra joy to eat mussels in a way other than steamed in white wine–cream broth. Thai beef jerky sounds intimidating, but it’s a plate of chewy sirloin strips with mild nuances of honey and soy sauce. You eat them using your fingers along with clumps of sticky rice. Two types of garlicky sausage in the style of northeastern Thai cuisine bring on slightly feistier spicing. Docile palates will appreciate the moist grilled pork skewers, arranged in rows and dangling from a metal contraption.

Larb kai—a common salad featuring chicken, roasted jasmine rice, and cabbage—has the heady thwack of fish sauce that I wish was used assertively in some of the more novel dishes. I miss it in the beef salad, which includes lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves but still comes off as lackluster. The same thing happens in the flat rice noodle dishes—one contains egg and Chinese broccoli and is prepared with your choice of chicken, beef, or pork. Sound familiar? The winner in the noodle department is ba-mee moo dang, a plate of egg noodles where rich barbecued pork plays off the refreshing astringency of yu choy, an Asian green.

When it comes to the bigger plates (all very sharable), seek out simplicity: soothing steamed chicken served with garlic rice and a bowl of chicken consommé to sip, grilled chicken with zingy papaya salad, and a whole grilled catfish perfumed by the herbaceous banana leaf in which it is wrapped.

And when the meal reaches dessert time, I want nothing more than a bowl of silky coconut ice cream. The restaurant also makes the Thai version of a snow cone, prepared on a display cart full of intriguing goodies that call to children from across the vast room. The snow cone is made with condensed milk, rose syrup, lotus seeds, palm seeds, taro, and red beans. Truthfully, I’m not a big fan of that flavor and texture combination. But it’s traditional to the culture, so I am awfully glad Tuk Tuk offers it. —Bill Addison

Tuk Tuk Thai Food Loft
RATING **
1745 Peachtree Street
678-539-6181
HOURS Lunch Tuesday–Friday 11:30 a.m.–2 p.m.; dinner Tuesday–Thursday 5:30–10 p.m., Friday 5:30–11 p.m., Saturday 5–11 p.m., Sunday 5–10 p.m.; Sunday brunch 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.
tuktukatl.com

Photograph by Deborah Whitlaw Llewellyn. This review originally appeared in our April 2010 issue.

1...16171819Page 17 of 19

Follow Us

69,386FansLike
144,836FollowersFollow
493,480FollowersFollow

NEWSLETTERS

© 2026. All rights reserved.