Tag: Empire State South

“We can pickle that!” exclaim a duo during a skit on IFC’s trend-skewering hit Portlandia (which you can easily find on YouTube). The pair grab increasingly bizarre items—ordinary cucumbers and eggs, then a dropped ice cream cone, unwanted CD jewel cases, a broken high heel—and seal them all in jars, dunked in a vinegary bath.

To nibble: “In Jars” 
at Empire State South, an array of spreads served in mini Mason-glass crocks—that typically includes deviled ham, trout mousse, pickles, pimento cheese topped with bacon marmalade, and boiled peanut hummus.

Chef, author, restaurateur, television personality, and James Beard Foundation Award winner Hugh Acheson stays mighty busy these days. When he’s not at Five and Ten or the National in Athens, or Empire State South in Atlanta, he may be found working on his newest restaurant, an Italian spot in Savannah opening in March 2014. He’s also relocating Five and Ten from South Lumpkin Street to South Milledge Avenue, working on two new cookbooks and judging Top Chef. Below, he divulges plans for the Savannah restaurant—including a possible name, gives us a look into the offerings at the new Five and Ten, and shares some surprising news about Empire State South executive chef Ryan Smith.

It's time for the fourth round of our Final Fork contest, which brings us one step closer to determining Atlanta's favorite restaurant.

Last week during a casual working lunch at Empire State South, I mused aloud as to whether or not to indulge in a phatty cake for dessert. Wong's phatty cake—a fluffy, sweet mascarpone filling sandwiched by two subtle gingerbread cookies—has had a place in Atlanta's heart since she started making them at Cakes And Ale. Local diners followed her (and the phatty cakes) when she moved to the ESS kitchen about a year ago. During that lunch last week, the staff encouraged me to comply with my sweet tooth, as the phatties would be moving again—gone forever from Atlanta, probably—along with pastry chef and creator of the ginger-cookie-meets-mascarpone mash-up, Cynthia Wong.

Over fried chicken, biscuits, sausage gravy, grits, and a half-order of blueberry waffles at One Eared Stag yesterday, I caught up with blogger extraordinaire Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet. We first met early last year when Roberts was in town researching his new book, Secrets of the Best Chefs—though Roberts started his blogging career in Atlanta in 2004. His book's official release date is November 13, but Roberts was in town this past weekend for Taste of Atlanta, and tonight Empire State South is hosting a four-course dinner for Roberts that includes a copy of the book.

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.

The name of Hugh Acheson’s new restaurant—his first in Atlanta—sounds retro and progressive at the same time, winking at the city’s history of preening boosterism: Empire State South.