Tag: King + Duke

You can walk into Buckhead’s St. Cecilia and simply be swept into its maelstrom, starting with the stark drama of the 11,000-square-foot room—the glass windows three stories high, the white-tiled columns, and the ceiling that soars twenty-six feet into the sky.

Culinary students may still squeeze themselves into the stiff white chefs coat, long the industry’s de rigueur uniform. But the new must-have garb, particularly among Atlanta’s male chefs who have made it to the top of the food chain, is the designer apron.

In a rather strange turn of events, executive chef and restaurateur Ford Fry—the man behind St. Cecilia, King Duke, the Optimist, No. 246, and JCT Kitchen—has signed on as Justin Bieber’s personal chef for the next three months.

The province of chicken wings belongs to the Northeast, not the South. Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, lays stake to the invention of deep-frying wings, claiming owner Teressa Bellissimo made them as a snack for her bartender son, Dominic, and his friends.

As the saying goes, you win some, and you lose some. This year we saw famed mixologists leave their longtime outposts, award-winning chefs open new “it” spots, and the restaurant community band together to help one of their own. As we welcome in the new year, we pause to take a look back at what happened in 2013.

The next restaurant to open in chef Ford Fry’s burgeoning empire, St. Cecilia will focus on light seafood and pastas influenced by Northern Italy. Its home, formerly Buckhead Life Restaurant Group’s Bluepointe, is being completely renovated, and as it enters the final stages of construction, Fry feels comfortable enough to announce a December—or at the latest, January—target launch date. Here, he shares the plans for the restaurant’s menu, atmosphere, and executive chef, as well as some new concepts he’s contemplating.

Taste of Atlanta is only a couple of weeks away. This year’s food fest, held October 25 through 27 at Tech Square, features samples from more than ninety local restaurants, four stages of cooking demonstrations, a barcraft competition, and a “Taste Revival” kickoff event hosted by Ron Eyester of Rosebud, the Family Dog, and Timone’s.

“I feel like I just walked into a restaurant time machine and leaped three decades ahead,” said a native Atlantan friend.

Buckhead is back, y’all, reveling in its first restaurant boomlet since the middle of last decade. And just like old times, each fresh-faced entrant quickly galvanizes a certain facet of the uptown community, spawning distinct social microclimates.