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Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Beer Dinner at Shaun’s
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Quick — if you’ve no plans for this evening, head to Inman Park for a beer-pairing dinner at Shaun’s as the restaurant welcomes Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver (featured in last week’s AJC from beer writer Bob Townsend) with a three-course prix-fixe menu with paired beers from Brooklyn Brewery. The menu is $45 per person; $65 when paired with beers. There is one seating at 7 p.m. On the menu? Silver Queen corn pancake with grilled quail and foie gras crouton paired with a double cream Brooklyn pilsner, roast chicken with beer-battered sage leaves served with a Brooklyn brown ale, and for dessert toast “Soldiers” with roasted Georgia summer fruits and milk chocolate gelato (Doty LOVES to make ice cream!) paired with Brooklyn chocolate stout. Shaun’s, 1029 Edgewood Ave, Atlanta, 404-577-4358, www.shaunsatlanta.com
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All Amick, All the Time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bob Amick and his company, Concentrics Hospitality, are busy as bees. Adding to One Midtown Kitchen, Two Urban Licks, Trois, TAP, Piebar and Lobby at Twelve will be this fall’s opening of Room at Twelve, the dining concept inside the Twelve Hotel Centennial Park. Amick describes Room as a “modern American steakhouse” serving prime cuts of meat, sushi, slow-roasted meats and even a tandoori oven for skewered meats and fish. The look, designed by ASD (also the designer of Piebar), is bathed in charcoals and grays, with a giant mirror as a focal point. Chef Nick Oltarsh, from Lobby at Twelve, is designing the menu and will helm the kitchen as executive chef. The restaurant is slated to open in mid-September, with the hotel. Room at Twelve Centennial Park, 400 W. Peachtree Street, www.concentricshospitality.com. Meanwhile, Amick has plans to turn the old pipe fitting factory at 240 North Highland into Parish, a New Orleans-influenced restaurant/upscale grocery/juice and java bar. Birmingham designer Taylor Dawson, who also designed TAP, will help Amick restore the 1890 building, with plans to keep the original brick intact, as well as the slate roof. Scott Serpes of Two Urban Licks will design the menu, which includes an all-day breakfast (including lunch items such as po’ boys and muffulettas) downstairs and casual-but-upscale New Orleans-style eats upstairs; he will also serve as executive chef. Parish is slated to open the second week of January 2008. Until then, we can hang out and get a testosterone fill at Stats, 300 Marietta St., a casual take on the sports bar. It’s classic Amick, with three levels and each bathroom designed for a different decade. “There’s a heavy slant towards high-tech audio/visual,” said Amick by phone, “but if you don’t want to watch sports, you won’t have to.” Oltarsh is designing the menu, and 790 the Zone has plans to broadcast from the main dining room. The boys are back in town, baby.
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Message from Mexico
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The land stretching inland from the Sea of Cortez in Los Cabos, Mexico, is acrid and dry. Craggy and mountainous, it’s littered with saguaro cacti for years — perhaps hundreds — to the cloudless blue sky for hope of rain. Bring water to this seemingly infertile soil, and the area’s rich minerals will sprout lush green. The area around Todos Santos, just north of the tourist city of Cabo San Lucas, is a community of ex-pat artists, surfers and ex-Hollywood types who have managed to blend more easily into the Mexican culture than the average tourist. Its only real tourist attraction is the Hotel California restaurant, from the acclaimed Eagles song. It’s here that natural and organic farming practices have begun to sprout up, and it makes for good eating. You can roam the narrow streets and find Tacos Chilakos — an open air spot with a few tables and even fewer counter seats that will give you access to some of the best carne asada tacos on the Baja California Sur peninsula. The spot itself is nothing more than a palapa — an open air, thatched roof hut — and tables adorned with plastic checkered cloths and the condiments to make a meal: shredded cabbage, pico de gallo, smooth guacamole, chopped onion, chopped cilantro, roasted serrano peppers and pickled jalapeños. But it’s the meat, seasoned and stirred up on an outdoor griddle, that makes the meal. It comes in bits — not strips — each little cube a universe of outdoor beef flavor. Placed on a grilled flour tortilla, we smothered it in condiments and drank Cokes to kill the serranos’ heat. The night before we had ventured into San José del Cabo, walking a dozen blocks or more from the tourist fray of Boulevard Antonio Mijares, to find a taco stand that served the Mexico City specialty, tacos al pastor. It seemed like miles before we found it. But suddenly, there it was — El Fogon — a large, open-air stand with mounds of ripe serrano peppers behind a glass counter. In the front corner is a spit, where tender, marinated pork is sliced, with a bit of pineapple, and served in a corn tortilla with a layered hot sauce. The fiery flavor, with smooth guacamole and cilantro, was exactly what we had been looking for. Afterward, we stopped at a local paleteria (popsicle stand) and squelched the heat with a creamy coconut and tamarillo paleta (homemade popsicle). After filling stomach, heart and soul with one of the best meals of our lives, the walk back didn’t seem half as long.
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