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Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Next Plate, Please: My Five Fave for Small Plates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’M SO NOT BORED: the calamari fritti and mojito at Eclipse di Luna
Photo: Rich Addicks/AJC
Something has happened to me over the course (pardon the pun) of the last nine years of dining out.
I get really bored when I eat.
Years of tasting small bites of things, then moving on to the next, has trained me to 1) Eat too fast when I am eating a regular meal and 2) Get really bored with just one big dish.
Luckily, there are places around town where I can take advantage of the small plate/tapas/mezza mania that’s been going on for the last few years. Places that specialize in tasting and moving on. Here are my picks:
1) The appetizers at Tierra in Buckhead — I never have to move to entrees here if I don’t want to: the musky, corn flavor of Salvadoran pupusas filled with cheese served with a pickly curtido; a pionono of plantains and sweetly seasoned beef; mussels in pasilla pepper broth. Yummers. What’s for dessert? The best tres leches this side of the equator. Unbored rating: 8.5
2) The small, groovy offerings at Beleza — organic kale cooked up Bahian style; forbidden black rice; watermelon and tuna crudo. Put an acerola mojito in my hands, and I’m a happy, unbored girl. Unbored rating: 8.5
3) Decatur’s Chocolate Bar provides small, savory bites of charcuterie, but I come here for the blast of savvy desserts. Where else can I get roquefort sorbet with Georgia pecan toffee? Unbored rating: 9
4) The bar at Trois makes it impossible to get bored, between groovy sliders of beef, smoked salmon and pork and even groovier retro cocktails, a perch on a bar stool here keeps me very perky. Unbored rating: 9
5) Eclipse di Luna has been doing authentic Spanish tapas — the right way, and before it was ultra hip — for a long time. Don’t send me to Dunwoody, I want the original Miami Circle location for patatas bravas and romesco sauce, calamari fritti and those incredible short ribs. Slurp. Unbored rating: 10
Where’s your fave spots to eat smallish?
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