In the March issue of GQ, critic Alan Richman names the 25 Most Outstanding Restaurants of 2015 , and two Atlanta restaurants make the grade.
Lusca , a 2015 James Beard Awards semifinalist for Best New Restaurant, is No. 11, and Spice to Table is No. 16.
Chefs Angus Brown and Nhan Le of Octopus Bar, the adventurous East Atlanta after-hours eats-and-drinks hangout, took over the South Buckhead space once occupied by Bluefin and opened Lusca in April 2014. “It’s pretty much the dream restaurant for Nhan and me,” Brown said at the time.
Here's what Richman wrote about the food:
Try the massive tortellini en brodo, and consider that this might be the year of tortellini. Stuffed with finely ground charcuterie trimmings and served in a reduced chicken broth, they're so rich you might wonder if you can handle more than one. Then order the pumpkin swordfish and the hand-torn potatoes—spuds are baked in a salt crust, cooled, dried, shredded, deep-fried, and topped with Parmesan and parsley.
In July 2014, chef/owner Asha Gomez closed Cardamom Hill, the critically acclaimed Indian restaurant she opened in 2012. But in August 2014, Gomez opened Spice to Table, a bakery cafe concept in the Old Fourth Ward, she called an “Indian patisserie.”
Here's what Richman wrote about the food:
Chef Asha Gomez is highly respected. Self-service food is not. Here they meet in an informal, expansive, serene Indian dining spot. Gomez's accents are brilliant: fruit salad with coriander vinaigrette, vegetable stew in coconut-milk broth. But the star of the self-service line is the Kerala Beef Cutlet: It looks like a burger, tastes like meat loaf, acts like a barbecue sandwich, and proves that ready-to-eat is now easy to admire.
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