Community Smith a ‘modern meatery’

This polished new restaurant at the base of the Renaissance Atlanta Midtown Hotel calls itself a “modern meatery.”

Chef Micah Willix, who earned his reputation in Atlanta at Ecco, focuses on a Southern-ish style of New American cuisine, fleshed out by meat-centric dishes — pork shoulder simmered in tomatoes, smoked short rib and potatoes, a bavette steak sliced over herbaceous salsa.

The oxtail toast, served in a tender pile with a pleasantly mild piri piri sauce and a sprinkling of aged gouda, is rich and warming, a small plate that’s actually easy to share with a few fork-stabbing friends. Other light dishes, including a grilled filet of steelhead trout and simple, small salads, do a good job balancing out the heavier ones. This is good menu writing.

All of this is served in a decidedly immodest dining room, a place where lamps dangle from 20-foot-high ceilings, booths are wrapped in brown leather, and a polished metal sculpture of a fox is poised as if in mid-run.