Linton Hopkins' Garden restaurant off to a good start

Service: excellent and intuitive

Best dishes: shrimp and grits, ravioli, country pâté

Vegetarian selections: yes

Price range: $$-$$$

Credit cards: all major

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Wednesdays-Sundays

Children: sure

Parking: in paid lot, not validated

Reservations: yes

Wheelchair access: yes

Smoking: no

Noise level: high

Patio: yes

Takeout: no

Address, telephone: 1345 Piedmont Ave., Atlanta. 404-585-2061

Website: atlantabg.org/visit/caf%C3%A9-lintons-garden

My family and I have traipsed through many a museum, garden and other public attractions as tourists. While I would like to say we think ahead on occasion and make reservations at nearby restaurants, we never do. Instead, we end up in the museum cafe, usually 10 minutes before closing.

The thing is, I usually look forward to these quasi-restaurants. There’s a kind of Stockholm syndrome borne of hunger. You’re cafe captive, you desire the perfect lunch, and you to want to believe in your latex-gloved captors.

Alas, public institutions usually get it wrong. They either go too fancy and imagine themselves as high-end destination restaurants (think of Table 1280 at the High Museum of Art) or they opt for the corporate cafeteria model (Cafe Aquaria at the Georgia Aquarium). The Cafe at Linton’s in the Garden (ain’t that a mouthful?) hopes to find the comfortable middle ground.

Last year, the Atlanta Botanical Garden invited chef Linton Hopkins to take over its restaurant and rethink not just its menu, but also its mission. Not only could Hopkins and his right-hand man, chef de cuisine Jason Paolini, buy from local farmers and ranchers (and occasionally dip into the center’s edible garden), they also could make the restaurant enough of a draw to bring in visitors at night, when the steep admission fee would be waived.

In November, the restaurant opened in the former cafe space with a trim menu the kitchen can execute reliably given the limitations of its setup. It will move into a much larger and, based on the renderings, considerably more beautiful space in 2016.

For now, it half fulfills its early mission and serves likable food, better and more honestly Atlantan in its outlook than you’d expect. It’s a great place to cool your heels after the orchid house, if not yet a destination on its own.

The cafe shares a courtyard with the Botanical Garden’s event space, where the bridezillas are in full bloom. It can be a load of fun to go at brunch and watch the various wedding partiers walk by in tuxedos, pink sateen, lace and tulle. It can be even nicer with a well-made cappuccino and a simple bowl of citrus supremes — skinless segments of blood orange, satsuma and grapefruit. Or you might indulge in a selection of crisp, warm croissants and crumbly muffins from Hopkins’ H&F Bread Co.

All of our brunch entrees showed the mind of a fine chef at work but the hand of a kitchen that, for whatever reasons of staffing or space, doesn’t plate the food with much artistry or get it to the table while it’s still hot.

However, I very much liked the flavors of griddle cakes made with organic Carolina Ground flour, and crisp, airy heirloom cornmeal waffles with sorghum and soft pecan butter. The latter would have been stellar had they been hot enough to melt the butter. A croque monsieur sandwich was to my liking, glazed with just enough béchamel and sharp gruyère cheese to create splotches of crispness and goo on its surface. All it lacked was heat.

Dinner is a bit weirder, but also more fun. As the garden is closed, you meet a host at the front entrance, who ticks your name off the reservation book and walks you to the restaurant, making chitchat and answering questions.

Then, when you arrive, you can count on sharing the loud, clattery room with a few drunk wedding guests who have escaped the event space across the courtyard, where a cover band is playing some rendition of an ’80s power ballad. Servers (fantastic servers) know that you have landed on Mars, and they do their best to get you to go with the raucous flow. The good wine list helps. We ordered an extremely tasty Italian Nebbiolo (Renato Ratti 2012), and were soon plotting to crash the wedding.

The dinner menu is a brief affair, which seems smart. A slice of firm country pâté with pickled apples and an assortment of charcuterie makes for good table passing.

The five entrees range from a flavorful rendition of Julia Child’s beef bourguignon sweetened with local baby carrots and turnips to a rich version of shrimp and grits laced with a russet she-crab cream and dotted with trout roe. Creamy tuma cheese ravioli come in a tumble of peas, carrots, asparagus and sprouts, a nice bite of spring.

After the evening finished with a bite of unremarkable pecan tart, we decided not to crash the wedding party. Instead, we wandered over to the parterre garden, where the tulips were just coming into bloom.

I look forward to seeing what this restaurant becomes after it moves into its new home. For now, it may not be a destination on its own, but factor in those pretty flowers and an Atlanta spring night, and you wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.