Bacchanalia
After more than 20 years at the top, Bacchanalia has become something of an old friend to anyone who cares about fine food in Atlanta.
Some of us remember back when Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison ran it from a poky little house in Buckhead; others think of it as the place where we learned to love, love, love artisan cheese.
We go once a year or so for a birthday or anniversary, and maybe we have found it better on one visit than the next. That happens after 20 years.
But we keep returning because the one constant about Bacchanalia is that it never stops changing and evolving. Sometimes the kitchen inches its style closer to the cutting edge; other times it falls back into a more classic posture. Because it refuses to ever grow staid, this restaurant always can and will surprise you.
Snappy Georgia white shrimp rest in a bowl of green gazpacho with pepper jelly, pumpkin seeds and almond, each ingredient working to focus the seawater sweetness of a truly fresh catch. A soft-cooked egg from Quatrano and Harrison’s Summerland Farm comes with crunchy heirloom grains, toast thins, edamame, okra and chanterelles — a study in textures, and proof positive that local foods have more flavor.
Dishes can sound a little listy, but each ingredient builds toward a complex flavor profile. A pairing of blue cheese and figs makes familiar sense, but this kitchen adds in lavender, shaved mushroom, Earl Grey tea and buckwheat. It all tastes the way late summer earth smells.
1198 Howell Mill Road, Atlanta. 404-365-0410, starprovisions.com.
Cakes & Ale
Billy Allin occasionally emerges from his kitchen dressed in shorts, a dun-colored T-shirt and a well-loved apron. He doesn’t look at all magazine cover or “Top Chef”-ready, and bless him for that.
His pitch-perfect neighborhood bistro proves that, when a chef cooks night after night in his own kitchen, uses the best local ingredients, keeps things small, and doesn’t try to respond to every trend sweeping the city, cooking happens at a heightened level.
Allin’s brief and deeply personal menu usually includes a whole roasted trout for two, smoky and crisp-skinned, and a presentation of burrata with seasonal vegetables, such as pole beans, eggplant and tomato in a lemon-anchovy vinaigrette.
155 Sycamore St., Decatur. 404-377-7994, cakesandalerestaurant.com.
BoccaLupo
Have you ever thought about ordering a fixed-price menu that consists of course after course of pasta? It does sound like something you’d eat to, say, bulk up for a sumo wrestling match. Trust me, you want this. Bruce Logue is a chef of ceaseless invention, consummate skill and intuitive flavor sense. His current pasta tasting menu includes orbs of fried macaroni with honey truffles and chive fondutta, house linguine with Sapelo Island clams and corn, and wild boar meatballs with gnocchi au poivre. Then again, you may need one of the classics off the standing menu, such as squid ink ramen with collards and boiled peanuts, or the soul smackdown Logue calls the “crispy white lasagna slab.” Noodle nirvana, this place.
735 Edgewood Ave., Atlanta. 404-577-2332, boccalupoatl.com.
Gunshow
Bright, noisy, chaotic, fantastic. You’ve got to go with the flow — starting with the craft cocktail cart that wheels toward your table — and try to ignore the rapidly mounting bill when you dine in Kevin Gillespie’s entropic eatery. The food appears willy-nilly from the kitchen, and it tramples through Chinese, Southern and Indian flavors. Dishes pile up, and forks fly. One chef brings a composed salad arranged like the cover dish for a cookbook, then the next offers a double-double cheeseburger wrapped in paper, imploring you to pick it up, like a pound puppy. It is all so delicious, especially that cheeseburger.
924 Garrett St., Atlanta. 404-380-1886, gunshowatl.com.
The General Muir
Across the country, young Jewish chefs and restaurateurs have cast an appreciative eye on the dining habits of their grandparents and great grandparents, and they’ve taken it upon themselves to modernize the delicatessen (cured meats) and appetizing (cured fish) eateries of yore. We’ve got one of the country’s best examples here, where chef Todd Ginsberg pushes the genres in ways that are intelligent, unpretentious and filled with surprising pleasures. From a definitive Reuben to a hamburger piled messily with gruyere cheese and crispy pastrami, he proves himself a master of the sandwich. But his vegetarian dish of curried lentils and eggplant with yogurt tastes nearly as indulgent. Head baker Robert Alexander fills a tempting pastry case and crafts the best restaurant bread in the city.
1540 Avenue Place, Atlanta. 678-927-9131, thegeneralmuir.com.
Holeman & Finch Public House
It was hard to imagine Holeman & Finch without cocktail guru Greg Best behind the scenes. But the drinks remain excellent, and the menu appears to have refound its mojo. Its new Whole Beast Program offers up a collection of offal-based recipes listed on a separate menu next to a picture of a serpent-tongued chimera. Starting at the head, try the veal brains swathed in delicious black butter, then move down to the crispy beef tongue served with runny goose egg and the succulent hunks of grouper cheeks. The nether regions come next in the form of fried discs of lamb’s testicle, meaty in flavor and no less pleasant on the tongue than a sweetbread.
2277 Peachtree Road, Atlanta. 404-948-1175, holeman-finch.com.
Sushi House Hayakawa
Atlanta has no shortage of sushi bars, mostly in the form of the countless counters that share a roof with Thai kitchens. Japanese Atlantans favor this Buford Highway destination, where genial chef-owner Art Hayakawa toasts his guests with glasses of Scotch and runs his restaurant like a kind of salon. He knows and introduces just about everyone who sits at his bar. Highlights include his mirin-cured salmon roe bowl and Tsukiji Market fish brushed with uni soy sauce. Don’t ignore the hot dishes, such as creamy crab croquettes and grilled squid, which go nicely with a draft beer.
5979 Buford Highway, Atlanta. 770-986-0010, atlantasushibar.com.
Shoya Izakaya
The city’s best and truest izakaya (Japanese pub) serves a choice of several hundred small plates to enjoy with your beverage. Drink a fresh fruit sour, for which you get a tall glass filled with a mixture of the clear distillate called shochu and soda water. On the side comes your citrus of choice — lemon, lime, pink grapefruit — in a ceramic reamer. So perfect. Then start with grilled items on sticks (kushi-yaki), including chewy king oyster mushrooms and even better melty pork belly. There are fried lotus chips, fried chicken knees (so good!), grilled rice balls with a crackly soy-glazed crust, octopus-stuffed pancake balls called tako-yaki, and, well … lots more. If you have a large group, you can reserve one of the private Japanese rooms and sit around a low table with a well for your feet.
6035 Peachtree Road, Doraville. 770-457-5555, shoyaatlanta.com.
One Eared Stag
People who eat out a lot and chase dining trends love this place. Chef Robert Phalen cooks with a kind of wit you never see anywhere else. He might place fried quail, guinea fowl, chicken and duck eggs on a plate, like something out of a Dr. Seuss illustration. He might top a marrow bone with smoked razor clams or roast a whole tuna collar that’s so big it wouldn’t fit on your Thanksgiving turkey platter. (Get it, if available.) A recent menu featured something called Dumpster salad, which surely tasted better than it sounds. He falters, then charms, then amazes. His crab risotto, which gets seasonal garnishes, might engender its own religion.
1029 Edgewood Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-525-4479, oneearedstag.com.
Leon’s Full Service
I’ll end with perhaps my most favorite of all — a restaurant that isn’t even in the Atlanta 50 this go-round. But I am lucky to live within walking distance of this bar and restaurant, where the drinks and food are surprisingly great, the service is always on point, the crowd diverse, and the setting both aesthetically appealing and comfortable. Aside from the Whole Foods hot bar, it’s the one place where I can safely say I’m a regular.
131 E. Ponce de Leon Ave., Decatur. 404-687-0500, leonsfullservice.com.
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