70 W. Paces Ferry Road, Atlanta. 404-262-2675, buckheadrestaurants.com/chops-lobster-bar. $$$$
Back before Atlanta was a craft cocktail and kale kind of place, it had a reputation as a “meat and potatoes town.”
This moniker was lobbed by national critics who found the city behind the times on dining trends. It made civic boosters bristle, particularly those who thought post-Olympics Atlanta was on a cosmopolitan upswing. But it resonated with many restaurantgoers who found the preponderance of high-end steakhouses the only dining constant here.
If you were to go back 15 or 20 years, you’d find the big chains such as Morton’s the Steakhouse, Ruth’s Chris Steak House and the Palm had their defenders. But most of the discussion centered on two home-grown restaurants: Chops and Bone’s.
Chops or Bone’s? Bone’s or Chops? Which was your favorite?
Wine drinkers went for Bone’s and its deep book. Folks with more contemporary tastes in food defaulted to Chops and its swank basement tenant, the Lobster Bar. Some said Bone’s was more comfortable, others that Chops felt more like a night out on the town, with better seafood options.
I can tell you this much: After visiting these two restaurants recently on weekday nights and finding both dining rooms packed to the gills, this city is by no means done with Bessie and Spud.
Bone’s was so busy on a recent Tuesday night that we had to wait for our 7 p.m. table. We had no problem, though, acclimating for a few minutes on comfortable armchairs in the lounge with a round of drinks and plate of warm-from-the-oven cheese wafers. Soon, we were at a cozy table for four set with thick linens and a small standing lamp with an incandescent bulb.
Maybe it was that easy light. Maybe it was the way the tight quarters facilitated shout-free conversation with our friends. Maybe it was the waiters, who took care of things without an iota of fuss. Or maybe it was that the food came through with everything the menu promised and more.
Bone’s delivered the smoothest dining experience I’ve had in a while. We ate without waiting too long, or being asked to admire too much, or think too hard. It felt so good. Who knows whether the buttered spinach was local or (gasp) how much butter was involved. What I can say is, it tasted the way spinach has not in my life for a very long time.
The menu seems resolutely pre-farm-to-table, which comes off as practically antediluvian these days. If you order a watermelon and feta salad, you won’t find any urge to praise the melon, the cheese or the tasteless mesclun salad. The only flavor comes from a scattering of Sweety Drop sweet-and-sour peppers right from the jar. No, you want that wedge salad with blue cheese and warm, chewy-crisp cubes of bacon. Maybe just half a salad, because you’ve got a lot of food coming.
The four of us split a 34-ounce prime rib-eye for two. It came pre-sliced, cooked exactly as ordered, with a crunchy, charred, well salted crust. I stabbed one luscious piece after another.
We also ordered a 12-ounce filet mignon, a much less flavorful cut of meat but a canny match for its extra topping of foie gras. Admittedly, $26 is a lot to pay for a “topping,” but the portion was generous and the foie seared to just that point where it melts on your tongue rather than goops on your fork.
We got one of the Seabreeze baked potatoes, rolled in crusty salt and larger than most chihuahuas. We got amazing corn pudding, all crust and soft custard and pops of fresh kernels. And we got that spinach that I ended up eating with the serving spoon after my plate was cleared.
Dinner ended, as it has to, with a slice of Mountain High Pie — layers upon layers of cake, ice cream and whipped cream. One slice constitutes four ample portions.
Bone’s is wickedly expensive, but there are a couple of ways to move it from the expense account to the home budget column. First, ignore that fabulous wine list and bring a bottle or three. Corkage is only $10. Then, don’t take the excessive portions offered at face value. A big hunk of meat, a big pot of corn pudding and a big slice of pie. It is a feast to share — plenty but not too much. The doggy won’t miss his bag.
Chops continues to be more conversant in contemporary restaurant idioms, with a menu that seems to have crossed the line into the 21st century.
The steaks appear not simply as a list of cuts but with detail about breeds of cattle and the ranches they came from. The other menu items speak of burrata cheese, Kurobuta pork and ponzu. It assumes its customers understand that “EVOO” is extra virgin olive oil.
I didn’t love my one meal, mostly because some items were so much better than others that I couldn’t get swept up into the yummy dreamscape of fine steak. We loved a fried soft-shell crab appetizer, sweet and meaty, a paragon of freshness. It’s as great as the signature crab cake, among the best in town. But we hated a tomato and burrata salad, undone by a cloying dressing.
And while we wanted to sing the praises of a gourmet Caesar salad, made with nutty Vacche Rosse (“Red Cow”) parmigiano cheese and a coddled farm egg, it looked like any old Caesar salad with its evenly chopped leaves, cheese shreds and crouton cubes. Also, where were the anchovies? The point of a Caesar salad is that the creamy richness of the dressing lifts up the funk and umami rush of this salty, cured fish.
We also struck out on our choice of side dishes, both greasy tater tot coins that were more puck than tot, and dessert-sweet corn mash.
A bone-in New York strip (which the kitchen had dry aged in pink Himalayan salt) was fine but lacking the developed mineral flavor I wanted.
But then we beheld our portion of A-5 Miyazaki beef from Japan, which is highly marbled and fine grained. It was just a few bites: at $19 per ounce I didn’t feel right ordering more than four ounces for the two of us, which was the size of a Snickers bar. Yet each bite rings now in my memory with clarity.
The first bite was a simple, rich pow. Like foie gras, a lobster claw dipped in butter, a perfect cheeseburger.
With the second bite, I just let the flavor linger on my tongue, where it did somersaults and seemed like it didn’t want to go anywhere.
With the third and final bite I felt a kind of food insight bordering on satori. I needed nothing more in my stomach. All that mattered was this one flavor, and when it was gone I would be done with the meal.
I imagine Chops will be calling my name again quite soon.
