At Last Dance, a star is born in Avondale Estates

Last Dance in Avondale Estates is a restaurant that’s difficult to describe but easy to enjoy; its quirky, eclectic, creative veneer belies the intense flavor and strong technique found on nearly every plate.

The restaurant opened in June with a purposefully vague concept; there’s no association with a specific cuisine, and the slogan on its front door describes Last Dance only as “a blissful entanglement.” If pressed, I might generally categorize the food as “eclectic American with strong global influences,” a description so broad it means basically nothing. I could apply the same line to TGI Fridays.

Behold, the liver eclair: a long, pale pastry draped in a vivid purple blackberry-lemon balm glaze. At first sight, the dish looked incongruously profane, like a steak drenched in chocolate syrup, or a cake topped with sardines.

But the flavor was heavenly, with the not-too-sweet glaze slowly soaking into the crisp, airy pate a choux pastry, all of it wrapped around a central vein of warm, smooth, unctuous liver pate. A Chinese five-spice blend softly glowed from within the pate, beautifully melding with the glaze. The eclair was both decadent and fleeting, a treat that was only at its best for about five minutes before the delicate pate a choux began to lose its integrity.

One amazing dish can buoy a whole restaurant, and the liver eclair could be Last Dance’s calling card if it can find a wide enough audience. But the place is far from a one-trick pony.

Nearly every dish on the menu is worth trying, a testament to the confidence and collaboration of the four-partner ownership team of industry veterans: Kathryn Fitzgerald, Patrick Daugherty, chef Joshua Fryer and pastry chef Chris Marconi.

The food draws from their experiences and indiscriminately references cuisines from around the world.

Hot and numbing okra, a mashup of Southern and Sichuan flavors, is spicy, crispy and addictive — one of the hit dishes that Fryer brought to Last Dance from his former wine-focused pop-up, Long Snake, Fitzgerald told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Marconi’s regularly updated ice cream sandwiches, which recently featured paw paw ice cream, have also appeared at other stops in her career, Fitzgerald said. A veteran of the Deer & the Dove, Marconi also makes the tender, vegan-friendly ciabatta, fluffy hot dog bun and other pastries at Last Dance.

Fitzgerald gets credit for the excellent half chicken, a tender, juicy bird bathed in a garlic- and ginger-infused gyoza sauce. She also brought the idea for the liver eclair from her Asheville, North Carolina, restaurant, Regina’s Westside, though she credits Fryer with taking the dish to another level. He seemingly performs magic to develop an ethereal, almost creamy texture in the oil-cured eggplant, another dish lifted by his technique.

Fitzgerald is an artist whose passions extend beyond the kitchen to painting, photography, sculpture and more. Her creativity and sense of style give Last Dance the feel of an artists’ retreat. Every table is topped with white paper and stocked with crayons; look around and you’ll see more diners busily doodling on their tables than looking at their phones. Fitzgerald often posts guests’ artwork to the Last Dance Instagram story; it’s touching to see the restaurant inspire so many acts of everyday artistry.

With so much creativity in the air, the beverage menu at Last Dance is surprisingly grounded in tradition. There’s a martini “plate” featuring a gin martini spritzed with orange Curacao, served with a plateful of traditional martini accoutrements like olives, pistachios, a pearl onion and some wonderful, subtle Sequatchie Cove Creamery Shakerag blue cheese. A martini plate and a liver eclair at Last Dance might be the most blissful entanglement you could find for less than $50.

The cocktail list also includes a rich Sazerac and a refreshing Pegu Club. The serious, passion-fruit-forward hurricane features overproof rum poured over snow-conelike pulverized ice, dropping the cocktail’s temperature so low that condensation freezes on the outside of the glass long after the drink comes to your table.

The wine list is short but highly curated thanks to Fryer. Like the food menu, the wine list draws inspiration from around the globe without bothering to follow some imaginary central thesis. You’ll find wines from Argentina, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.S. and elsewhere, though they tend to be from low-intervention winemakers and cost between $13 and $17 per glass.

As one might expect at such a creative restaurant, the few minor foibles I experienced at Last Dance related to consistency and attention to detail. The vivid and exciting smash salad can be ordered at a mild, medium or hot spice level; when my wife ordered it mild, it was nearly too spicy for her. Fitzgerald said the mild version is supposed to be served without the tiny slices of datil peppers and acknowledged that our spicy salad was likely a mistake.

While the service was generally very good, I was slightly annoyed with one interaction around a glass of wine. I asked our server about an orange wine on the list; he couldn’t quite describe it and instead offered a taste. When he returned to the table, he regurgitated a description rather than delivering a sample. It was just a blip in an otherwise lovely dinner, but it soured what could have been an above-and-beyond moment.