Grazing: First Look: Parker’s on Ponce
December 15th, 2008 by Cliff Bostock in Restaurants
STEAK IT OR LEAVE IT: The Kansas City strip steak
Last week, Our Fearless Leader finally uttered the “r” word: recession. Never mind that anyone who has rolled a cart in a grocery store or coasted to a gas pump has known the word has been applicable for months. Now it’s an official part of reality. We’ve been in a recession for a year.
Given that, it’s surprising that restaurants, especially higher-end restaurants, continue to open. My bank account says “burger,” not “steak,” so it felt almost decadent to show up at a new steakhouse last week. Parker’s on Ponce (116 E. Ponce de Leon Ave., 404-924-2230) is located in the former Mick’s building across from the courthouse in downtown Decatur.
The restaurant seems huge – all restaurants look huge to me these days, owing to their epidemic emptiness – but Parker’s space is broken up into several dining rooms. We ate in the front room, where a few other tables were seated.
It’s been years since I was in the building, so I’m not sure how much remodeling has occurred. The space is warmly lit, almost minimalist in décor, and features a few glowing fireplaces. I saw my first Christmas decorations of the year here – a few poinsettias and a silvery stocking.
Our server gave us the scoop. The restaurant, more than a year in planning, has been opened by brothers JT and Chris Scott, who earlier worked at Mick’s. (They are the sons of the late Tom Scott, DeKalb County’s longtime tax commissioner.) Chef is David Hartshorn, who earlier was the chef at Einstein’s in Midtown.
Although it bills itself as a steakhouse, the menu includes as many fish, chicken, pork and pasta dishes as beef. There’s nothing very experimental about the food. About as wild as it gets was my starter of “Irish, not French, onion soup,” heavy with Guinness and a decent aged cheddar instead of Gruyere. It had a powerful sweetness to it.
Wayne ordered a dip of fontina and ricotta cheese topped with a puree of roasted vegetables. It was served with a crackery, thick flatbread. Don’t think about ordering this for your lonesome or you’ll fill up before your entree arrives. I liked the stuff – how can you not like whipped, creamy cheese? – but I’d prefer the vegetables more roughly chopped.
There are six steaks available. “All steaks,” says the menu, “are wet-aged and certified choice or better.” Prices range from $16 for an 8-ounce New York strip to $52 for a porterhouse for two. Wayne ordered the 22-ounce Kansas City strip ($29), half of which he took home.
I asked our server how the steaks are cooked and she said, “They’re grilled. It’s not like 1,800 degrees or anything complicated.” Flavor was good and, for the money, I’d probably return, keeping in mind that I’m not going to get the prime-guaranteed beef I’d get at Rathbun Steak.
There’s a choice of 11 sides. These, too, are mainly straightforward and tried and true: mashed potatoes, fries, asparagus, creamed spinach, etc. Wayne ordered the Merlot mushrooms – a huge portion of whole white button ’shrooms that took up most of the plate on which the hugely thick steak was served. Not bad, not great.
I’m sorry to report that my own dish, ordered at the server’s suggestion, missed the mark. It was the sesame-seared tuna with wasabi-spiked mashed potatoes, sesame ginger vinaigrette and asparagus.
The tuna was not top quality. It might have been better had it been sliced thinner before searing, although this would compromise the sesame coating, which was agreeable. Neither one of us could detect the wasabi in the potatoes and, oy, the asparagus was skinny but tough. I can’t recommend it.
I spied other dishes going to tables and most of them looked very appetizing, especially roasted chicken with a jalapeño-cheddar grit cake and braised collards. There’s only one vegetarian dish, a Portobello mushroom “steak” grilled and served over pea-and-fennel risotto.
We ordered a single serving of white chocolate bread pudding for dessert. It was gooey, chewy, sweet and boozy with bourbon. Yum.
I’ll be interested to hear others’ comments on the restaurant. It had been open a few weeks when we visited.
Here and there
Maybe it was because I got stuck with the fish instead of the steak at Parker’s or maybe it’s anticipating the opening of Richard Blais’ Flip, but I was left craving a hamburger a few days later.
So, we drove to East Atlanta to dine at the Earl, whose burger is among my favorites in the city. Anyone who thinks the recession has killed the restaurant business completely should come here. The place was packed, smoky and loud. In fact, there was a wait for a table and nobody keeping a list, so we left.
We walked to the Glenwood, which I haven’t visited since the departure of chef Ryan Stewart. We found the place eerily empty, compared to the Earl, but had a good meal. We split an order of fried chicken livers in Buffalo sauce for a starter – irresistibly crunchy but almost tempura-like, velvety, stingingly hot.
Then we both had burgers – with bacon and cheddar for me and bacon and blue cheese for Wayne. A few oddly flavorless fried pickles were on the side. I also got some collards that were deliciously fatty but needed a considerable shot of vinegar. Wayne got decent fries. …
Speaking of fried pickles, they’re now on Daddy D’z menu, too. The barbecue joint is using dill spears instead of the usual bread-and-butter-shaped ones. They’re a bit greasy but good. …
The Lamplighter, down the street from Daddy D’z, may be open for lunch by the time you read this. If the menu chef Carmen Cappello is planning gets served, you’ll definitely want to sample the novelty. Call ‘em: 404-748-4370.
December 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
I’m looking forward to trying this. Hopfully it will be better than our last steakhouse jaunt. My husband and I ate at Rathbun steak for our birthday in August. After a $160 meal for 2 we couldn’t get home fast enough afterwards because we both became sick and hugged the toilet all night. Our steak was burnt to a crisp on the outside and almost raw on the inside (we ordered it medium) so that was probably what did it!
December 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
You’re so full of it. Any sort of harmful substances living on raw meat are on the outside and get killed during cooking.
Harmful bacteria generally do not penetrate the inside unless the meat is milled up like in hamburger patties.
You either got sick at the thought of the undercooked meat preference or by a substandard side. I hardly believe it was the beef. If there was something wrong with the entire piece of meat, you would have smelled it when you brought a piece to your mouth.
And no, I don’t work at RB Steaks. I’m just tired of seeing these exaggerated “dramatic” comments.
Incidentally, “medium” is a warm pink center. “Medium-well” and Longhorn’s Steakhouse are probably what you should have got and gone.
December 15th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Agreed — very tired of seeing these unlikely stories of food poisoning in comments sections and message boards of various food sites.
If you genuinely suspect that you are suffered from food-poisoning via a restaurant meal, the most responsible thing to do is to notify the restaurant so that they can know of the incident and other customers can avoid the same fate.
After that, please try keep the incident between you and the restaurant and not in public forums. Gentlemen and Ladies shouldn’t puke and tell.
December 18th, 2008 at 4:09 am
As someone certified in food safety, I can tell you with certainty you did not contract food poisoning in the incident you describe. Foodborne illnesses are almost exclusively brought into the body during the digestion phase – when food is entering the instestinal tract. That process generally take 12-24 hours to occur. Unless you suffer from a severe allergic reaction, any illness would have been caused by foods eaten the night before, or possible at breakfast or lunchtime – not the meal you ate within minutes.
December 18th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I can only add to my agreement with the above comments by saying that at any restaurant, let alone one where the tab was $160, if your order doesn’t arrive as you ordered it then send it back.
December 19th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Wow! I had no idea I would get such harsh criticism from commenters. We didn’t say anything to the servers that night about our steak not being the way we wanted. I’m not sure why .. . . we just didn’t. We just nicely kept our mouth shut and ate it. It wasn’t terribly bad jst not the way we would have preferred it. I have always been told never to send food back. We didn’t call up there later that night after we got so sick because we figured there was no way we could prove it was their food. Neither of us had eaten anything since breakfast and we had been fine all day. Our natural inclination was to assume something we ate there was bad since it was such a quick reaction. I was remiss in saying it was probably the steak because it could have been either of the 2 sides we had or our dessert as well. That is my error. Also, I’m sorry if my comments on this site completely tired people out from seeing them on food sites. I am new to this blogging thing so I haven’t kept up with all the hip comments on this site to know that mine was just so tired and worn on public forums. And the only way reason we go to alot of restaurants is by reviewing comments about them on forums. We like to read people’s comments and see what is generally thought about the place. So if people are so tired of reading comments about restaurants in public forums then shouldn’t this one be closed? Becuase that is what they talk about . . . experiences in restaurants. . . the good, bad and ugly. I love a steak “medium” with a warm pink center. I always order tat and always get that. But this steak was definitely more rare than that. And why would you assume I should have gone to Longhorn’s just because I got a steak I didn’t like. You don’t know me. Is there some sort of stereotypical Longhorn’s eater? How can you say I should have gone there? I think it is very hurtful to tell people they are full of it just because they express an opinion that differs from your own. Ther was nothing exaggerated or dramtic as you claim about the statement I made. I simply stated we ate there, we got sick, I presumed it was the steak. Nothing dramatic about that. I’ll admit I was wrong in presuming about food. You can admit you are wrong about knowing my character enought to tell me where I should be eating instead. I’ll be damned if I ever try to make a comment again on a blog . . .too many people that can’t debate fairly, accurately and with integrity.
December 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
No, Ginger, what they’re trying to tell you is that you did not contract fool poisoning from the meal you ate at Rathbun’s because it isn’t physically possible. A food-borne illness usually take 12-32 hours to develop. If you didn’t eat all day and gorged on rich, fatty food…well, I can see how that could upset your stomach.
Plus, in my opinion, medium is overcooked. A steak of prime quality should be served rare or medium rare. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter how tender or juicy or flavorful the meat is, if you cook the snot out of it it’s going to taste like leather. It sounds like you’re an amateur diner with poor knowledge of food safety, and I’d hazard to guess that you were the cause of your sickness. Did you happen to serve chicken at home the night before you went out to eat? Sounds like someone didn’t wash their hands and gave their husband and themselves salmonella.
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:45 am
Freckleface: putting a post in a public forum claiming that you were poisoned at a restaurant could potentially hurt that business and all the people employed there.
I understand that you think the other posters are being rude to you, but please consider that you are being rude to all those whose livelihood depends on Rathbun’s by making an anonymous, public claim of food poisoning.
Nonetheless, in your defense, since others have claimed that food-born illnesses take 12 or more hours to develop, I have this quote from the National Institutes of Health website (nlm.nih.gov) entry on food poisoning: “The symptoms from the most common types of food poisoning generally start within 2 to 6 hours of eating the food responsible.”
So now I’ve got two things to be angry about:
1. Anonymous, public claims of restaurant food poisoning
2. Bad medical information
I’m just an angry son of a gun.