Omnivore Atlanta

The Colonnade may have its tapas, but the Bureau’s got cheap fried chicken on Wednesdays now.

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This just in from Concentrics:

Atlanta, GA (March 31, 2009) – Concentrics Restaurants’ Bob Amick and Todd Rushing are proud to announce that New Orleans’ native Nick Melvin has assumed the lead of Executive Chef of PARISH: Foods & Goods. With a passion for food and all things pure and local, nationally acclaimed Chef Nick Melvin will create New Orleans-inspired dishes with modern influences at the Inman Park neighborhood restaurant and market.

“Nick possesses the ideal qualifications that I’m certain will make for a standout chef at PARISH – he is New Orleans born and bred with an exceptional passion for farm to table fare and was a part of the Concentrics family for quite a while,” said Concentrics Restaurants founder Bob Amick. “While at Serenbe, he utilized the local, sustainable and farm-to-table philosophies that PARISH embraces, and he brings the flavors of his hometown back to Atlanta. We are excited to have him back as a part of the Concentrics team.”

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The Chicago Tribune has a photo gallery up about how Peeps are made. Take a look, and then visit this blog dedicated to Peep murder. Ahh, the glorious circle of life.

(Photo courtesy of pdphoto.org)

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It’s the last day of our financial period. Our walk-in shelves are considerably barren, especially for a Saturday with 350 on the books. My sous chef will be working another double and working a station tonight to salvage labor cost a bit. We’ve scrambled around all afternoon, picking up enough provisions to get us through this one night. We are hoping, praying, gambling, that the 34 portions of scallops and halibut will sustain a busy night. But we need to run out, because they won’t be fresh enough to sell Monday after being closed Sunday. And we’ve already calculated that we need to do twelve thousand dollars in food sales to make our numbers.

Although the entire month yields the final result, as in any race, we kick extra hard as we near the finish line. Here’s my Tony Bourdain moment: Want a good time to not go to a restaurant? Try the very last day of their financial month. At around 9pm.

This isn’t what I fell in love with, for sure. I detest it. It’s the only part about what I do that I consider work. And the three days that we wait for the email from the accountant revealing our managerial efforts are sheer agony.
(more…)

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OK, now there can be no doubt: Tapas have been completely assimilated by the culture.

I say this because my friend Gregg called me this evening from the Colonnade, the iconic Southern restaurant on Cheshire Bridge Road,  where he said a tapas menu is being offered.

I called the restaurant and was informed that the menu was offered all last week and will “probably” be offered all this week. The tapas basically comprise this week’s specials menu.

Dishes on the tapas menu include your usual Colonnade favorites like fried oysters. I couldn’t hear much else of Gregg’s or the restaurant employee’s description above the din of noisy diners in the background, but I can’t wait to try it.

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On the case: Kraig Torres stocks his beer store, Hop City, for its April 2 opening

The Westside is looking more and more like a beer Mecca. Hop City, a craft beer and wine specialty store, will open this week across the alley from the soon-to-open 5 Seasons Westside in the Brickworks complex on Marietta St. Along with beer and wine, Hop City will also stock beer-making supplies, a rarity in Atlanta.

Owner Kraig Torres will host a Grand Opening party on Thursday April 2 at 5 Seasons that will feature nine craft brewers, including local favorites Terrapin, 5 Seasons, Sweetwater, and Atlanta Brewing Company. There will be free beer samples, food and live music from 6-9 p.m.

Torres is the self-proclaimed “beer guy” in the operation, with his general manager, Doug Schaller, handling the wine side of the aisle. Torres will stock about 1,000 varieties of beer, along with about 800 wines. The store will have a 12-door cooler for beer, as well as a chiller on hand to prep those large, single bottles of American craft beer and Belgians.

(more…)

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I'D TAP THAT: The bar at Leon's Full Service

It’s a rare but beautiful thing when a restaurant inhabits its surroundings so thoroughly that it immediately feels like an intrinsic part of a city’s landscape. Leon’s Full Service, located in Rue de Leon’s old location on the corner of Ponce de Leon Avenue and Church Street, has managed to become such a natural part of Decatur already, it’s hard to believe the restaurant is only eight weeks old.

The reason may be the owners’ intimate familiarity with the hopes, desires, and beer enthusiasms of Decaturites. They’ve spent the last 12 years running the legendary Brick Store Pub around the corner. But it’s more than Leon’s pitch-perfect reading of what a young, booze-friendly customer base requires. The space is brazenly appealing, evoking a slightly nautical feel with its white wooden booths, blue walls and red accents. Just enough of the building’s vintage character has been left in place to communicate its aesthetic, and just enough has been done to modernize the space to make it feel clean and vibrant. It’s Decatur all over. Don’t you just hate Decatur sometimes for being so … awesome?

There are certain qualities of Brick Store the owners have imported to Leon’s. The commitment to outstanding beverages includes a manageable but thrilling beer selection, and extends into wine and cocktails. (Try the Belgian champale cocktail for something truly weird and delicious.) The enthusiastic service here mirrors the passions of Brick Store’s brew-loving barkeeps. It’s not uncommon for a server to take a seat at the table to fervently discuss a certain beer, cheese or dish. It sometimes makes for slow service at other tables, but is wholly worth it for the attention when you do get your turn.

Continue reading “Review: Leon’s Full Service”

(Photo by James Camp)

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Let’s hear it for that rarest of psychiatric disorders, folie à plusieurs, “the madness of many,” whereby large groups of people develop a shared delusion.

You remember how thousands drove to Conyers once a month to see the Virgin Mary screw with astronomical phenomena and channel messages to a woman living there. That was arguably a case of folie à plusieurs, even though nobody really deserved classification as loony-toons. (Of course, religion always exempts itself from characterization as crazy, even when its statues are bleeding grape jelly.)

I’m sorry, but I feel some of the same is going on with Varasano’s, the new pizzeria in Buckhead, whose opening — 10 years in the making, according to our server Sunday night — has caused more buzz than any restaurant in memory. Last week’s opening was even announced in the New York Times.

There’s a very simple explanation for all of this: Owner Jeff Varasano (whose passion for pizza I certainly do not question) has been hosting foodies at his home, where he has long experimented with making the perfect pizza.

(more…)

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This is unbelievable. The Obamas are planting an organic garden and some Big Ag folks are annoyed that they aren’t showing appropriate appreciation for the value of conventional farming practices (i.e. use of chemicals).

This was attached to copies of a lengthy letter mailed to Michelle Obama and circulated on the Internet:

Did you hear the news? The White House is planning to have an “organic” garden on the grounds to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for the Obama’s and their guests. While a garden is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made Janet Braun, CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I [Bonnie McCarvel] shudder. As a result, we sent a letter encouraging them to consider using crop protection products and to recognize the importance of agriculture to the entire U.S. economy….

The Reluctant Eater summarizes the story and links to the full text of the letter.

(Hat tip to Broderick Smylie)

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Oh happy day! Spoon, the terrific Thai spot on Marietta Street, has opened a sister operation in Ormewood Park shopping center, 749 Moreland Ave. That’s the shopping center that houses Azio.

The restaurant opened Friday and we dined there Saturday night. Our meal was flawless. We both ordered specials. For me: soft-shell crabs in a panang sauce that has no equal in the city. For Wayne: this crispy duck in a basil sauce. (Warning: the latter cost $26 while the crabs were only about $16.)

The restaurant is not yet serving alcohol and probably won’t until June. You can carry your own beer and wine, if you like. The bar is, however, in place and customers are welcome to dine there. The place, generally, has a very sociable vibe.

The restaurant was crowded when we visited but was running without any obvious glitches. The staff, just like the Westside one, is beautiful, solicitous, friendly and witty. There’s nothing like being waited on by marriage material.

I’ll have more to say in an upcoming Grazing column.

(Photos by Cliff Bostock)

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My pal Brad Lapin has been in Los Angeles the last two weeks, but returned home in time for us to lunch Friday, as usual, at La Pietra Cucina. Thanks to Facebook, we had a reunion lunch with our friend Frank Miller, author, professor, stage director and Funniest Person Alive.

Frank and I both ordered the porchetta panino (right), stuffed with thin-sliced, roasted, buttery pork and arugula, while Brad ordered the calamari (in the background).

But the highlight of lunch was the slimming portion of housemade gelati sent out by Chef Bruce Logue. I’ve never seen spoons move quite so rapidly as Brad and Franklin engaged in a virtual sword fight to get at the last dollop of the stuff.

Logue says plans are still on for the restaurant to expand into the larger adjoining space by May 18. The present space will revert to its original purpose as a private dining room.  Business has picked up considerably lately, in part due to AJC critic Meridith Ford Goldman’s recent four-star review. Hey, maybe they’ll even put up a sign and create a website one of these days.

I have no doubt the restaurant will continue to be first-rate, but I suggest you visit before the expansion. For now, it’s open weekdays for lunch and for dinner Friday and Saturday.

(Photos by Cliff Bostock)

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I noticed that Fred Brown left a comment on a post here a couple of days ago. For those of you who don’t know, Fred is the longtime publisher of Brown’s Guide to Georgia, an engaging monthly that began publication in the early ’70s and, as I recall, underwent several deaths and resurrections, the latest being as an internet resource.

Among the magazine’s highlights was its employment of Bill Cutler, who was in most people’s judgment the first serious dining critic in our city. Bill, who founded Knife and Fork with Christiane Lauterbach before his death in the ’80s, brought a strong voice and narrative style to reviewing.

The reviewing spun out of his other passion: bicycling. Bill wrote incredibly engaging accounts of his bicycle tours of rural Georgia and these included stories of his meals, interwoven with his descriptions of a world in extreme transition. I became a fan very early on because Brown’s Guide began publication when I was working for newspapers in rural Georgia myself. I felt, those years, like I was living in a Flannery O’Connor short story whose characters were being forced into modernity.

Bill also wrote occasional pieces for the Atlanta Gazette, Creative Loafing’s competitor, when I was editor there, although these were not about food. More often, he wrote about race, politics and the changing South.

He was also a friend (and inspiration) of Elliott Mackle, who wrote the original Grazing column for Creative Loafing (while I was editor here) and later became dining critic at the AJC.

It is hard to overstate how important Bill was in moving dining criticism out of the dark ages in our city. Fred Brown cultivated the same kind of critical eye and narrative style in other writers he employed (like Tom Patterson). While the Internet doesn’t accommodate the luxurious narrative of storytelling that characterized the original magazine’s feature stories, it is a good fit for the (colorfully written) listings that also filled its pages.

Indeed, I enjoyed this first sentence from the magazine’s listing of Omnivore:

OMNIVORE ATLANTA is the food blog of the weekly, free, at-one-time alternative newspaper, Creative Loafing.

Can you spot the snark?

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Every Monday through Thursday from noon to 3 p.m., Morelli’s Gourmet Ice Cream has begun offering a free scoop to anyone who’s unemployed and struggling to find a job. You can also use their free Wi-Fi to look for said job.

Though usually known for flavors like Jalapeno Coconut and Ginger Lavender, the current economic crisis has encouraged new, hilariously named flavors like Life’s Lemons, the Pink Slip and Unemployment Bana-fits. Sometimes you’ve got to laugh to keep from crying.

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HERE COMES THE SUN: The sunchoke agnolotti at Restaurant Eugene

It’s been about five years since Linton Hopkins opened Restaurant Eugene (2277 Peachtree Road, 404-355-0321). During my first visit — before the restaurant had received much press — I showed up dressed in my usual slothful way, direct from the gym, as I recall. Wayne was similarly attired.

As soon as we walked through the door of the restaurant, we felt out of place. Nearly every man in the dining room was in a coat and tie. We were jetted to a table in the bar area, where we would not spoil the view for the crowd of old-line Buckhead residents. (OK, actually, we didn’t have a reservation and the hospitable Gina Hopkins, Linton’s wife, fit us in.)

I’ve only returned to the restaurant a few times since then, switching my allegiance to the wonderfully zany Holeman and Finch, the gastro-pub that Hopkins opened next door for drinking and snacking. Not the least of my motivations, too, was price. The menu at H&F is mainly small plates of Southern-inspired comfort food while Eugene’s pricey menu offered more traditional meals made with brilliant, wallet-draining attention to detail

Continue reading “Grazing: Restaurant Eugene reinvented”

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“I would give you 50 cents toward purchase of a Krystal but I fear that you would simply blow the money on booze. Therefore I am instead giving the 50 cents to an organization that will help break the cycle of your addiction and help you lead a productive, happier life during these miserable economic times.”

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Tarek Tay, one of the owners of Zaya, is featured in an MSNBC article about stress among small business owners who are struggling to stay afloat these days:

In the economic tailspin of the late 2000s, loss is part of life. Workers are losing their jobs, employers are losing their businesses, and as credit becomes more and more scarce, everyone is losing confidence. What’s more, entrepreneurs are grappling with a sense that they’ve lost control of critical factors that could determine their futures. Those psychological hurdles are perhaps the biggest challenges facing today’s business owners; after all, it was probably that shining confidence and ability to innovate that got you started in the first place, right?

“So much of it has nothing to do with you,” says Tarek Tay, 36, co-owner and managing partner of Atlanta’s Zaya Restaurant, which launched strong in February 2008, boomed through the summer–and then saw business drop 30 percent in September. Although well-reviewed, it has operated in the red since, even with $1.2 million in 2008 sales. “If your food isn’t good, you can improve the quality,” he says. “If service is the problem, you can train your staff. But if the problem is that no one’s going out to eat because of the economy, what can you do?”

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Terrapin Beer Company
Athens, GA
9.8% ABV

Terrapin brewer Spike Buckowski has jumped into the Belgian ale wave with both feet with Volume 5 of the Side Project Series. Monk’s Revenge is described as having the hop profile of a double IPA, with the malt and yeast of a Belgian tripel. Six kinds of malt and six hop varieties, dextrose to replicate the Belgian candi sugar, and a yeast copped from one of the 7 Trappist breweries (Spike is mysteriously vague about which brewery) all contribute to a wonderful complexity in both aroma and flavor.

Floral and spicy hops greet the nose, along with a faint resiny note that clues you to the beer’s American heritage. Sweet, biscuity malt and the unmistakable ripe fruit of Belgian yeast are also evident. The taste starts with the smooth, mild tropical fruit sweetness of pineapple and banana, followed quickly by a tingly hop bite of grapefruit, white pepper, pine, orange, and mint. The sugary base carries warm buzz of kirsch and amaretto into the strong, drying finish. The banana and clove esters of the Belgian yeast become stronger as it warms, as does some solventy alcohol.

The balance here is fantastic, with all of the malty, fruity, hoppy, and tangy notes getting their chance to shine, but the overall effect seems a bit raw. The bottle-conditioned beer has a dullish carbonation that might lively up itself with a bit more time, and the hot alcohol suggest that this would be a good candidate for cellaring, although the hopheads might object that the fresh hop aromas and flavors would suffer. I’d have a couple fresh, then put a couple away; that way, you get the best of both worlds.

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The incomparable Broderick was on hand to photograph tonight’s opening of Varasano’s. Check out his pictures.

Can you spot the image of the Virgin Mary amid the tomato sauce?

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This sounds great. Rosa Mexicano is serving “Mexican Passover” dinner April 5-15. The New York restaurant has done this as part of its “Flavors of Mexico” series for six years.

The restaurant will host a cooking demonstration and luncheon on April 11. Call Edgar Zapata at 404-347-4090 for more information and to make a (required) reservation.

Meanwhile, check out the special menu’s dishes:

APPETIZERS
Caldo de Pollo con Bolitas (Mexican Matzoh Ball Soup)
Roasted jalapeño chicken broth with cilantro matzoh balls, carrots and black garbanzo beans.
Lunch & Dinner, $7.50

Higadito de Pollo para Tacos
Chipotle chopped liver with egg, tempura scallions, chicken chicharrones and tomatillo-avocado sauce, served with warm corn tortillas to make your own tacos.
Lunch & Dinner, $8.50

ENTREES
Lengua de Res a la Veracruzana
Traditional beef tongue simmered in a Veracruz sauce of tomatoes, olives and roasted peppers, served with matzo-potato-chive fritters
Dinner, $17

Tacos de Lengua
Seared beef tongue served with chile de arbol salsa and pickled jalapeño cabbage
Lunch, $9

Chile Ancho Relleno con Ternera Barbacoa
Ancho chile stuffed with slow cooked veal shoulder, braised cabbage, tomatillos and jalapenos, served with mole verde
Dinner, $21

Robalo Relleno
Baked stuffed sea bass with zucchinis and roasted pecans, served with pureed pumpkin and prunes and spinach-potato kugel “izmir style”
Dinner, $21

DESSERT
Pastel de Dátil
Warm pecan, date and bittersweet chocolate flourless cake, served with piloncillo butter sauce and orange whipped crème fraîche
Lunch & Dinner, $7.50

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I wondered recently if Pot and Pan, the popular Midtown breakfast joint on Piedmont near Cheshire Bridge, plans to relocate, close or what. It is located in a strip of shops, most of which have moved out in anticipation of ground-breaking for a new development there. I received this e-mail from a long-time reader today:

We’ve been eating at Pot N Pan regularly since you mentioned it 15
years ago.

As far as they can tell me, the developer is out of funding right
now, so they are open “indefinitely.” That was the word this past
weekend. They were originally supposed to be out in October, then
November, then December, etc. I don’t know how actively they are
looking for a new location, but it doesn’t seem like they are.
We’ll be sad if they end up closing. We’ve been seeing the same
people there for years. They even bought a high chair when our baby
was born, and a booster as she got bigger.

Every Great Depression has its silver lining.

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Varasano’s. Hurry.

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Where are you?

You’re already showing up at Brasserie, Café Centro and Brasserie 8½ in New York. What about us? Huh? What about Atlanta?

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Catharine Price writes about what to do with winter vegetables on Slate. This article may be a help to many people, but I have to say – really? Has the woman heard the term “soup”? And she doesn’t know what to do with parsley? I do love Mark Bittman’s response to her parsley dilemma, although his declaration that kiwis aren’t that good is horrifying. Makes me think he hasn’t had fresh ones off a vine – tiny, sweet/tart home-grown kiwis are perhaps the best thing in the entire universe. So there.

Derek Brown writes a history of the American mixologist on the Atlantic’s food site.

The New York Times gets in on the Varasano’s conniption of pizza joy.

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War documentaries are perhaps best made by outsiders who are able to show the nobility and suffering on both sides of the conflict. Anat Baron brings such neutrality to Beer Wars: Brewed in America, a documentary film that explores the goings-on behind the scenes of the world’s largest and smallest breweries as they struggle to win the minds and palates of America’s 115 million beer drinkers. Anat is allergic to alcohol, so she’s never tasted the beers that are at the center of the conflict.

“I think that [not drinking] has helped me in making the film because I don’t cast judgment over one or the other group,” Baron says. “I am certainly the last person to tell you what to drink or what not to drink, but beyond that, the actual war does exist in the business of beer, and that is more what the film is focused on; it is far less about the two different types of consumers, and whether Bud drinkers think beer geeks are elitist.”

Baron’s 90-minute film will air simultaneously in 440 theaters across the nation on April 16 and will be followed by a 30-minute live discussion with a panel of brewers and beer experts hosted by know-it-all pundit Ben Stein. The panel will be answering questions generated in advance from the live audience. “They have a digital network in the theaters that can accept satellite feed,” Baron says. “It’s just a really cool idea, I think, that all these people across America are going to be watching something happen simultaneously. I wanted to get people talking, and this seemed like a better way to do that than the traditional way of rolling out a few theaters at a time.” (more…)

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It’s now being reported that the wave of customer illness that shut down the Fat Duck is probably linked to kitchen employees coming to work while they were sick. I find this interesting — it’s a part of kitchen culture that’s not discussed much when talking about food safety. In most restaurants (and the better the restaurant the more this is true, usually), cooks simply do not call in sick. Part of the culture is that you come to work no matter what. I’ve seen chefs and cooks work through the most horrific illnesses. You see it all the time, even in reality TV — chefs get sick and then are treated as weaklings if they don’t suck it up and work. I wonder if the incident at the Fat Duck will make anyone pause to think that maybe kitchen machismo (and crazy labor standards) might pose a real threat to customers and restaurant credibility.

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