Omnivore Atlanta

Fritti remains my favorite pizzeria in town despite much hoopla over a few newcomers. Part of its appeal is the starters. The one I order most is the mushrooms fried in rice-flour batter with white truffle oil. (It may be the only place I like to smell truffle oil anymore.)

Favorite dishes: My favorite pizzas are the margherita, the speck and arugula and the Napoli with bufala, anchovies and capers.  309 N. Highland Ave. 404-880-9559. www.frittirestaurant.com

We will be counting down Cliff’s Top 10 Favorites every day between now and Oct. 21, the day our Food Issue 2009 launches. Check back tomorrow for Number 8!

(Photo by Cliff Bostock)

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We dined at Sotto Sotto this evening and got a mouth full of wonderful food and an ear full of news.

First, the meal: It was the last night of Inman Park Restaurant Week and the restaurant was packed with diners taking advantage of the restaurant’s $25 three-course meal. I actually skipped that but I did take the server’s suggestion that we “say goodbye to this year’s Heirloom tomatoes” by ordering dishes that featured them, like the Caprese salad above.

The salad included a very good bufala mozzarella and yellow, purple and red Heirlooms. The yellow, which I don’t recall encountering anywhere else this year, was especially good, with a slightly sweet flavor that Wayne called “watermelony.” For my entree I chose the restaurant’s classic dish of tortellini stuffed with ricotta flavored with fresh mint under a tart sauce of red Heirlooms and basil.

Wayne ordered the three-course meal, starting with the cantaloupe and prosciutto shown here, followed by a risotto topped with chopped tomatoes and basil. He spooned down a bowl of chocolate soup for dessert.

Now the news. We ran into Riccardo Ullio, owner of the restaurant, along with Fritti next door and Beleza in Midtown.

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We hit Fritti tonight around 9:30 and found Enrico Liberato, the restaurant’s new pizzaiolo, hard at work, turning out pies for a crowd that was rather large for late Sunday night. In fact, restaurant owner Riccardo Ullio reports that business has been so good that April was the restaurant’s best month ever — by a large amount.

The flip side is that the wood-burning oven can hardly keep up with the demand, so Fritti will be getting a new one soon.

I departed from my usual Napoli tonight, and ordered the Robiola e Pesto, a white pie made with goat cheese, sundried tomatoes and argula pesto. Wayne ordered the Quattro Formaggi — four cheeses with San Marzano tomato sauce. Both were nearly perfect, but nothing beats the Napoli here.

The restaurant will begin offering a new pie made with scamorza affumicata in a few weeks. A smoked cow’s milk cheese, it’s seldom seen on menus in Atlanta. Ullio plans to develop some starters using the scarmoza, too.

Meanwhile, the Pizza Wars continue. Readers are still responding to my original Omnivore post about Varasano’s Pizzeria over a month ago. AJC critic Meridith Ford Goldman basically shared my own view of Varasano’s in her must-read review last week:

But often the pizzas are soggy and laden — and worse, inconsistent. A “New Haven clam” pie touts clams, mussels, lots of garlic and either a white or red sauce (all of which are far better on a mound of linguine than a mound of dough), at one offering limp and lifeless and at another much more appropriately crisped.

The rest of the menu is as uneven as the pizzas: the zeppole are a fun, but nothing sensational. Insalata Caprese is made with mealy heirloom tomatoes prepped ahead of time so that the entire salad is ice cold when it’s served, making it as much a heap of “tasteless cardboard” as Varasano so infamously calls Fritti’s pizza on his website.

It ain’t bragging if you can do it, goes the old baseball saying goes. Varasano’s Pizzeria has a little more doing to do.

Friends who visited Varasano’s last week had the same experience of radical inconsistency. I have to wonder if all the comparison to Varasano’s isn’t what has caused Fritti’s business to boom.

(Photo by Cliff Bostock)

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LOOKING FOR A DONOR: Tierra's Dan Krinsky

I’m back to pizza this week, but first, I want to cite some important news in Atlanta’s culinary community. Dan Krinksy, co-chef and owner of Tierra with his wife, Ticha, is in need of a kidney donor.

Krinsky was diagnosed with polycistic kidney disease, a genetic disorder, about six years ago. He has been seeking a donor for two years and although he’s had seven offers, none of them turned out to be a match. He is now undergoing dialysis three times a week.

His blood type is O, the most common, so the competition for a donor kidney, including a cadaver organ, is intense. He prefers a living donor because, he says, cadaver kidneys are not as reliable over the long term. Recent research has concluded that donating a kidney does not affect health or life expectancy.

All donor costs will be paid by Krinksy’s insurance company. Recovery from the laparoscopic surgery is usually about two weeks.

Continue reading “Grazing: Tierra’s Dan Krinsky needs a kidney”

(Photo by James Camp)

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MMMMM, CHARRY: The Margherita pizza at Varasano

Enrico Liberato is the new chef, the pizzaiolo, at Fritti. Like everyone else obsessed with pizza in our city, he had to visit Varasano’s Pizzeria (2171 Peachtree Road, 404-352-8216) in the new sky-scraping Mezzo building in Buckhead.

Varasano’s, in case you’ve been living contentedly under your homemade Chef Boyardee pizzas, has received more media buzz than any restaurant in memory. Jeffrey Varasano, the restaurant’s owner, became something of an Internet celebrity after he moved to Atlanta and began blogging his efforts to re-create the pizzas he ate regularly in New York City.

Food bloggers have been singing his praises for at least a year. And the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution both ran major feature stories about him on July 2, 2008, after the writers attended one of the private parties he frequently hosted at his home.

These parties were rather like public scientific experiments in which Varasano attempted to make perfect pizzas with his electric oven. They also, of course, were brilliant marketing for the restaurant, creating such anticipation that Varasano’s Pizzeria was effectively given rave reviews before it even opened.

Continue reading “Grazing: First Look: Varasano’s Pizzeria”

(Photo by James Camp)

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This from Riccardo Ullio’s Facebook page:

On Monday, April 6, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake devastated the Abruzzo region of Italy. At least 260 people lost their lives and more than 28,000 people have been left homeless by the disaster.

Please join us in the effort to raise funds for the people affected by the earthquake. On Tuesday, April 21st U Restaurants will host the Dine Out for Earthquake Relief.

All profits from dinner at Sotto Sotto, Fritti, Cuerno and Beleza will go to provide relief for the victims through the International Red Cross.

In order to raise additional funds, U Restaurants will hold a raffle featuring an array of great prizes, worth over $4500, from U Restaurants and other local retailers. Raffle tickets can be purchased at all U Restaurants.

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Have you visited my other site, Savory Exposure? My “photo name” is Broderick Smylie. I took all these pictures … except the blurry ones.

But seriously, folks, nobody depicts the restaurant scene like Broderick. Bookmark him now. …

Who would have guessed? The FoodieBuddha likes tea more than coffee. He’s very peaceful. He’s inventoried the new selection of teas at Danneman’s. Bookmark his site too. …

Jennifer Zyman, the Blissful Glutton and author of our Cheap Eats column, has just returned from a visit to Madrid, Berlin and Prague. Check out her pictures of Madrid, probably my favorite big city in the world (with Sevilla, south of there, being my favorite small city). Unfortunately, Spain’s economy is tanking in a major way. …

Steakhead has started a tour of dining deals under $25. We must be on the same wavelength. His first visit was to Fritti, where Wayne and I dined a few nights ago too. …

Bill Addison waxes Proustian during a final visit to Pano’s and Paul’s on his Atlanta Magazine blog. …

Some of the folks on Atlanta Cuisine are complaining about a dip in quality and escalating prices at Dynamic Dish. They blame the restaurant’s success. I continue to have good meals there — when I can get in the damn place. I called a few days ago to reserve space for pizza night and got a recording that said they were all booked up. Grrrr.

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What is it? It’s a roasted-pork bánh mì from Nam. I reported recently that these sandwiches had shown up, along with pho, on the lunch menu there. I picked one up today and found the restaurant fairly crowded at 1:15 p.m. with only one person working the door and tables. She was clearly flustered, running from table to table.

The sandwich was tasty. While it’s a bit more substantial and definitely fresher than most of the Vietnamese sandwiches you find on Buford Highway, it does cost significantly more — $6.50, compared to under $3 at many places in the burbs. There’s also one made with chicken. I’ll return to sample the pho, of which there are four varieties available.

Some weirdness: Prices of other lunch dishes are very confusing. On the menu flier I picked up, more than a few of the lunch dishes are more expensive than the same dishes on the dinner menu. I have no idea. …

Thursday was a good-eating day. My friend Christopher Howe and I went to Star Provisions. He had a baguette with prosciutto and butter and I had the day’s special, roasted chicken with beet greens and rice. While the chicken leg and thigh had good flavor, they frankly weren’t pretty with their shriveled skin (served over quite tepid rice). Since the Girl Scouts have been pounding the pavement with armfuls of cookies everywhere, I had to have a smores cupcake with marshmallow icing. You’ll want two. …

After writing a post about the forthcoming Varasano’s Pizza, I was craving pizza all day yesterday, so Wayne and I dined at Fritti. We had our usual starter of fried mushrooms with truffle oil, plus a dish of fried goat cheese with arugula salad.

Wayne ordered the pizza with cotto ham and mushrooms, while I ordered the “Toscana,” featuring bufala mozzarella, peppered salami, cherry tomatoes and rosemary.

Our server warned us that the restaurant’s new  chef, Enrico Liberato (from Naples), was using a new bufala with a quite salty edge. He wasn’t kidding. I quickly adapted but the initial bite stung. Enrico, who is young and very friendly, has made other subtle changes in the ingredients.

Fritti’s remains the best pizza in town to my palate. Moreover, it doesn’t cost much more than most others. We both marveled at the intensity of flavors — from toppings to the dough itself. I can’t wait for the pizza wars to begin when Varasano’s opens.

(Photo by Cliff Bostock)

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I’ve been craving pizza all week, so we visited Fritti Thursday night. While I got my favorite Napoli — made with bufala, wild oregano, capers and anchovies — Wayne ordered the calzone, which arrived at the table looking like a gigantic crab, larger than the plate on which it was served.

Wayne admitted that it put the first calzone he ever tasted — when he was 10, in Columbia, S.C. — to shame. Light, crispy and creamy, it was filled with ricotta, mozzarella, salame and cotto ham. He accepted the offer of a dish of marinara on the side. It didn’t need it, but he never says no to extra food.

We also ordered my favorite starter, the fried mushrooms.

As we finished our meal, restaurant owner Riccardo Ullio arrived on his motorcycle. (Yes, we know one another.) Riccardo also owns Beleza, the groovy Brazilian cocktail lounge. He said that he is in the process of changing the menu there to all raw food. It won’t be just vegetarian food. Ceviche, carpaccio, tuna crudo and such will be on the menu, along with vegetarian dishes like the grains the spot is already serving.

Meanwhile, Cuerno, next door to Beleza, is featuring live flamenco at 7 p.m. Sundays. The show features guitar, dance and singing. If you’ve never seen authentic flamenco, you need to go. As far as I know, Cuerno remains the only Spanish restaurant in our city and the paellas estan fantasticas.

(Photo by Cliff Bostock)

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Slugs slouching toward Bethlehem? Planet of the chalky lakes? Nope, it’s my favorite pizza at Fritti, the Napoli, made with bufala mozzarella, salted anchovies, capers and wild oregano.

This particular pizza is one of eight made with a special flour and certified by the Verace Pizza Napoletana Association. The crust is somewhat billowy compared to the restaurant’s other pizzas. That’s not to say that the “traditional” one topped with Gorgonzola and pineapple and drizzled with balsamic vinegar we shared Friday night wasn’t good, too.

The starter I find irresistible here is the mound of cremini and portobello mushrooms fried in rice-flour batter with truffle oil — hot, fragrant and luscious. We also ordered a plate of bresaola with celery and Parmigiano with lemon.

Fritti, like its sister next door, Sotto Sotto, is among my favorite comfort restaurants, where I can consume 2 zillion calories and know each and every one will be delicious.

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We just got an e-mail from Riccardo Ullio, owner of Sotto Sotto, Fritti and Beleza, with the news that one of his managers, James Smith, has just lost his newborn son to SIDS.

Tomorrow night, Oct. 3rd, all proceeds from dining at any of Ullio’s three restaurants will benefit a memorial to the short life of Ramse Hunt Wilson, who was only 37 days old. Fritti and Sotto Sotto will close at 9 p.m., and a celebration of the life of Ramse will begin at 10 p.m. at Beleza.

Our thoughts go out to James and his family.

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