Omnivore Atlanta

LET THEM EAT PIE: The "Founder's Pizza" at Pizza Fusion

“Are you here for gluten-free pizza?” the young woman at the door of Pizza Fusion (2233 Peachtree Road, 404-351-9334) asked us.

“Of course,” I said. “Isn’t that the main selling point about this place?”

“Well,” she said, “I need to tell you that we have sold out of the gluten-free crust.”

Wayne and I looked at one another and gasped. The young woman tilted her head and cooed, “I’m so sorry.”

Actually, neither of us has celiac disease, the intestinal disorder for which a gluten-free diet is prescribed. It’s common. As many as one in every 133 Americans can’t digest gluten, a protein in wheat, barley and rye. Gluten also occurs frequently as a secondary ingredient in all sorts of products.

The increasing diagnosis of the disease has caused many restaurants to add gluten-free dishes to their menus or, like Shaun’s, to sponsor regular dinners for people with celiac disease.

But Pizza Fusion is, as far as I know, the only restaurant in town to offer gluten-free pizza, at least when they have it. Two days after our visit, the restaurant was still waiting for a shipment of the mysterious flour necessary to make the gluten-free crust.

But Pizza Fusion, a franchise out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., also advertises itself as “green.” Vegetables are mainly organic. Meats and poultry are free of chemicals. The restaurant’s interior is built from recycled this and that. You can recycle your pizza boxes. The toilets are “low-flow.” Food is delivered in “hybrid, electric and fuel-efficient vehicles.” I could go on. In short, the restaurant calls itself “the greenest restaurant in America.” (more…)

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I’ve had the cold from hell for a week, so I’ve only eaten comfort food like Dynamic Dish’s stew of great northern beans and heirloom peas from Whippoorwill Hollow Organic Farm. I drank a glass of freshly made carrot-ginger-Fuji apple juice with it.

We ate at the restaurant’s new bar counter. It has five seats and, at least to me, is more comfortable than sharing the end of a table whose other end is occupied by complete strangers. Here, you can eat with strangers, but stare at the cookies and dates stuffed with chocolate and almonds between intervals of conversation.

David Sweeney, the restaurant’s chef/owner, says he’s not going to open for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Bummer.

Brad Lapin and I made our weekly trip to La Pietra Cucina where I ate short ribs over mashed potatoes. Brad ordered this (more photogenic) fish stew. Being sick, I figured I deserved the dessert, a chocolate-mousse-like concoction with hazelnuts. We’re returning for dinner this week with a visiting foodie friend from Rome.

I ran into Jennifer Zyman, CL’s cheap-eats writer, at Pietra. She reports on her own meal on her blog. Jennifer and her dining companion find certain flavors — salty and bitter — too strong in two dishes. Bitterness is a flavor I can’t get enough of, generally. (No comment necessary from the sweet peeps.) But I’m hypersensitive to saltiness and don’t recall getting an over-salted dish at Pietra.

I gave Jennifer a hug. I hope she didn’t wake up with my cold.

My final comfort food was pizza at Stella. The fall specials menu includes this white one topped with smoked prosciutto and streaked with balsamic reduction. I mainly enjoyed it, although too much of the prosciutto was stringy.

Wayne ordered another special pizza, featuring cherry tomatoes, anchovies and capers — similar to Fritti’s Napoli, but with a crispy crust instead of the billowy, melt-in-the-mouth one at Fritti.

I also sipped a good bit of juice from Arden’s Garden. During the sore-throat phase, the straight-up ginger- root juice was almost anesthetic. Of course, the price, over $10 for 10 oz. or so, is kind of numbing too.

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Homegrown Restaurants is celebrating peace, pride and pasta throughout the month of October. Every Wednesday, Rich Chey restaurants (Doc Chey’s Noodle House, Osteria 832, and Stella Neighborhood Trattoria) will donate 15 percent of their revenue to The Pride Committee Inc. The organization promotes unity in the community and also encourages fellow Atlantans to speak their minds. All proceeds go toward the 2009 Atlanta Pride Festival. The schedule is as follows:

Wednesday, October 8th at Osteria 832
Wednesday, October 15th at Doc Chey’s Emory
Wednesday, October 22 at Stella Neighborhood Trattoria
Wednesday, Octobert 29th at Doc Chey’s Virginia-Highland

For more information, log on to http://www.homegrownrestaurants.com.

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We dined Tuesday night at Stella (563 Memorial Dr., 404-688-4238) and found the place crowded with people playing its weekly trivia game.

For me, though, the big attraction was a special — a thin-crusted white pizza topped with prosciutto and fresh, local figs. It was a bit pricier than the average special — $15 for a single-serving pie — but worth every penny. I could eat one of these daily forever.

According to our very entertaining server, Bria, the special’s appearance is unpredictable, so call ahead to find out if it’s available.

Stella is now open for lunch weekdays, by the way.

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On April 14, approximately one month after a tornado ripped through downtown and ravaged most of Cabbagetown, a dine-out has been planned to benefit those affected in the Atlanta neighborhood. The event was planned by Rich Chey, owner of HomeGrown Restaurant Concepts and the recently opened Stella Neighborhood Trattoria in Grant Park. Twelve local restaurants will donate 15 percent of the proceeds earned from 5 p.m. to close (some restaurants will also donate lunch proceeds) to Cabbagetown Initiative’s disaster relief fund, which provides assistance to those who suffered from tornado damage.

It is a worthy cause and another reason not to cook on a Monday night.

Participating restaurants include:

Stella Neighborhood Trattoria, Six Feet Under, Redfish, Dakota Blue, Agave, Grant Central Pizza, The Standard, 97 Estoria, Flatiron, The Depot, Ria’s Bluebird and Vickery’s in Glenwood Park. For more information on the dine-out and directions to participating locations, visit www.AtlantaTornadoRelief.com.

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I went to Stella Neighborhood Trattoria recently and encountered something strange. The restaurant has an extensive wine list, but has yet to get its liquor license. They allow people to bring their own wine, but they charge a $5 corkage fee.

My understanding of corkage fees is that it protects the restaurant from losing profits when people do not order off the restaurant’s wine list. But if the restaurant does not have a wine list, then what’s the fee for? I could understand if it was a service charge – the waiter still opens and serves the wine, but because no extra wine cost is added to the bill, the server effectively is not tipped for their efforts (something you should keep in mind when you BYOB), but a corkage fee is not a service charge — it goes to the restaurant, not the server.

I find it especially strange in a restaurant that is waiting on a license. If it were a place that was always going to be BYOB, I can imagine a corkage fee for the hassle of buying glassware, etc. But for a place that plans to have wine, and that has not yet acquired the license, not having wine is actually an inconvenience for the customer. Charging them to solve that problem for themselves seems strange.

The restaurant also has a list of “rules” that children who eat there must abide by — no-brainer stuff like not screaming or smearing food around. Having waited on my fair share of badly behaved children, I empathize with the attempt to curtail this behavior before it starts. But I question the hospitality of being presented with a menu that tells you how to act, even if the requests are fair. Apart from that, I’m not sure this tsk-tsking on the menu will actually help with truly badly behaved kids.

It just doesn’t seem like good business to make customers feel ripped off and talked down to before they even get food in front of them. But hey, what do I know? The place was packed!

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Stella Neighborhood Trattoria (563 Memorial Drive, 404-688-4238) has opened in Grant Park and my first impression was quite positive. We went the first night it was open to the public, something I rarely do, and the staff was on its toes and the food was good.

The owner is Rich Chey, who also operates Doc Chey’s Noodle House and Osteria 832 Pasta & Pizza. I’m fond of the latter. It’s an inexpensive trattoria but has plenty of sophisticated flourishes. The same is true of Stella.

The restaurant is serving only its “base menu” right now but will soon add a menu of seasonal specialties and desserts. It will be hard to get me to eat anything but the short ribs with root vegetables braised in red wine — an exceptional version at a low price (above right). The cod and potato fritters are, um, stellar, too.

The restaurant features the extra-long bar (top photo) that most new restaurants seem to be featuring. I assume this trend is a reflection of how alcohol sales are up to 70 percent of many restaurants’ sales these days, according to a friend in the industry. But it may also reflect the trend to eat at bars, something I’ve always enjoyed.

I’ll have more to say about Stella in next week’s Grazing column.

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I recently mentioned the appearance of a sign announcing Stella Neighborhood Trattoria on the new Oakland Park condo building at 563 Memorial Drive in Grant Park. It turns out that the restaurant, which should open some time in February, is a project of the same folks who own Doc Chey’s and Osteria 832 in Virginia-Highland. I’m no fan of the former but I like the latter’s inexpensive no-frills pasta and pizza. So Grant Central Pizza is going to have some serious competition.

The new restaurant is across from Oakland Cemetery, which, by the way, it has renamed “Oakland Park cemetery” in its advertising, perhaps to make it less funereal. I wrote an article on the cemetery years ago and its original name was the Atlanta Graveyard. Perhaps it was called Oakland Park at some point; I don’t know. It certainly functioned like a park in the late 1800s.

Even weirder, I couldn’t find a single mention on the website of the condo development itself that it faces the picturesque cemetery — not even in its description of the location. Meanwhile, up the road, Six Feet Under’s name giddily exploits the location.

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