As part of Restaurant Week, I visited Rathbun's with a group of friends. As you can see from the photo, Rathbun's shares some of the design characteristics that I noticed at Kevin Rathbun Steak: an entrance secret enough to be the envy of the CIA (and I don't mean the Culinary Institute of America), a hip industrial/modern interior, and a youngish crowd (present company excepted).
This was the first course a sopressata served with cheese, bread, and a very small amount of what seemed to be a marmalade. The slices of sopressata were so thin that I had a hard time really discerning its taste, but it certainly qualified as light.
My red meat cravings got the best of me and I ordered the hangar steak served on a bed of polenta. It was very good---I particularly enjoyed the pairing with the polenta---but I should have ordered the Georgia trout. Everyone who had the trout said it was wonderful.
My cravings served me well for dessert. I had a piece of chocolate cake with a marshmallow cream topping. The marshmallow cream really complemented the cake very well.
Verdict: Long on style, not as much substance as I had hoped.
Sprig opened a few months ago on LaVista Road in the spot where Quinnie's used to be. One couldn't come up with a bigger change in atmosphere. Sprig is another buzzword-compliant Southern restaurant: local, organic, etc. The decor is very nice. I sat outside where I had a nice view of a small stand of trees and could largely ignore the parking lot. I had high hopes for this restaurant, which was started by an up-and-coming chef who has attracted a fair amount of local attention. And while I think the place is good for a date night out, I didn't think the food was as exciting as it should have been. (Date night restaurant is, by the way, my term for a restaurant that is primarily designed for show, some place that puts more emphasis on the words on the menu and not enough time into executing what's on the plate.)
This seems to be my week for cheese and chops. I enjoyed this cheese plate which had cheeses from Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, as I recall. I wish that the olives had a little more pucker power and that I had a few more---they make an outstanding complement to the cheeses.
Since Sprig is a Southern-themed restaurant, I tried the pork shank. I thought this was a particularly good choice given their emphasis on roasting. The meat didn't have quite the interesting roasting artifacts---charred bits, etc.---that I would have expected. The cut of meat itself just didn't seem to be as porky as I had expected. I decided to try to jazz things up with a little dark mustard. The waiter brought a serving of a Grey Poupon-like smooth mustard, not the grainier, more interesting mustard that I expected. I quickly gave up on it and went back to the meat. I did really enjoy the black eyed peas.
I found the service to be a tad supercilious. I've complained before that high end American restaurants often treat customers as if they are privileged to be allowed to be served. This certainly wasn't the worst service I've had but it certainly didn't meet the standards of warmth and comfort that I would expect from a truly Southern experience.
My friend and colleague Steve Nowick visited, giving us the chance to try Empire State South, a relatively new restaurant at Peachtree and 10th. It's the Atlanta outpost of a well-known Athens chef. The restaurant itself is very spacious with large dining and bar areas. They also have some dessert items out and wrapped, as if in a small-town store. I'm quite frankly not sure whether those are for show, carry-out, or snacking in the bar.
Steve and I agreed that we enjoyed the first two courses the most. This is the cheese course, which had three Georgia cheeses, all of which were delicious. The cheeses came off as fairly light, probably a combination of their intrinsic characteristics and the fact that the portions were small.
For a second course, Steve had a bean soup that he loved. I had a field green salad which had several very thin, delicate slices of ham as a garnish. The ham didn't overwhelm anything else because the slices were so thin---they complemented the very fresh lettuce extremely well.
I had the pork for the main course. It too had a very subtle flavor: tender and pink on the inside with a very delicate crust. It was very well executed but somehow didn't excite me as much as the other courses. Perhaps I was expecting something a little more porky. Steve had the chicken, which he also said was very good but not as much fun as the other courses.
Coming out of the Georgia Tech game, I spied a food truck that promised fried pies. I don't see food trucks around Atlanta very often, so the very concept was intriguing, but quite frankly they had me at fried pie. The truck was from Mercier Orchards, an apple orchard in northern Georgia, so naturally the theme was apple. I ended up with a fried apple pie and an apple slush. The pie was good but my favorite was the slush. It was very rich with apple taste. The slush captured the tart/sweet combination that is the essence of an apple in some ways better than the average apple does. Who says football food has to be boring?
The Big Chicken in on Cobb Parkway in Marietta is a Georgia landmark. If you haven't seen it, you haven't seen Georgia. As you can see, the beak moves. I understand it was designed by a Georgia Tech grad. It's been there for 40 years and I presume that it is burned into the consciousness of children all around Georgia.
I also took the opportunity to stop by Harry's Market, which is off the same exit of I-75. I stopped because I've seen it on Alton Brown's show. It turns out that it is a Whole Foods by a different name. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but there's no point in me driving 30 minutes to shop at a slightly larger version of what I have down the street.
