Photography by Martha Williams

The first time I went to Jamie and Aaron Russell’s outdoor sandwich restaurant, on the main drag in Avondale Estates, was shortly after it opened in December 2023. It was love at first sight. At that time it was called The Velvet Hippo, named after their silky and sturdy pit bull mix rescue. The place was simply perfect: a great space with Astroturf, surrounded by amenities such as overhead fans and heaters, landscaping, and enclosed toilets. Beyond the creature comforts were the distinctive sandwiches, sides, and cocktails. By February, Meatball Monday had been added (yay!), and the name had been changed to The Little Hippo (okay).

Unfortunately for the youngish couple, a lounge in Durham, North Carolina, had already federally registered the name. One crucial step in starting a new business of any kind is making sure that no one else owns the name you are considering. If a restaurant is called The Real Something Something, you can be sure that there has been a dispute or lawsuit over copyright infringement. But The Little Hippo works for me, both as a name and as a concept.

Gourmet sandwich shops are a significant trend across America (Bunk and the more recent Sammich in Portland, Oregon; Turkey and the Wolf in New Orleans; and the gorgeous but pricey Bona Fide Deluxe—opened in February 2023 by the hipsters at Banshee—near the Edgewood–Candler Park MARTA station). Meanwhile, there are already plenty of great sandwiches in Atlanta—the hot pastrami on rye at the General Muir, the unbelievably cheap egg banh mi at Lee’s Bakery, the spiedie (alas, temporarily retired) at Ticonderoga Club, the Israeli falafel pita at Rina—but nothing iconic. New Orleans has the muffuletta and the po’ boy, Philadelphia the cheesesteak and the roast pork, New York the mile-high deli meats on rye, and Maine the lobster roll.

What many people don’t know about the Russells is that Aaron used to work for Günter Seeger at The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, and that he became the official pastry chef of Seeger’s on West Paces Ferry Road. He was nominated for a national James Beard Award. After the unfortunate closure of the high-end Seeger’s, Aaron became co-chef at the much-beloved (now-defunct) Chocolate Bar in downtown Decatur. Many, myself included, still pine for that magic caramel popcorn, which brought in orders even from heavyweight local corporations. I also crave his homemade Rice Krispie treats, made with brown butter, at his and his wife’s Poor Hendrix in East Atlanta. Jamie left her career in academia to run the dining room of Poor Hendrix, one of the true jewels in town. The young couple excels at keeping their places casual, with menus that are short, sweet, and affordable given the high quality of both ingredients and preparation.

A friend of the Russells owned a lot where a dilapidated shed once sat, just past the Tudor stretch. Per the City of Avondale Estates, he was able to raze the building if he rebuilt in the same spot. Rebuilt it was, using cheap siding, and the Russells rented it. The cooler is in the backyard, and ordering takes place at a tiny counter.

I forgive the restaurant for its bizarre hours (just like Poor Hendrix, it’s open Mondays but closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays). I am not crazy about people bringing their dogs to The Little Hippo, oblivious to the fact that their pet may disgrace the Astroturf or bite a fellow canine. But I adore the sandwiches, on soft potato rolls dotted with sesame seeds or classic hoagie buns. My favorite is the Vietnamese-style fried fish, with all the accoutrements of a banh mi jammed into a soft roll. The lamb burger is actually a merguez, a spicy North African lamb sausage, sticking out at both ends in what is a magical, aggressively tasty combination. The hoagies are great, too, with fillings such as Italian meatballs (Monday only), fried mortadella, or Italian charcuterie. Vegetarians get a pita with beets, tahini, and cucumbers. I am also appreciative that none are of a size that could dislocate my jaw. The menu contains more than sandwiches: a phenomenal ginger carrot soup, a divine potato salad included with your order, cocktails such as the Negroni Spritz and a passionate “Marg” that’s strong on the silver tequila and the Tajín spice. I don’t typically need a dessert after a sandwich, but only a fool would fail to order the fudgy chocolate brownie.

Dogs—Little Hippo not included—gambol around. There are children, old folks, and pretty much anyone who understands that fun awaits under a sky that could be blue or gray, in a place where the food doesn’t cost the now-usual arm and leg.

This article appears in our June 2024 issue.

The post Review: Gourmet sandwiches at The Little Hippo hit all the right flavors appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Martha Williams

Fifteen years ago, when I first met Alex Brounstein in the Sweet Auburn Curb Market, where he had just opened his first Grindhouse Killer Burgers, I felt that everything I knew about restaurants was about to change. He doesn’t like it much that I call him the first hipster restaurateur I met (“I wasn’t that cool,” he demurs). But the way he brought together popular culture and novel food ideas in an unorthodox setting thoroughly rattled me.

Everything about Grindhouse was fun. Did we like the burgers more because they had fresh Southwestern peppers and interesting sauces, or because we could slouch at the counter and watch cult movies on the wall? Both! A former lawyer who put away his suits to embrace a less serious way of life, Brounstein was challenging us to quit being so stuffy. We accepted the challenge, and a movement was born.

Brounstein’s new concept, the wildly clever and relaxed Breaker Breaker (921 Wylie Street Southeast), opened late last summer on the BeltLine. It takes full advantage of an unusually uncrowded and narrow stretch, once the home of the historic Stein Steel in Reynoldstown, where giant metal beams were turned into ceiling joists.

The BeltLine turns sharply at Wylie Street, and Brounstein wanted to call the restaurant “Point Break” for the 1990s surfer movie. After his partners vetoed that, Matthew McConaughey appeared to Brounstein in a dream and suggested “Breaker Breaker.” Good, he thought. If they say it twice, they’ll remember it.

What I especially love about Breaker Breaker—besides the fried-fish platters with thick tartar sauce, the fun sandwiches, and the cocktails—is the location. Unlike most of the places constructed closer to Krog Street, there is nothing conventional about the architecture. It consists of linear-stacked concrete blocks, with a huge metal roof original to Stein Steel floating on top. Nicknamed by Brounstein “The World’s Most Expensive Umbrella,” the iconic feature extends to protect a gigantic patio, reminiscent of those along the Gulf Coast beaches of Florida.

The inside of the restaurant has cozy diner vibes, but the best seats are outside or at the bar. All around you, people are having fun. Kids play by the big yellow crane and the other leftover machinery. Their young parents watch them with tall, not-too-sweet, sippable frozen cocktails in hand and fat grouper sandwiches in front of them. Eager bicyclists dismount and lock their wheels, while intowners arrive from a neighborhood where parking isn’t yet a nightmare.

Being fun doesn’t mean that the restaurant isn’t serious about its food. The chef, Maximilian Hines, comes from the now-closed Lawrence, and some of his ideas—always run by Brounstein and his usual manager, now partner, Johnny Farrow—reflect his experience in the world of fine dining. Take Hines’s dips, for example. The fresh, earthy flavor of a chunky beet dip topped with fresh dill—served with raw veggies, but easily recruited to enhance the supermoist hush puppies presented with spiced honey butter—quickly earns enthusiastic approval. Ditto the smoked-fish dip with pickled chilies. There are fun little fried enoki mushrooms atop fried calamari. The fries, shaped like neither sticks nor wedges nor curls, seem to have fallen from a big peeler that respects the irregular form of a potato.

Everything is easily shared: charbroiled oysters with lemon wedges, empanadas generously filled with chicken étouffée with salsa verde on the side, peel-and-eat shrimp, platters of fried fish with fries and Cajun slaw, a Dockside Poutine where crab plays hide-and-seek among the cheese curds. The sandwiches—shrimp po’ boy with slaw, mushroom chopped cheese, properly fried or grilled chicken—hold plenty of appeal. The kids menu offers a mini fish platter and a grilled cheese sandwich. There are no burgers, of course, considering how close Breaker Breaker is to Grindhouse. But there are vegan crab cakes and a bevy of other enticing options.

Everything is easy to execute in an uncommonly narrow kitchen. The only two desserts—ice cream sandwiches (firmly pressed cookies bracketing banana or vanilla ice cream) and refreshingly sour individual Key lime pies—are easy to grab and serve.

Much thought has gone into the beverage menu. Wine boxes; inexpensive lagers; cocktails such as the Mucho Nada (White Claw mango vodka, mango puree, Tajín rim) and spicy Vaya con Dios (habanero tequila, passion fruit liqueur, lime juice)—all are quickly made and lend themselves to repeat orders. As of press time, a rooftop lounge, “Florida Man,” is set to open in late March. [Editor’s note: It’s now set to open in May.]

Unlike the easily replicated Grindhouse, Breaker Breaker is more of a singular concept relying on a unique location. Never before had I thought of the BeltLine as a city boardwalk. But I can see it now, thanks to a team with a real understanding of what makes us happy, and enough chutzpah to generate it.

This article appears in our May 2024 issue.

The post Review: Breaker Breaker turns the BeltLine into a boardwalk appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Martha Williams

My heart always beats faster in a restaurant when I see something I have never seen before. It isn’t as if I’ve never spotted a chef expediting his own food at the kitchen pass, checking that everything on each plate is how and where it should be, moving a little sprig of greenery by a sixteenth of an inch or calling for his crew to redo an entire dish. But a chef, let alone one who is the size of a giant, standing in the dining room at a long table and quietly fixing all that needs fixing in plain view of his customers is pretty much new to me.

Southern National opened this summer in trendy Summerhill, where it joins Little Bear, Talat Market, and other influential independent establishments. The restaurant announces itself from the get-go as an ambitious showcase. As a young Black chef fresh out of culinary school on the West Coast, Duane Nutter was a disciple of Darryl Evans, Atlanta’s most famous Black chef of the 1980s and 1990s, who hired him for what is now the Four Seasons. Nutter then toiled in the kitchens of Villa Christina and other local restaurants. In 2008, the city and its many visitors became familiar with him and current business partner Reginald Washington, also Black, when Nutter became executive chef at One Flew South in Concourse E of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Born in Louisiana, raised in Seattle, Nutter broke all the rules when he put fancy sushi, elevated Southern cuisine, and craft cocktails on the menu of an airport restaurant.

Nutter and Washington departed Atlanta in 2016 to start a restaurant they called Southern National in Mobile, Alabama, Washington’s hometown. The place attracted a lot of attention, down to making the short list of finalists for a regional James Beard Restaurant Award, but eventually closed. Now relocated to Atlanta, the restaurant cuts an even more cosmopolitan figure.

There is something of the showman in Nutter, who has done stand-up comedy and improv on and off throughout his career. Speaking in a voice surprisingly gentle for a man of his size, he refers to Southern National as “a compilation of [his] greatest hits.” Asked about his style, he answers, “I cook my life,” with a blend of innocence and pride. He thinks nothing of depositing shiny black mussels, shiitake mushrooms, and bacon in a thicket of glossy Southern greens or plating tradition-breaking berbere-spiced fried boneless chicken thighs on tender maque choux.

Photograph by Martha Williams

The bread service—all-around-crisp sheet-pan biscuits with pepper jelly and jalapeño johnnycakes with cane sugar syrup butter—lets you know that you are in a South that is evolving beyond tradition. A smoked-turkey-and-corn soup with big-pearl couscous and bright green Southern chimichurri sauce, a perky salad of grilled okra and shishito peppers, and an exuberant vegetable plate spiced with za’atar win you over instantaneously thanks to their originality. But there is more: a frequent special of pimento cheese set with pickled goodies against a giant bouquet of homemade crackers, grilled pork chop rubbed with coffee in red wine mustard sauce, sassy baked rigatoni with “lamb burger helper.” Complex and exciting, a finely textured, boozy pecan Old Fashioned float feels like a cocktail and a dessert in one.

The opulent bar mixes clean, well-balanced concoctions such as the Coconut Negroni, the Punch Royal (cognac, champagne, pineapple juice, and lemon), the Prado (blanco tequila, lime, maraschino, egg white, and a fancy cherry impaled on a stick), and the On the Nose (bourbon, lime, ginger soda, with a little dark rum on the top), all created by Greg Best and Paul Calvert, the stars behind Ticonderoga Club, who have cooperated with Southern National since its Mobile days. There is a lot to love about a wine list that roams from Spain’s Basque region to Italy’s Puglia with well-priced, timely selections. The usual suave, calculated neutrality of Smith Hanes’s decor, art by renowned Black artists, and the educated but unobtrusive servers in fancy aprons allow the food to shine in all its colorful glory.

You won’t regret entering Nutter’s world. Instead of looking over his shoulder at what others are doing, he has fun on a path of his own. His head is full of ideas about how to celebrate the South without resorting to cliches. Aesthetically and emotionally satisfying, Southern National tells you that Atlanta is a global city that is changing for the better.

This article appears in our November 2023 issue.

The post Review: Southern National is an adventure in haute Southern cuisine appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Caroline C. Kilgore

The words adorable and European are never far from my mind when I walk into Larakin, the coffee shop and wine bar that opened late last year almost within sight of Piedmont Park. I climb a few opulent steps engraved with the names of the drinks that wait within—coffee, wine, latte—and suddenly I am in another culture. A wonderfully comfortable patio extends a warm welcome to whoever seeks easy, relaxed sustenance: a perfect hot biscuit, a tasty sandwich on freshly baked focaccia, or a glass of Spanish wine and a plate of white anchovies marinated in lemon and extra-virgin olive oil.

The narrow indoor space offers no seating, but plenty of incentive to down a cortado while standing at the counter; at six by four feet, the kitchen has less room than some walk-in closets. Though the package is tiny, the message is important: One can serve splendid coffee and wine and even some good food out of a small space, if one has the will and talent. The face beaming out of the kitchen/closet belongs to Jordan Chambers, a perpetually curious Missouri native who went to culinary school in Atlanta, and whom locals may remember as the co-owner of Emory Village’s Steady Hand Pour House, which closed in 2013.

Larakin (or larrikin) is an Australian expression that can denote a mischievous or rowdy youth or, more generally, someone who knows how to have a good time, conveying something like joie de vivre does in France. Chambers was inspired by a trip down under to adopt it for his new business. The cafe’s treasures start in the morning with a simple breakfast sandwich, filled with a buttermilk frittata baked in a cast-iron pan with Cabot white cheddar, thinly sliced red onion, and chopped guindilla peppers. It’s served on a brioche roll, to which you may want to add a dash of Ding’s Magic Hot Sauce, a local product made by a friend of Chambers’s. Although he hadn’t been to France until recently, Chambers also endeared himself to me by standing up for the famous jambon beurre, a sandwich in which butter, rather than cheese, complements slices of mild Parisian ham. Alas, though, customers had other ideas, and Larakin has switched to a (still delicious) proper ham-and-cheese sandwich.

At Steady Hand, Chambers was an early adopter of made-to-order cups of pour-over coffee; he’s been serving Intelligentsia beans since 2007, and in his new place he eschews syrups, flavors, and even sugar. But he’s no longer just a coffee nerd of uncommon gifts: Chambers has emerged as a wine geek to be taken seriously. I and many others had to wait a solid six months, the amount of time it took to get a full beer and wine license, for his vision to be fulfilled. Now, though, he’s able to pair his glorious conservas—imported tinned seafood such as razor clams, sardines, scallops, branzino, mussels, and small mackerels, packed in fruity olive oil by artisanal European facilities—with compatible wines. (See page 33 for more.) Tinned-fish plates are served with guindilla peppers, cornichons, lemon, and focaccia or chips. Pizzas and focaccias change constantly depending on what’s around: Combos such as tomato, spicy onion, basil, and microgreens, and feta, basil, and Calabrian chilis, have been big hits, and look out for the occasional refreshing gazpacho as well.

Larakin approaches wine the way it does coffee: no additives or stabilizers, minimal sugars and sulfites, small production. The list changes frequently, and the blackboard chalks up selections by the glass that may include a sparkling Gramona III Lustros Brut Nature, a skin-contact Casal de Ventozela Contatto, even a Txurrut Basque Vermut or an El Maestro Sierra Oloroso 15-year sherry. Beer and sangria haven’t been forgotten, nor has the imperative to make things fun: Hosting events like Sunday-afternoon music parties with resident DJ Indiana Robbins, Larakin is a gift to its neighborhood in countless ways. It deserves a place on your radar.

This article appears in our October 2023 issue.

The post Review: Larakin is a good thing in a small package appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Martha Williams

Fifteen years ago, a somewhat hidden South Buckhead gastropub became a local and national sensation, based on an approach to food and drink that made it one of the coolest culinary kids in town. But yesterday’s Holeman & Finch is not today’s Holeman & Finch.

You’ll still find the cool kids inside the new space at Colony Square, as I did on a recent visit. It happened to be the day Michelin announced it was bringing its famous restaurant guide to Atlanta, for better or worse; conversations about what the news could mean for the city’s restaurants could be heard down the bar as I ordered my first cocktail, the spritzy, gin-based Ribbons. Balancing dry vermouth with apricot and amaro, it was a good enough aperitif, though my favorite was ultimately the Crescent Wing, served in a coupe and reminiscent of a Paper Plane. Tangy, with an earthy depth from Madeira, the drink seemed aesthetically and spiritually connected to the classic cool that H&F appears eager to re-create in its new digs.

The decor leans into the clubby appeal of the original—a retro, industrial-funk hangout that closed in 2020, and whose planned move to Midtown was delayed by the pandemic. That vibe felt more organic further up Peachtree Street than in the almost-hip corporate courtyard of Colony Square. But that doesn’t mean the new look is a miss; the mix of warm wood against cold metal, just barely reflecting the dim lighting, does a decent job of mimicking the original H&F’s edgy Gen-X/Millennial experience. Hanging hams flanking the open kitchen, and unique art pieces in each dining booth, prove the vibe was capable of travel, at least partially. But in reality, the OG Holeman & Finch will never be duplicated, for several reasons. (Another: the fact that spirits master Greg Best—a partner at the original H&F, where he played a key role in bringing craft cocktail culture to Atlanta—now makes his drinks at Ticonderoga Club and Southern National.)

Opened by Linton and Gina Hopkins in 2008—when Buckhead was still figuring itself out after pushing out Black partygoers and blaming Ray Lewis—Holeman & Finch caught lightning in a bottle. Other, stuffier Buckhead restaurant institutions were becoming as dated as the wilted lawyers who held court in their private back rooms, likely formulating early plans for Buckhead City. Then, along came this strange little spot across from the Hopkinses’ fine dining place, Restaurant Eugene. Rather than steaks and lobster, it served what we were told was one of America’s best burgers, taught ATL how and why to drink Fernet Branca, and specialized in whole-animal cuisine. Hell, it even had a “Parts” menu.

The new H&F briefly had a “Parts” menu, too, during its soft opening. It included veal brains. Today, Gina and Linton, along with their son/manager Linton II, have wisely pared down the menu to parts more known. The solid roasted bone marrow remains, but we’re no longer in an area of town where youthful blue bloods relish in proving their street cred by eating offal. In Midtown, veal brains don’t make sense.

Smartly, the Midtown menu—now divided into oysters, cheese, charcuterie, and “small plates” that range from chicken livers to carbonara alla chitarra—is easier to digest. The Lady Edison 36-month ham plate, at a very reasonable $12, is a sweet and salty spread of sliced hog heaven that I paired with chevre at the bartender’s suggestion. But it’s the more approachable dishes—red snapper meuniere with new potatoes and wide-cut collards, roast chicken with tomatoes, parsley, and thick croutons in vinaigrette and natural jus—that shine. My advice: For added veggies, go for the simple lettuce and herb salad, or the Woodland Gardens bok choy in hot sauce and sherried shrimp butter, over the tasteless kilt greens in bacon fat.

I steered clear of the classic menu items that made Holeman & Finch such a revered brand in Atlanta, like the beloved Crunchy Gentleman sandwich and the famous cheeseburger (which is almost $10 cheaper at Ponce City Market). I do regret not having the option to taste Linton’s Sapelo Island red peas, which weren’t on the (frequently changing) menu when I visited. Still, it’s good to see the Hopkinses’ scrappy, highly celebrated rock-and-roller restaurant come back from the uncertainties of Covid. Filling in the final pieces of its former self will take time, but this stylish reminder of Atlanta’s indie dining origins—executed well enough, if perhaps less imaginatively—remains sufficiently gutsy to justify a repeat visit.

This article appears in our September 2023 issue.

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Photograph by Martha Williams

I liked eating in Japanese restaurants better before the omakase frenzy took hold. Yes, it could be stressful to tell trusted chefs that you wanted to give them carte blanche: “Omakase,” you whispered (the phrase means something like “I leave it up to you”), and maybe a number between $100 and $200. The chefs then reached deep into their inventory to create menus reflecting the availability of products and their seasonality. When you grew satiated, you said, “I have had enough,” and that was it. Receiving every piece of sushi one at a time from the chef’s hand, you felt superior to the masses eating big platters nearby.

In recent years, though, omakase around these parts has morphed into something more like a prix fixe dinner, featuring a tasting menu with sometimes as many as 22 courses. Practically speaking, the formula makes economic sense. It requires a smaller staff and a smaller battery of cooking equipment than a conventional restaurant; the dining room is usually compact and features a single counter. Atlanta now has at least three dedicated omakase restaurants, all within striking distance from one another on or near Howell Mill Road. More are on the way.

I’ve already told you, in a December 2022 review, what I think of Mujo: It is the epitome of fine dining ($225, beverages excluded) and a fascinating showcase for the traditional Edomae style of sushi, which features cured fish that’s had time to relax and deepen in flavor. Let me add a few others for your consideration.

I had many delightful dinners at Sushi Hayakawa: For 15 years, the restaurant was a staple—and a famously difficult reservation—on Buford Highway, where its chef, Atsushi “Art” Hayakawa, was a jovial dude from Hokkaido who had the best salmon caviar in town. It relocated recently to the Star Metals development and streamlined its name to, simply, Hayakawa. The reformulated restaurant features a severe dining room with a long, austere counter, with the chef working at a distance from his customers and wearing a microphone. The dishes I remember best from the costly meal ($315, beverage and service excluded) are the clear soup with pearly scallops, the simmered conger eel with sansho pepper, the remarkable bluefin tuna, and the spicy pollack roe over rice cooked with dashi broth and green tea. The meal included too much rice for my comfort, but the quality otherwise never faltered.

Photograph by Martha Williams

Leonard Yu’s Omakase Table ($235 before tax and gratuity) will save you money because it doesn’t have a liquor license and you can drink what you bring without a corkage fee. Yu, who is from Indonesia, rose to fame through his pop-ups at Brush Sushi Izakaya. As at other omakase restaurants, dinner starts with a series of tiny appetizers known as otsumami—a few pearls of lustrous caviar, a bite of monkfish liver. As the main event got underway, I particularly loved watching the chef arranging precious pieces of seafood atop carefully shaped fingers of rice—almost as if he were a potter—and working on the temperature and texture of items such as a rare cherry blossom trout, a wondrous sharkskin sole topped with a bit of its own fin, an unusually shaped cockle, a delicate splendid alfonsino, a quickly poached striped imperial prawn. Young assistants stood by to explain the nature and provenance of a female squid that appears only in the spring, or an almost crunchy amberjack warmed by pressing binchotan (Japanese charcoal) on its surface. Yu impresses connoisseurs with his ethereal tamago, a Japanese omelet flavored here with sweet shrimp; it’s a dish that normally does very little for me but was the revelation of the meal.

Editor’s note: When this article went to press for our August 2023 issue, it included Jason Liang’s Cuddlefish. However, Cuddlefish closed in late July. As this article was not published online until late August, we have removed Cuddlefish from the digital version.

This article appears in our August 2023 issue.

The post Review: Omakase, y’all! Taking stock of Atlanta’s latest fancy sushi spots appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Martha Williams

Not long ago, on the same morning that I reluctantly forked over $2.17 for a small pouch of M&M’s at my regular gas station, I paid $7 for a cortado and an excellent breakfast sandwich—eggs and bacon on a soft sesame-seed roll. How could such a thing be? In any event, I have since returned almost daily to the Best Sandwich Shop and the Wurst Beer Hall, chef Shaun Doty’s new restaurant combo in the former Moe’s space on Ponce de Leon Avenue.

An Oklahoma native who once worked at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead and has opened restaurants including the Federal and Bantam + Biddy, Doty has gotten this spot up and running with the help of vice president of operations (and life partner) Natalie Samples. He’s already doing remarkably well with a concept that seems pretty brilliant to me—“bringing the North to the South”—and a commitment to both quality and affordability that feels increasingly rare these days. As any New Yorker can tell you, one can still get a cheap egg sandwich and a cup of coffee on every corner of the city, courtesy of an old-fashioned food cart or a diner. In Atlanta, it’s impossible.

Photograph by Martha Williams

Well—nearly. Nowadays for breakfast, I head to Best Sandwich, where the basic egg-and-cheddar option goes for $3.50; there’s also fresh orange juice and halfway decent hash browns. By noon the menu grows to include daily soups (matzo ball, tomato) and a lot more sandwiches. The latter are divided between hot (e.g., the Farmers Daughter, with seared Halloumi and roast peppers, and the Immortal, a meatball sub with San Marzano tomato sauce and mozzarella from Capella Cheese) and cold (the Sunset Blvd, with turkey, bacon, and avocado), and all are easy to enjoy in the cozy, tiny dining room.

An even bigger draw: the beer hall, which occupies the other, larger part of the building and pours Bavarian lagers by the liter and half liter. (The sandwich shop closes at 3; the beer hall opens at 5.) The Wurst Beer Hall specializes in hearty fare: currywurst and french fries, smoked pork chop with brown butter and sour cherries, and fish and chips, with sides like braised red cabbage and an unusual Ukrainian beet salad with kidney beans. Yes, you can order crowd-pleasers like chicken wings and humongous pretzels with cheese sauce—but I prefer bangers and mash or, if I can gather enough people, the giant sampler platter of four sausages, served with sauerkraut and German mustard. (Doty’s economizing extends to the dinner hour as well: He doesn’t buy the sausage from some local hotshot monetizing his meat trimmings, but rather from Patak Meat Products, an Austell-based old-world butcher that has truly mastered the trade.)

Photograph by Martha Williams

The Friday and Saturday special? A monumental pig knuckle, simmered in duck fat for 12 hours and served with kraut, pickles, and country bread, that the chef himself may be willing to carve tableside. Skip the Aperol spritz (good advice for any beer hall) and glory in the thoughtful selection of brews—mostly lagers, including my favorite, Ayinger Pils—and homey dining room, with several TV screens that may have a soccer game on. There’s outdoor patio seating too—a bona fide beer garden.

This article appears in our July 2023 issue.

The post Review: This Poncey-Highland restaurant is the best of the wurst appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Martha Williams

Take me to a minuscule bar with clever low-budget decor, shove a one-page menu under my nose that doesn’t look like typical pub fare, and I am sure to fall in love before even tasting anything. Whoopsie’s, recently opened in Reynoldstown, checks all the boxes, playful and serious in equal proportion: a sparse 40 seats, lots of thrift-store finds and reclaimed furniture, lights turned way down low. From the exuberant restroom mural—by painter William Downs—to the assorted botanicals pressed into lacquered tabletops, everything about the place indicates an appreciation for local artistry.

The first time I ventured in, on the early side and barely hungry, I plunked my elbows down on the padded bar and watched as Tim Faulkner—a force in Atlanta’s cocktail world, who opened this place with chef Hudson Rouse—mixed drinks with deep concentration. Faulkner and Rouse, the chef-owner of Avondale Estates’ Rising Son, met while working at Octopus Bar in East Atlanta, where Faulkner still pulls an occasional shift. The two friends share a distaste for their industry’s compulsions and commercialism. They may profess their love of imperfection, but their team effort here is impressive, the tightness of their focus formidable.

The pair had already put a deposit on another location south of East Atlanta Village but decided to forfeit it when the erstwhile Hodgepodge Coffee at Moreland and Hosea Williams closed, freeing a much more desirable spot on an always-packed stretch of road. Whoopsie’s opens at 5 p.m. to catch the flow of rush-hour traffic, extending a warm welcome to those needing to take a breath before heading home. It stays open until midnight, dispensing classy cocktails, low-intervention wines, and a small number of uncommonly serious comfort dishes.

I’ve always been impressed by Rouse as a fun, savvy Southern chef who works without histrionics. He grows vegetables on his farm in Rockdale County and gets most of his meats from Stone Mountain Cattle. At Whoopsie’s, his tiny menu is divided into “cold,” “hot,” and “proteins,” and the portions are ultragenerous. Many of the dishes could easily feed two, including Rouse’s cafeteria-style snack tray (deviled eggs, pickles, chowchow, delightfully thick and unfussy pimento cheese, various terrines) and daily specials such as a classic slab of prime rib au jus with horseradish sauce, a hearty porchetta with salsa verde, supercrisp chicken thighs sprinkled with Maldon salt, and, on Sunday, whole poached or roasted fish.

Even though the techniques are sophisticated (cheesy French-style pommes aligot instead of mashed potatoes, seasonal salads dressed with Champagne vinaigrette, hasselback sweet potatoes, can’t-put-them-down tostadas from Maricela Vega’s Chico), nobody is trying to make things too pretty. The kitchen is thrifty, using the previous night’s protein to create the sandwich of the day. The desserts are either some form of boozy ice cream with cookie crumbs and fresh fruit or a variation on the kind of icebox pies Rouse grew up with. What I love about Faulkner’s drinks, meanwhile—tuxedos, amaretto sours, daiquiris du jour—is how exquisitely balanced and minimally garnished they are. (That and the wonderfully nerdy ice program, which involves giant shards broken with a hammer.)

Photograph by Martha Williams

At Whoopsie’s, the kitchen has the manifest gift of simplicity. The mood is sexy yet unfussy. The wine list reaches deep into eccentric selections, with some specials written on a blackboard and a rare devotion to half-bottles and splits. In their mid-40s, both owners have been at the receiving end of the hospitality industry long enough to make good times a priority; they’re comfortable in their own skins as badass dudes who like to party, but also love to create an orderly universe that’s responsive to the needs of the clientele. Faulkner and Rouse are particular where it matters to them, relaxed about everything else. Every hour at Whoopsie’s feels like happy hour.

This article appears in our June 2023 issue.

The post Review: Spend a very happy hour at Whoopsie’s appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Martha Williams

Any given evening, most of the with-it young clientele sitting down to dinner at La Semilla aren’t full-time vegans. But that’s a large part of the draw at this new Latin restaurant on a hot stretch of Memorial Drive: It’s for everyone. And everyone appears to be eating here. Every table is full. The noise level is just right—cheerful, not deafening. Your interest is piqued, your instincts are rewarded—if you follow them through the tall doorway, set off by garlands of large green leaves painted onto the brick. If you don’t have reservations, there may be a couple of seats at the bar.

A short sentence on the menu mentions the restaurant’s plant-based food, but your eyes may skip right over it to focus on delightful items such as queso, empanadas, Cuban sandwiches, and tamales. Your first, gloriously garnished cocktail is strong enough to suppress any lingering questions. La Semilla’s owners, Sophia Marchese and Reid Trapani, aren’t trying to fool or convert anyone. “Everybody is on their own journey” is their motto. They’ve been together for 10 years, the last five of them devoted to embracing and promoting a plant-based, anti-inflammatory diet, which they decided to take up for health reasons. (Studies have suggested that vegan or vegetarian diets may reduce inflammation, thereby lowering the risk of some chronic diseases.) As culinarians, they became known for their platform Happy Seed, which held pop-ups at places such as A Mano and Buena Vista, and which has reached full flower here.

What feels unique about La Semilla, which the young couple started “from the gravel up” in a new building, is the joyous vibe. It’s the kind of place where the pair and their contemporaries can let loose. Trapani as the chef, and Marchese as the general manager and creator of the rock-star beverage program, have gotten rid of the stereotypes associated with boring vegan restaurants. There’s just enough information on the menu for customers to manage gluten intolerance and allergies; most of the dishes feel otherwise uncomplicated.

Marchese is of Cuban descent, and Trapani has family roots in Italy; both have traveled to the Yucatán and throughout South America. La Semilla’s dishes seduce the eyes before they start on the palate, with lion’s mane mushrooms, jackfruit, cauliflower, and squash standing in for a previous generation’s bland textured vegetable proteins. Crunchiness and creaminess, often missing from the vegan experience, are present throughout: for instance, in a delightful potato- and cashew-based queso blanco, served as a starter with good tortilla chips. The brilliant croquetas de jamon and the “cubarrito”—with picadillo and fried plantains in it—could sway even a Cuban grandmother. The bread and the sliced cheese in the pressed Cubano may be outsourced vegan products, but the sandwich as a whole is as fresh and tasty as those in Miami.

It’s easy to accept at face value the heirloom beans with sofrito, the street corn, and the rotating tacos made with fresh tortillas—but I especially enjoyed the mystery shrouding items such as the sikil p’ak (a thick, dark-red toasted-pumpkin-seed salsa from the Yucatán) and the easy-to-share crunch wrap, a takeoff on the fast food favorite consisting of a medley of fresh vegetables, seitan, and nacho cheese sauce encased in a crisp dough. For dessert, two options, neither disappointing: a caramelized-plantain ice cream “split” or pumpkin fritters with cajeta and espresso sea salt.

From talking with the owners, I learned a thing or two about their pleasant-tasting, nut-free butter and their chicken, a product called Daring, made of soy and not too many other ingredients. I heard their passion for healthy cuisine free of animal products. What was foremost on my mind as I ate at La Semilla, though, is how satisfying the sensory experience was. I watched the bartenders assemble elegant rum- and tequila-based cocktails and pour biodynamic wines. With a shimmering Oaxacan mai tai in one hand, the other holding a spear of yuca drizzled in cheese sauce, I happily watched fellow diners sharing plates of nachos, available after 9 p.m. and loaded with queso, pasilla salsa, morita cream, and more. I might’ve gone back to meat the next day, but I’m glad for the seeds of change planted by a restaurant that makes it easy to envisage a different way of eating.

This article appears in our May 2023 issue.

The post Review: La Semilla is for everyone appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Martha Williams

The first Filipino restaurant in Atlanta, the long-gone Ms. Honeybear, hid at the back of a crummy strip mall on Memorial Drive near Stone Mountain. It was there that I developed a fondness for lumpia (fried spring rolls) and halo-halo (a shaved-ice dessert akin to an extravagant parfait) as well as the amazing ube—a purple tuber much in use in the cuisine of the Philippines. In subsequent decades, the only representations locally were the marvelous Mabuhay grocery on Jonesboro Road and a few other short-lived holes in the wall.

Then came Estrellita, which opened in Grant Park in 2020—and Kamayan ATL, the magical pop-up enterprise launched by Mia Orino and her partner in cooking and in life, Carlo Gan. Born and raised in Manila, Orino came to the U.S. to attend college at Georgetown University, where she majored in political science. Her hopes to become a lawyer eventually morphed into a passion for community activism; she still owns a business in Washington, D.C., that helps survivors of domestic violence find employment. In Atlanta, she and Gan began throwing feasts the way Southerners throw cookouts. The communal meal known as kamayan—usually served on banana leaves, without utensils—tied her to her heritage in a place where people have been eating together by hand since the precolonial era.

I never attended the pop-ups, which took the form of prepaid kamayan feasts in venues around town, but always meant to. Then came the pandemic, which made me a bit anxious at the prospect of eating at a table with a bunch of strangers. But there’s nothing to worry about at the brick-and-mortar restaurant Orino and Gan recently opened in Asian Square on Buford Highway, a place now adored by me and a zillion other food obsessives (in Atlanta and beyond: Last year, even before the restaurant opened, Orino and Gan were James Beard Award semifinalists in the Emerging Chef category). There, they serve a regular a la carte menu most nights of the week, in addition to hosting regular kamayan-style meals.

Photograph by Martha Williams

At one recent such event, individual tables of various sizes—for two, four, six, eight diners each—occupied the relaxed, faintly beachy dining room. Cut-up tropical fruit (like star fruit and dragon fruit), cute ube muffins, two different kinds of rice (including a fried garlicky one presented in half of a fresh pineapple), sauteed pancit noodles, shrimp crackers, cubes of crisp pork belly, riblets—all and more were already laid out on each table. As soon as everyone was seated, a parade of grilled skewers, huge prawns, fried pompano, pork rolls, and various lumpias made its way around the room. Of the almost incapacitating two-hour meal, I especially remember a wonderful mess of blistered green beans seasoned with what tasted like citric acid and, toward the end, an entrancing eggplant and coconut curry served in a clay pot. Diners are welcome to take home their leftovers. (Follow @kamayan_atl on Instagram to find out about upcoming dates.)

The regular menu is just about as exciting, with many of the aforementioned dishes served in individual portions. Lechon, the roasted suckling pig frequently outsourced by restaurants, is cooked in-house at Kamayan, appearing in guises such as a succulent leg, a rolled-up belly cooked in the style of porchetta, even crunchy slices of pig ear on a plate of sizzling sisig with organ meats and a fried egg. Kare-kare (creamy beef and peanut stew) and a rotation of other comfort dishes alternate on a menu that changes often. “I like to keep things interesting,” Orino told me.

The restaurant doesn’t serve alcohol yet—a liquor license is in the works—but canned sodas, including a Filipino one flavored with calamansi, are available; so is housemade ginger tea, usually kept in a big percolator by the door. Friendly staff bring the food to your table after you place your order at the counter, and retrieve cutlery and sauces from a small table set aside for that purpose. Always ask for Orino’s ube flan or her halo-halo—with layers of ice cream, shaved ice, fresh fruit, sweetened red beans, and sticky sauces.

This article appears in our April 2023 issue.

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