Update June 20 - The menu for Lure has been pulled and I have been informed by Fifth Group that the menu and prices were not finalized and should not have been posted by the webmaster. Please take this into consideration when reading this post, and I want to reiterate that a comparison like this is not apples to apples, and was simply out of my own curiosity.
Fifth Group has a new restaurant opening soon in Midtown called Lure, and the menu is up today. I looked at it and immediately realized it will be a direct competitor to the newly opened Westside restaurant, The Optimist, which I posted about the other day.
How do I know they will be competing for sea-eaters? Check the menus. [Optimist | Lure ]
Both have raw bar menu options. Both have smaller plates (Optimist called them Starters, how passé). Both have more substantial entree portions. And they use many of the same ingredient bases, as is generally the case at any seafood restaurant.
Immediately I thought of Ryan Sutton, who writes for Bloomberg and also has blogs called The Bad Deal and The Price Hike. On these Tumblr blogs he discusses restaurants with excessive price tags, and restaurants which are increasing their prices (particularly those who recently received positive reviews from the Times and such). I love the concepts, though I don’t know Atlanta has enough data to support something like that. I mean, tracking the fixed price of all three fine dining restaurants in Atlanta isn’t really edge-of-the-seat sort of news.
But how do the menus of The Optimist and Lure compare? I picked a few similar items for a pricing showdown. Of course, this can’t take into account portion size, sourcing, or overall execution, but hey, it’s fun to slap ‘em down on the table and measure. The fish, that is.
West Coast Oysters
Lure – Hama Hama oysters $3/each
TO – Misc W.C. oysters $3/each
WINNER – TIE
East Coast Oysters
Lure – Cavendish Cup and Harpswell Flats $3.00-$3.50
TO – Misc E.C. oysters $2.50/each
PRICE WINNER – The Optimist
Salads
Lure – Herbs and Lettuce, candied ginger, pumpkin seeds, lime vinaigrette $10
TO – Simple salad with shaved celery & herbs OR little gems, meyer lemon anchovy dressing $7
PRICE WINNER – The Optimist
Soups
Lure – N.E Clam Chowder OR Tom Yum Shrimp Bisque $9
TO – Seafood gumbo or frothy she-crab soup $9
WINNER – TIE
Mussels
Lure – Blue Hill Bay mussels steamed with wheat beer, curry, and creme fraiche $14
TO – Mussels, crabby-coconut broth, birds eye chile, herbs $9
PRICE WINNER – The Optimist
Shrimp
Lure – Broiled GA shrimp scampi-style, with Sparkman’s cultured butter $12
TO – Whole GA white shrimp a la plancha, “sopping” toast, arbol chile, lime $11
PRICE WINNER – The Optimist
Chicken
Lure – roasted half chicken dirty rice, roasted okra $24
TO – wood roasted half amish chicken, almost boneless, salsa verde $18
PRICE WINNER – The Optimist
Trout
Lure – grilled whole ga rainbow trout served head-and-all, with pickled ramp butter and new potatoes $28
TO – whole roasted georgia trout, marcona almond, pickled celery $20
PRICE WINNER – The Optimist
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So we have a clear pricing winner, right? Well, at least on paper. We’ll see how Lure substantiates. But I find menu pricing interesting, and for those that think The Optimist is priced a little high (my initial reaction), it helps to see what the market actually looks like.
Of course I do look forward to trying Lure, and wish them best of luck.
