Last night Katie and I were planning on hitting up Tartufo, the newly opened pizza restaurant which shares a wall (and ownership) with La Fourchette. As we were getting ready, I received an email letting me know that Tomo’s new location in the Ritz Carlton Residences was able to open their doors that evening, a week earlier than the most recently announced opening date. Though according to Restaurants Consultant Group owner Tony Akly, whom we sat next to during our quick visit before Tartufo, they had hoped to be open four months ago. Mr. Akly’s group (F.A.B., {three} sheets, MF Buckhead) is responsible for the design and build, an impressive and fashionable room which could swallow the old location five times over.

The menu is in a different format, though 90% of the items are carryovers from the Vinings location. In addition to the many chairs at regular tables, there’s a sushi bar with maybe ten seats, and a more traditional bar with another ten, which is where we setup shop. I ordered the Nippon 75 cocktail (above) with gin, yuzu, and a few other elements, really nice.

I also tried the “sake in a can” below. I was told it was a sake beer, but at 19%, this was no beer. It was, however, a very nice, clean, and sweet fruit rich sake.

I sampled a few nigiri, my favorite. The red snapper in the center is garnished with flaky salt and lime juice. Definitely the best piece on my order. I prefer to sit at the sushi bar and eat nigiri a couple of pieces at a time, as the intimacy that makes sushi so great is lost when sitting anywhere else. And many pieces are meant to be eaten quickly.

Same goes for the gunkan-maki (aka battleship style) uni, which should be eaten quickly while the nori is still crisp. By the time it reached my table it was already soft and chewy so I just saved those pieces for last; the dreamy uni is like dessert to me. It was very fine fish, but not the best nigiri I’ve had at Tomo. In such a large space, with most orders being prepared en masse by one of four sushi chefs behind the counter (none of them Tomo, he was working the room), I think it’s near impossible to maintain the personal touch with the chef which I desire. It’s a trade-off, and clearly this is a more lucrative design for Mr. Naito, and I can’t blame him for reaching for such success. There’s no money in running a tiny room with eight seats for omakase.

We finished with the banana flan, gone in about five point eight seconds. Awesome.

There was an excellent crowd there on their first night.

Chef Tomo Naito, very confused as to why this big nerd here wanted to snap a photo.

On to Tartufo! We got the classic Margherita. By the time I could walk next door to La Fourchette and grab a beer (which they allowed me to bring to Tartufo), our pizza had already arrived from their 650 degree brick style, electric powered oven. I wonder why they don’t crank that sucker up to 800!

We thought it quite delicious. Great mozzarella, nice coverage, and a thin layer of bright, lovely tomato sauce.

The crust is reminiscent of Antico, but lighter and more preferable to me. I’m not sure how many days this dough was in ferment, but they may be able to get a bit more structure if they give the dough another day or two. But this was their second day open, so I’m not criticizing. The staff was great, eager to know what we thought. It’s a small place, with a few seats at the bar where you can watch the pizzaiolo, a communal table for twenty, a maybe three four tops. I could easily see this being a popular spot, the place is cool, staff is friendly, and the pizza is very, very promising.

The Porch at Collier has been open a week or so, in the greatly renovated former Hong Li space, next door to Big Easy Grill and the new location of Verde. I’ve been eagerly waiting for both of these restaurants to open due to the shortage of casual eating/drinking within stumbling distance of my home. The food was terrible at Fox and Hounds, but it was my go-to spot for a quick beer or three.

I’ve been to Verde twice now and think it’s solid within its genre. They changed the salsa recipe last week, and it’s improved. They really did a lot of work on that space, it’s very spacious and cool, easily a place to watch a bunch of football. While the food format is very similar to Taqueria del Sol, I like that there’s table service and it’s more of a place you can hang for a bit.

Back to the point. I was on the way to lunch in Midtown but discovered I had a blown tire so I put on the spare and decided to stay close to home, thus my chance to visit The Porch. Helmed by Ryan Stewart, formerly of The Glenwood, Eno, and Farmstead 303, the Porch at Collier is a big space, with an amazing roof top (just in time for Winter!), with a feel somewhere between modern lounge (read: purple couches and shiny things) and casual pub. There’s a mix of regular tables, bar style high tables, “loungin’ areas”, and a long wood bar. I sampled two items from their lunch menu, a safe mix of wraps, sliders, soups, salads, and a few other unfocused selections.

I started with the calamari, just because I wanted to try a couple of things. Calamari usually “is what it is” but something fried and crunchy sounded good. The cornmeal crust is well done, and the chorizo and romesco-like sauce add interest to this huge portion. If you want fried calamari, I’d recommend it.

My main was the lamb sliders. I tried to improve my putrid photo by using some of those fancy image filters available in Flickr. It really worked well, huh? Having just enough lamb funk, with a good bit flavor from the goat cheese and pickled onion, I enjoyed these, except that the well toasted but otherwise simple buns were too large for the patties. No matter, I just tore off the edges. The small side of french fries were exactly like hot McDonald’s fries, which is not a complaint.

While not destination worthy in my opinion, my two selections were of better quality than anything I had at Fox & Hounds. I just hope the place catches on as a bar hangout, I think it will be critical to their success. They did have a separate cocktail/beer/wine menu which looked decent. I do worry that the upscale/loungy vibe won’t draw those that are simply looking to hangout and quaff a few suds in a familiar place. But I plan on going back soon. The dinner menu appears to have a few more selections with potential.

How can you not love a place called Chicken & Beer? Even if it’s really just the subtext for the actual name of the Korean chain – BBQ Chicken. Whenever I’m driving home from Greenville (which is often), I make a point to stop in Duluth for some grub. I usually check out Chow Down and Blissful Glutton’s sites for the must-visit places and make lists of where I want to go, this being one of them.

Which reminds me, I really want to write an iPhone app that is similar to Yelp, except it’s only for viewing (no feedback) and the only content is from bloggers, allowing you to filter by blogger and search geographically. So if I’m in Duluth I could check out a map and see pin points of all the places Chow Down recommends, maybe a 1-2 sentence summary, address/phone, and a link to her full blog post to view in Safari.

The whole problem with Yelp is credibility. As I mentioned yesterday, part of following a single blogger is you can develop a level of trust between blogger and reader. I keep whole lists of restaurants that Gene (Eat Drink Man) recommends, because I generally enjoy the style of food he cooks and the type of restaurant where he dines. It’s much more valuable to me than a bunch of aggregated data from random “Elites” or people with very different tastes. One day. If anyone wants to help, let me know.

Back to the chicken, which was really good. The olive oil fried surface is as crunchy as it gets, with more than a little spice and plenty of seasoning. I dug the flavor from the oil, which they must cook at a lower temp to avoid a bitter, singed crust. Olive oil burns somewhere around 320F. It’s not perfect as the chicken was overdone and not moist enough, but I’d rather more flavor and a super great crust than have a particularly great bird on the inside (LeRoy’s). Recommended for shizzle. It’s right next door to Honey Pig in a newer strip mall. Free Wi-Fi.

I also wanted noodles so I hit up Dan Moo Ji, where I feel about as old and boring as a white guy can feel in Duluth. They’re chock full of young and good looking Korean youngsters, sucking down noodles, and watching Biebs videos on the television. And apparently writing cutesy stuff on the walls. Tee hee hee!

Gratis pickled radish and broth (good even on a hot day) to start.

I started with kimchi gimbap, which is reminiscent of a maki roll. They aren’t mind blowing, but it’s a nice way to get your kimchi and rice fix in bite size form. They’re cheap too.

I also ordered the cold noodles with vegetables and spicy sauce, jjolmyeon. I had not read Jen’s post since last year, and I was definitely put off for a moment when the petite waitress asked me if she could mix up my bowl.

Though I was confused as to why she thought I couldn’t mix my noodles up with my chopsticks, I said sure, and she proceeded to put on a plastic glove and dove her hand into the bowl. As she man-handled my noodles, she gazed at me and asked, “How do you know about this place?”

To which I replied, “the internet.”

“Ah”, she said, as if that made perfect sense.

Just like that my first, and best, handle noodle mixing job was over. I hope it was good for her too.

The noodles were great, super chewy and a bunch of sauce ended up on my shirt as I had difficulty snapping the strands with each bite. Appropriate spice level, I think. Plenty leftover to take home too.

After all that fried chicken and carbs I made a veggie plate for dinner. Tomatoes with chive and balsamic. Pink eye peas with pimienton and a shot of good sherry vinegar. Mandoline sliced squash quickly marinaded in chili oil. And yuzu kosho dosed cauliflower mash (sort of a play on the old horseradish mashed potatoes of twenty years ago). Katie and I were quite pleased with this impromptu and quickly produced meal. Summer vegetable season is a great one.

There something so satisfying about the appearance of a cold beverage as it sweats in the seatbelt scalding summertime in Atlanta. You know just by looking at it that it’s going to be cold and refreshing. I sat outside with a friend this past Sunday, ate some smoked wings and enjoyed this amazing bottle of ’99 Vilmart Cuvee Creation. Light bubbles, crisp, acidic, and a little tart, this straw color stunner drinks like effervescent Burgundy. I was told it can be found at H&F bottle shop. Cellartracker prices are around $90 so I’d assume it’s a little more than that locally. (We always pay more here in Georgia, all those hippies in California make wine so they are unsurprisingly less prone to taxing and regulating it).

Related, at a recent party the host had this great spread of icy booze. It’s one of those buffet carts you’d see at a Chinese restaurant, repurposed as a highly portable booze train. I bet you could find one of these cheap at a restaurant supply depot kinda place. It’s not the sort of thing a high quality restaurant would need, and not really visually appealing, that is, until you fill it with champagne and beer.

Yesterday was the 4th chili cook-off put on by me and my friend Aaron. We had it at Red Brick (formerly ABC) brewery again, which has been good to our event. The beer and chili flowed. We had about 175 attendees, and should end up with an extra $600 or so, which we’re giving to the Georgia chapter of the National MS Society.

I made the two out of focus chilis above, a pork green chili and a black bean chili with quinoa and butternut squash. They were both solid but I was especially happy with the pork. I roasted the tomatillos in rendered Benton’s bacon fat, and also threw in homemade pancetta when I seared the pork shoulder. I didn’t think it would win because it wasn’t traditional enough, but it was the chili I wanted to eat the most.

This year we used chafing trays with sterno instead of crockpots. Last year the power circuit was tripping due to the overload and we had to worry about extension cords. I thought this worked much better and each setup only cost $5-6 at Restaurant Depot. The chili below was a “pho chili” – a thin pho broth with a pickled vegetable garnish and sriracha. It was definitely creative and pretty tasty too.

Ryan J. worked hard to defend his title, but I found his chili to be the most palatable it has been during his four year reign of gastrointestinal terror.

This is what it looked like. It just looks hot.

This was a brisket chili I liked – tender, sweet up front, and a little bit of heat. Maybe a bit too sweet for my tastes, but it was definitely one of the better chilis, and there were some goods ones.

Some people, such as my brother, got creative with the naming.

Here he is, having a grand time.

When the winners were announced, it was no surprise that Annie won the Best Unusual trophy, her 2nd piece of hardware in three years.

Ryan (2nd from left) won for the 4th time for spiciest, despite the protests from one guy who kept bragging about his ghost pepper hot sauce he had back in his car. We got it, yours would have been spicier.

“3 Guys, 1 Chili” won first prize, with a stellar brisket chili. I think the competition has increased the last two years. Both this year and last, the winners appear to have put a good bit of thought and effort into the chilis.

You can tell by looking below, there’s no messin’ around anymore. See any smiles? Chili is serious business.

My friend Annie (“the esperanzette”) sent me some info regarding a food benefit Esperanza and others are hosting this weekend at Star Bar. A can of food gets you a 35.4 centiliter can of Pabst. Is PBR already retro hipster? Just wondering.

As this is my first weekend partying in ATL in a long while, I think I’ll be stopping by. Plus, Annie is my arbiter of hip, so I know she wouldn’t steer me wrong. Details below.

info:
Esperanza Presents
with 4th Ward Heroes
There’s no place like the bar for the holidays.

Saturday 11/20
Star Community Bar
437 Moreland Ave., Little Five Points

Performances by:
Howlies
Stunned Ep Release
http://howlies.com/
The Barreracudas
http://www.myspace.com/barreracudas

A CAN FOR A CAN: PBR Sponsored Food Drive
Donate 1 can of food, receive a 12oz PBR
Atlanta Community Food Bank Benefit

Show starts at 10pm
Admission: $8 / 21+

WHYNATTE drink specials at the bar all night.
Local brands and bands holding it down for ATL.
Esperanza foam hands and merchandise for sale.

For more info please visit:
http://esperanza-atl.com/ || http://www.whynatte.com/ || http://pabstblueribbon.wordpress.com/ || http://clatl.com/

I hit up Muss & Turner’s this past Sunday for lunch. I was joined by my hetero-life-partner, Aaron. We’ve had brunch a couple of times the last few weeks, and as this meal generally occurs after a 3-4 hour workout, I’m pretty hungry. We usually go the route of splitting a bunch of things.

This time we had the “Now Open on Sunday” fried chicken sandwich, which I believe was formerly named “Never on Sunday”. It’s a good chicken sandwich, like a Chik-Fil-A on steroids. Bigger, crunchier, juicier, and on great challah bread.

We also split the burger and a large order of fries. A large order is generally enough for four normal people.

The burger is on the same bread as the chicken sandwich, and features a large patty of really tasty Riverview grass-fed beef, cooked on their kamado grill, which lends a nice backyard-grilled flavor. I like the little kick from the the addition of roasted poblano too.

I’ve had the burger twice in the last month, and they will cook the burger exactly to order, their recommendation being medium-rare.

It’s the only restaurant in town that has served me a true medium-rare. The inside is extremely red and pleasantly mushy in parts. Aaron thought it was a bit undercooked for his tastes, but I say don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

It’s really, really good. Tom Maicon had it right, though I disagree in one area, I do like just a touch of salt, but agree that most places overdo it. If you get a nice sear on good beef, you don’t need much salt, and you don’t want to distract from the flavor of really good product.

On a related note, I had the “Farmer burger” at FLIP last Friday, which features Gum Creek grass-fed beef. They did lay off the seasoning, but I found the Riverview beef to hold the edge in overall flavor. In addition, the beef patty was packed way too tight at FLIP, resulting in a grainy and less juicy texture. The FLIP burger was $11, the M&T’s burger is $10.93. Neither comes with fries.

It’s not “cheap”, though I did get $25 off our meal because I have the M&T staff swipe my rewards card with each purchase, and for every $250 spent you get a $25 credit. It took me over two years, but that’s faster than the estimated six years it’s going to take me to get that damn free dozen bagels from Goldberg’s. Just three more dozen and those free bagels are mine.

Finally, Muss & Turner’s wine list is good, but I tend to order from their great beer list.

I stopped by The Sound Table on the way home from SC a few weeks ago. I sat at the bar downstairs. It was fairly dark back there, hence the crazy blurry photos.

My meal began with some champagne, of beers. Good and cheap. High Life really does seem to have a taste of its own. Though these cheap beers are fairly trendy. Did you hear about PBR going for $44 a bottle in China?

Speaking of beer trends, last night at The Shed, Katie tried to order a PBR but was told that they only had Genesee. Genesee is what my grandmother (picture a tiny Irish woman with a cardigan draped over her shoulders, two handing a giant mug of draft beer) in Pennsylvania drinks, and what she has been been drinking for as long as I can remember. And Yuengling is produced in Pottsville, which is forty miles from where she lives and where my father grew up. He tells me that when he was young no one drank Yuengling because that was an old coal miner beer and it was uncool. My how the times they are a-changin’.

Back to matters at hand, I started with the Goi Ga salad, a Vietnamase preparation, which also reminded me of some Thai salads. Small pieces of shredded chicken with cabbage and onion in a soy sauce and probably some sort of vinegar dressing. They also added pecans and mint. Really tasty except that they went really heavy on the soy sauce, so there was a pool of it when I neared the bottom of the salad. I had a glass of the picpoul blanc from the Languedoc. Maybe a little Sauv blanc-ish, the wine had some salty and burnt flavors that went aight with the food.

Next I had the spatchcocked chicken. What is spatchcocked, you and the guy who was sitting next to me at the bar might ask? Ruhlman is here to show you. I wasn’t expecting wings, I guess I had envisioned a whole quarter chicken. The flavor was good though; the singed chicken skin went well with the lemon and herb flavors, as well as with my glass of pinot nero (light Italian clone of pinot noir).

Good stuff overall, fair prices. I look forward to going back.

I’ve visited Pizzeria Fortunato on the East-West Connector in Smyrna a handful of times (post #1 | post #2), but I had a great experience there recently that I thought was worth sharing.

After a fun Saturday afternoon, I was looking for somewhere that could offer a cold beer and some guilty food. Pizzeria Fortunato had me covered.

In addition to pizza, there are some very decent wings at PF. Plenty of sauce, crispy, and plump, without being overly rubbery. I like wings to be a bit smaller than this, but these will fulfill a wing craving, no problem.

If that’s not guilty enough for you, you should try the fried provolone dish. It’s sort of an Italian version of queso fundido.

On this visit I noticed on the specials board that a variety of Italian classics, such as veal milanese, are offered at PF. I’m curious to see how they are one day. The closest to traditional fare that I’ve tried are the meatballs.

The meatballs were large, soft, well seasoned, and they didn’t have a reheated texture or flavor. Very respectable.

By the time the pizza arrived, I was stuffed. It was also very dark outside (we sat at a table on the patio) so this is the best photo I could muster up. The pizza was huge and loaded with pepperoni and sausage. It’s not a “trendy artisan” pie, but it’s delicious. I’ve always found their crust to be somewhat texturally odd and devoid of much flavor, but it’s not offensive in the least, and the crust isn’t a doughy gut bomb.

Ormsby’s has a decent looking menu, to me it’s reminiscent of Leon’s in Decatur, mostly because of the fries with multiple sauce options, but also because the menu has a dash of progressive flair while staying true to its bar roots. I had my first meal there last week with Live to Feast and Foodie Buddha, and there were some interesting choices, and I look forward to trying some of the things we didn’t get to that day. But I see myself primarily going to Ormsby’s to drink. They have a well sized beer menu, and the bottom floor of the restaurant is the much talked about drinking and game haven, offering up a bar, pool tables, darts, shuffle board, and even a bocce court. I really dig it. The interior is cool, the people are nice, and the accommodations are welcoming. The Westside just found it’s great after work beer hangout.

As for my first impressions of the food – the fries were solid, though when you are in shouting distance of Abattoir it’s tough to eat them without comparison, because I think Abattoir has some of the best fries in town. The dipping sauces were good. Gravy on fries…

Below are the “corn dogs”. The portion was large for the price, and they were tasty, though the batter was more reminiscent of chicken strips batter than the dense, artificial corn dog exterior taste that I had hoped they would play around with.

FB got the BLT with egg and onion rings. He seemed to like it all right, though he complained about the value. That’s sort of his MO though.

LTF got the “Abe Froman”, a nod to Ferris Bueller.

I had the “Bruno Burger”, a White Oaks pastures grass fed beef patty with mushrooms and provolone. The hamburger, was huge, cooked exactly to medium (as specified), and the toppings were plentiful. The bun was decent too. But the flavor of the beef was a little bit of a bummer. I had a local grass fed burger at Zin during my recent visit to California and was blown away by the natural dirty flavor of the beef. I had not tried White Oaks beef yet and was hoping for the same thing.

I was too full to eat more than a bite of my onion rings, especially as they are very batter rich, and I prefer very little batter.

I look forward to spending many hours at Ormsby’s. Let me know if you’re there, I’ll challenge you in bocce.