A Quick and Mostly Kind March Through Atlanta

I decided to take a weekend trip to Atlanta to see friends. And eat and drink, of course, because that's what friends do with each other.

But before we eat...Atlanta is booming, y'all. The site of multiple construction cranes erected all through Midtown reminds me of the Houston skyline in the frothy days of $100 oil. I didn't see new Truist Park, the MLB Brave's fancy and totally unnecessary new suburban digs built a couple of years ago just northwest of Midtown. But I could feel the buzz of change in the area around old Turner Field (now the home of the Georgia State Panthers football team) as I drove past its walls, a whistling twin whoosh of optimism and concern over gentrification caffeinating the air itself.

And then there is the Beltline, Atlanta's multi-generational urban re-engineering project to create a 300 mile interconnected trail of commingled retail, housing, and public play space around the city. The project is remarkable and generally well received (yeah, gentrification is a problem here, too...keep pushing for more affordable housing, ATLiens). Clumps of small businesses of every hipster stripe bear daily witness to a flowing stream of school kids on skateboards, people walking their pets, squadrons of invariably chubby tourists on rental scooters, and a fair sprinkling of fancy scarf-wearing executive producers humblebragging their way down the path to their next kombucha-fueled meet-and-greet.

Add it all up and it's a heady time in Atlanta. The surging contrast between well-intentioned artifice and authenticity is everywhere...including the local restaurant scene.

Which brings us to Staplehouse. The restaurant is built on the legacy of the late Atlanta chef Ryan Hidinger, who was planning to open the place with his wife, Jen, and fellow top-end Atlanta kitchen wiz Ryan Smith in 2014 before shockingly passing away from terminal cancer. But the team's vision for Staplehouse lived on, with proceeds benefiting restaurant workers in need through a local nonprofit called The Giving Kitchen. The collective effort resulted in Bon Appetit recognizing Staplehouse as its Best New Restaurant in the country for 2016, with accolades for culinary creativity and skillfulness as well as a spirit of authentic passion for the mission being repeatedly cited as something that made the place different.

That sounds nice and friendly. It is. But make no mistake…Staplehouse lays on all the pretense of a Serious Restaurant. You can smell the itch for a Michelin star.

It starts with the "pay AND tip when you reserve your table" policy. It continues when you don't walk in the front entrance, but enter the restaurant through the garage door hoping to evoke a metaphor for visiting a friend’s house. This combination comes across more clever than welcoming, more forced than friendly.

Once inside the handsome brick dining room for Friday night dinner, we pass by a savory cannoli (with uni and chive) station right after the hostess stand. This amuse bouche also brought our first dose of an irritating trait shared by lots of technical high-end places, where the staff starts telling you how the chef wants you to eat your food.

"Chef wants you to eat this in one bite."

"Chef would like you to start with the piece on the left then move one on the right after chewing but not yet swallowing the first bite."

“Chef would love to see you slowly levitate out of your seat just after you take your bite, turning as you do to acknowledge him. Once in the air, a small nod will do. No more than 3 inches, please, to preserve the sanctity of the experience for other diners. Cheers.”

I first encountered this tic several years ago at the much-lauded Alinea in Chicago. There, a course that consisted of a celeraic bubble in an arugula liqueur served in a shot glass was accompanied by set of instructions that were so unintentionally but wildly pornographic that it broke the suspension of disbelief at our table and effectively ended the dinner.

Staplehouse wasn't that fussy. But we had already placed ourselves fully in the kitchen's hands with the tasting menu and upped the co-dependency with wine pairings. I think Chef should trust us enough to know how to put their food in our mouths, and be content that if we don't do it the way he/she might have preferred that the food would still stand up and the experience won’t be compromised.

But the eating instructions were a staple of the Staplehouse experience, the little food on big plates kept coming. And while the kitchen got on the aforementioned hot streak as the meal moved on, there were a few misses early.

For example, chard. What's the ongoing fascination? Anyone? And a layered chunk of the dehydrated leaf coated with some powdery bland yeast is not likely to win any new converts. A truly minuscule duck "slim jim" on the adjacent corner of the same plate as the desiccated kale cousin was just fodder for future flossing. A beef dish of dried crystalline shards of striploin over tartare and bone marrow was also a clever feat of engineering, but missed my palate.

But there were hits for sure over the course of 10 course dinner tasting menu, especially in the back half of the evening. A cube of sturgeon was meltingly tender, with a crunchy quinoa crust complementing the buttery flesh of the fish. A simple roasted spear of broccoli with pickled garlic was perfect. The chicken liver tart and aged duck with corn miso were awesome.

The strengths of the overall menu and the great wine pairings...especially the Loberger grand cru riesling paired with the sturgeon the Italian donnafugata paired with the chicken liver tart...won out in the end. And the restaurant's commitment to the culinary community through their charitable program is beyond admirable. But I had to say that the whole evening had the feeling of trying too hard, more Pacino than Hanks in its performance. The meal was memorable, but more for the catch phrases more than the total performance.

To my surprise, Sunday brunch...a reliable metaphor for culinary cliche and excess the world over…brought me a more authentic and very Atlantan experience.

Local Three is operated by Atlanta chef Chris Hall and his partners Todd Mussman and Ryan Turner from long-time area stalwart Muss & Turner's. They have brought the same sense of high-end food and low-key demeanor perfected at M&T to a weird Northside Highway bank building, so seemingly out of context for a restaurant that it has a speakeasy quality to it. And much like the reveal of a really good hidden bar, when I opened the door for brunch I was embraced by an explosion of welcoming colors, smells, and happy sounds. This room immediately drawled at me "come on in, brutha, we've missed you."

The brunch at Local Three runs through a buffet line in the kitchen, a fun way to be a part of the proceedings. Truly soft scrambled eggs, crisp and smoky Neuske bacon, and medium-sized hi-rise biscuits with not-too-thick turkey sausage gravy covered the breakfast basics. Roasted habanero-spiked root vegetables, cajun shrimp and grits, bloody rare shavings of roast beef with horseradish on king Hawaiian rolls, and caramel banana nut bread brunched it up nicely. Everything was very well executed and popping with flavor. The paloma with fresh juices, not on the menu but perfectly mixed, was just lagniappe.

And most welcome of all, there were no instructions or explanations on what to eat or how to eat it.

Clearly, Local Three doesn't aspire to be what Staplehouse wants to be. But it also is laser focused on what makes a great restaurant, and has casually has arrived at a formula that delivers a great Atlanta restaurant experience.

Did I only eat and/or drink on Friday night and Sunday morning in Atlanta? No, friend, it seems I did not.

Other stops included:

• Banshee, an EAV gastropub with extended kitchen hours on the weekend served up Parisian gnocchi with lamb, english peas and rosemary almonds was perfect on a cold night. The winter root salad spiked with house made green goddess and black garlic gremolata was a powerhouse of flavor. The friendly bar staff knew their shit, and made me happier than the same by shaking up a Stately Hag...reposado tequila, cocchi americano, strega, lemon, thyme.

• a guilty-pleasure bologna, egg, and cheese at a place two doors down from Maple Street Biscuits (looked great, too busy) in Alpharetta whose name I can't remember and doesn't show up on Google Maps with my friends Corey and Kate from local band Run Katie Run.

• Pure, my deeply appreciated long-time Alpharetta source for legit margaritas with my adopted son Sadi, who now runs the beloved North Fulton School of Music.

• Citizen Soul in radically revamped downtown Alpharetta for a killer grilled cheese with bacon jam with my dear old friend and mentor who'd bitch at me if I included his actual name in a blog post.

• Patria Cocina and Pin and Proper in a Beltline-adjacent shopping and artist collective called The Beacon. A roulette wheel of margs was featured at the former, a game of throwing old footballs at even older bowling pins in an interior chain link play area at the later.

• also at The Beacon, Third Street Goods, a healthy grocer and sandwich shop with big biscuits and pimento cheese, both made from scratch in-house.

• the sunny outdoor drinking space at Ladybird for a White Lion with my beautiful artist development and music producer friend, Courtney. Courtney also brought me to solid tacos al pastor from the diner in the back of El Progreso grocery store near the maximum security US Penitentiary a couple of miles south of the zoo. Hopefully you are lucky enough to have a friend like Courtney.

• a delicious but wildly unnecessary post-Staplehouse snack of Nashville hot chicken and bread and butter pickles on homemade white bread, washed down with solid negroni at One Eared Stag.

• Char, a Korean BBQ place where I didn't eat and I am sure I drank, but mostly just remember the playful 80s pop and hip hop DJ set.

• Rina, a sleek and simple Israeli spot near Ponce City Market with cocktails on tap, including a tart and revitalizing pomegranate beauty called The Metzitzim, and a super smooth and tahini-rich hummus with aromatic seasoned ground beef and pine nuts.

• and finally, The Bookhouse Pub, a charismatic beehive of a bar on Ponce de Leon Avenue for some good-bye drinks and friendly shit-flipping.

Is that it, Johnson? Yeah...that's it, folks. A solid 30 hour run through a pretty wide swath of a city that I love for its welcoming spirit, sprawling diversity, and casual authenticity. And even when you can see it trying maybe a little too hard to be seen as a Great City, it has an endless heart.