Atlanta New Year's Dining Options

Ok, so you probably made your New Year's Eve plans weeks ago. But if you're a procrastinator, you're scrambling right about now to come up with a plan. If the number of press releases I'm still receiving about NYE dining options are any indication, there are seats still available.

I for one have never wanted to venture out into the holiday fray since my New Year's 2008/2009 disaster at the now defunct Shaun's, so we'll be hosting dinner at our place. And how's this for good fortune - our very talented friend will be preparing a veritable feast, so all I have to do is clean my place, tee up a festive Pandora station, and try my hand at making a tres leches cake for dessert (the demise of Tierra has me scrambling to replicate the wonderfulness that is their tres leches).

Now I can't guarantee that you're not too late for some of these, but here's a round up of some of your potential options!

Serpas
Book your reservation between 5:30 and 6:45 p.m. to enjoy a four-course prix fixe menu for $50 per person. Enjoy a five-course prix fixe menu for $70 per person for later seatings.

La Tavola
3-course prix fixe dinner for $55/person (plus tax and gratuity). Yum, their gnocchi with a farm egg and black truffle is on the menu - it's divine!

South City Kitchen is offering their 3-course menu of Southern favorites for just $39.95 plus tax and tip at both locations. They have an apple red velvet cake on the menu which sounds delish to me.

Livingston has a five-course New Year's Eve tasting menu for $55 per person, which can be paired with wines for an additional $35 per person. You can also enjoy live music and a midnight balloon drop.

Straits
Their celebration will feature a special $60 menu or $100 with unlimited alcohol and a performance by the world-famous video DJ, DJ 2nd Nature.

Empire State South

$75 per person, 4 courses & $35 wine pairings (tax and gratuity not included); wine pairs to be determined. The dinner includes luxe options such as Foie Terrine with riesling gelee, compressed apple, green strawberry preserve and toasted brioche or an honest to goodness Baked Alaska for dessert. Not swank enough for you yet? Add some caviar for $120.

Aria is offering a four-course New Year’s Eve menu with a set first course and options available for the remaining courses. The dinner is $85 per person, tax and gratuity not included.

Double Zero Napoletana is serving up a three-course prix-fixe menu on New Year’s Eve. Guests can enjoy southern Italian dishes from 5 p.m. to midnight. The cost is $55 per person, which includes a gift bag containing a split of Prosecco, champagne flutes and a special gift from the Castellucci Hospitality Group. The regular menu will also be offered. 

JCT. Kitchen & Bar is offering a $65 four-course menu (a “taste”+ three courses) filled with Owner/Chef Ford Fry’s Southern favorites. Sample dishes include hickory roasted Berkshire pork tenderloin and “chicken stand” fried Georgia quail. Dinner will be served from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Or check out Fry's No. 246 with special menu items such as squid ink spaghetti with Dungeness crab and braised Brasstown beef cheeks for $55 per person. Dinner is from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. 

Woodfire Grill is offering five-course vegetarian and pescatarian menus in addition to a regular five-course menu on New Year’s Eve. The regular and pescatarian menus are priced at $115 per person, and the vegetarian menu is priced at $105. Wine pairings are also available for $6 per course for a half glass or $12 for a full glass.

Gotta work on New Year's Eve? Ra Sushi is also throwing a New Year’s Eve Remix party, giving non-night owls and industry workers an opportunity to celebrate the new year on Sunday, January 1. From 8 p.m. to close, guests can indulge in Sunday Night’s Flying Fish Lounge specials with select sushi, appetizers and tapas ranging from $2-$7 and drink specials starting at just $3. 

Happy eating and Happy New Year!

Besha's Favorite Dishes of the Year

Besha over at Omnivore published a list of the best 9 things she ate this year. Sad to say I've only had one of them - No. 246's porchetta sandwich, which I covered in my own fawning way.

Really must try those sweetbreads and the egg on rice soon! Also clear that I'm not reading other food news enough as I completely missed the M. Wells dinner in October and I am one of the .004% who has been to Au Pied de Cochon and would like to try Hugue Dufour's cooking!

New Year's Resolution #1: cut down on my Hollywood gossip reading time in favor of keeping up a bit better on some of the other food publications in town!

New Year's Resolution #2: Try some of these dishes! (which will be hard to balance with New Year's Resolution #3: Eat less (meat and carbs specifically), work out more.)

News Roundup Wishes You a Merry Christmas

The New York Times brought together a great collection of Christmas recipes--everything from Grouper to Gingerbread--with accompanying anecdotes, as told by NYT's dining writers.  Worth a read even if you've already got a favorite, like mom's rum cake.

Too full of egg nog to work in the kitchen?  Creative Loafing's Cliff Bostock paid a visit to venerable Rhodes Bakery.  Famous for its cheese sticks, Rhodes is a fluorescent-lit throwback to a time when, as Cliff puts it, "Betty Crocker ruled the ovens of America."  Throwback or not, the cinnamon rolls sound like a too-sweet reminder of childhood!

In news that fails to surprise, a new report declares that the food at Hartsfield is the unhealthiest airport food in the U.S. of A.  Having tried in vain to find a health dining option at Hartsfield on many occasions, this report just confirms the obvious.  But thinking more about it, I can barely remember a healthy airport meal anywhere.  Maybe its just that travel is always my excuse to eat junk food?

Finally, TBS's Trends With Benefits recently visited Atlanta's own PushStart Kitchen supper club, as seen in this short video.  There's even a cameo by fellow blogger Chris of Eat Drink Repeat.  First featured right here on AdventurousTastes, it's great to see PushStart garnering so much well-deserved attention! Check out the video here (ad plays before video starts):

Hannukah Festivities and Dining

Shalom, y'all. Eight crazy nights kickoff today...menorahs, latkas and dreidel, oh my!

Read to get your baruch ata on? Here are some festive ideas...

Ever wonder what Chanukah, Chanukkah, or Chanuka Hannukah is all about (other than multiple spellings)? Rock out and learn the story from Yeshiva's Maccabeats. Love these guys!



John Kessler gets his Jew on by making latkas. Make your own and don't forget the sour cream and apple sauce. Yum, it's my favorite part of the holiday!

More recipes from NYTimes. I associate Hannukah with brisket but there are lots of tasty options.

Crank up the atmosphere for your Hannukah celebration with Matisyahu's Spotify playlist.

For a rowdier option, check out Hop City's weekly tasting tomorrow (12.21) at Octane. From 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., enjoy a He’Brew Hannukah tasting. Guests will taste the reformulated He’Brew Genesis, Origin, and Messiah Bold in celebration of Hanukah with original Brewmaster, Darren Quinlen. For more information on this event, call 404-350-9998. Maybe the Hipster Barista will challenge you to a game of dreidel!

Speaking of dreidel, learn the rules here.

If you're not doing the typical Jewish Christmas ritual of Chinese food and a movie, check this out - there's something called Chanukah on Ice is happening on Dec. 24.

New Year's Eve Dining: Travel to Paris 1898 at Restaurant Eugene

I just referenced yesterday the crazy cool thematic dining Achatz has going in Chicago. One of the earlier incarnations to his Chicago restaurant was Escoffier's Paris. We may have missed out on that, but now we can get a similar time traveling experience at Restaurant Eugene this New Year's Eve!

NYE is that most stressful of holidays - so much pressure to have fun, right? Well I can't think of anything lower maintenance than a fab meal at one of Atlanta's best restaurants. Granted you'll pay a pretty penny, but an experience befitting the Paris Ritz doesn't come cheap!

I just finished watching Midnight in Paris, so I've got the glamour of Paris on the brain, so this sounds divine to me!

Here's more about what to expect:

TIME TRAVEL TO THE 1898 PARIS RITZ WITH RESTAURANT EUGENE FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE

ATLANTA, GA—There are culinary heroes and then there are culinary heroes. Auguste Escoffier’s name speeds the hearts of chefs everywhere, and as we look forward to 2012, Chef Linton Hopkins decided there was no better way to celebrate New Year’s Eve, the holiday synonymous with elegance and sophistication, than to transform Restaurant Eugene into the Paris Ritz of 1898 with a recreation of the first New Year’s Eve dinner Escoffier served there.

Paris owes so much of its burnished luster as the capital of cuisine to Escoffier, who made haute cuisine more accessible.  It is only fitting then that the Restaurant Eugene kitchen, where southern foodways flirt with molecular gastronomy, should dedicate itself to a painstaking recreation of a night in Escoffier’s kitchen.  This night is one that will linger in your memory for years to come.   A Parisian street band will further transport guests by performing at Holeman &  Finch Public House, where a cash bar featuring classic cocktails of the era will be available exclusively for Restaurant Eugene’s New Year’s Eve guests.

The restaurant will offer two menus for the evening—a seven course menu for guests with dinner reservations before 7pm, for $150, with wine pairings for an additional $60; and an eleven course menu for guests who are seated after 7:30pm, for $225 with wine pairings for an additional $75. To make reservations, call 404.355.0321.

News Roundup: December 13, 2012

Just back from a day trip to Chicago, where instead of delicious deep dish pizza or high concept delights, I ate at Chi-town headquartered McDonald's...at the airport...after my flight was cancelled...for the second week business trip in a row. Not my idea of good eating!

So on to more interesting news...

I've long heard rumblings of discontent about Robert Parker's power in the wine biz. Now one of his minions is caught up in a payola scandal!

Atlanta won't be the same without Tierra's heavenly tres leches cake. I'm heartbroken just thinking of a world without its creamy charms.

Since it's election season...do you know which food companies are spending the most on lobbying?

The AIDS Awareness Day Belvedere Party at STK last week was amaze-balls (Note to self: never miss parties thrown by Caren West). Now you too can enjoy the meaty glamour when it opens to the public on Thrusday.

And now in other news completely unrelated to food. I sat next to the PhD who did this research on my flight home today. My takeaway? TAKE YOUR VITAMIN D! Seriously, I'm not kidding, take a boat load of Vitamin D. That is my public health announcement of the day.

Moroccan Takeover at Woodfire Grill

Pastilla and tagine-cooked lamb probably aren’t the first things that come to mind with you think about Chef Kevin Gillespie’s Woodfire Grill, but for at least one night a select few will get to get to sample the incredibly delicious and distinctive cuisine of Morocco in celebration of Mourad Lahlou’s cookbook, Mourad: New Moroccan. 

The dinner will feature hors d'oeuvres followed by four courses and a small taste for $125 per person.  Diners will also receive copies of the cookbook.  Prefer DIY-Moroccan?  No problem – the cookbook is available now on Amazon.

Dinner with Mourad Lahlou @ Woodfire Grill
Monday, December 12 at 6:30 PM.
For reservations, call 404-347-9055

Muir Glen Aria Dinner

Summer is long gone and memories of those perfect heirloom tomatoes that filled the farmer's markets are quickly waning, so what's a tomato lover to do? As the mercury drops, I rely on canned tomatoes, and Muir Glen is my personal favorite brand. Organic with a variety of different styles (fire roasted makes for the best chili in my experience...), what's not to love?

Lucky for me, then that Muir Glen was back at Aria once again to showcase their reserve tomatoes. I was surprised as anyone to find out at last year's event that there is such a thing as reserve tomatoes, but it turns out that every year the folks at Muir Glen are canning up something special. This year's reserve tomatoes are called Harvest Sunset™, which according to their press materials offer a blend of red and yellow tomatoes chosen for sweetness, texture and unique flavor.

So Muir Glen teamed up with Aria's Chef Gary Kalaska to create a Muir Glen tomato menu for a media dinner:

Hors d'Ouevre

Ruby Red Tomato & Sapelo Island Clam Chowder

Fire Roasted Tomato, White Bean, Red Chard, & Fennel Sausage Soup

Spicy Angus Beef Grillades on Buttermilk Biscuit

Southern Fried Chicken with Creamy Ruby Red Tomato Gravy on Buttermilk Biscuit

Grilled Cheese, Bacon & Tomato Keasters Grilled

Oak Grilled Ciabatta Bruschetta with Red & Yellow Tomatoes and Basil

Menu

Fried Green Tomatoes with Deviled Egg Salad, Ruby Red Tomato & Dill Pickle Dressing

Pan Roasted Jumbo Prawn with Herbed Lobster Ruby Red Tomato Broth

Spicy Braised Angus Beef with Fired Roasted Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Gold Potatoes and Cilantro

Upside Down Tomato Cake with Black Pepper Tomato Ice Cream

Fried green tomatoes with ruby red tomato and dill pickle dressing

In my mind, nothing beats a perfect fresh slice of tomato and some mozzarella. But when that's not available, some top notch canned tomatoes and various and sundry other yummy ingredients will do the trick. 

Pan roasted jumbo prawn with herbed lobster ruby red tomato broth

There was plenty to enjoy at dinner, but my favorites of the night were arguable the simplest and the most unusual. On the simple side, a grilled cheese with bacon and tomato is my perfect comfort food. And on the more unusual end of the spectrum, tomatoes make for excellent desserts. The candied tomatoes on the upside down cake were heavenly!

Upside down tomato cake with black pepper tomato ice cream

Aria is where the Mr. and I went the night we got engaged, so it always has a special place in my heart - all the better if I'm being wined and dine! Alas these dishes aren't on Aria's regular menu, but lucky for you, Kalaska has shared one of his recipes for you to try at home.

Chef Gary Kalaska's
Spicy Braised Angus Beef
with Fire Roasted Tomatoes, Tomatillos, Gold Potatoes and Cilantro

Prep Time: 30 Minutes
Start to Finish: 2 Hours

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, cut into 1-inch cubes
5 tomatillos, paper skin removed, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 jalapeño chile, stemmed, seeded, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped (2 teaspoons)
2 lb boneless beef chuck roast, cut into 1-inch cubes, fat trimmed
1 teaspoon kosher (coarse) salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cans (14.5 oz ea) Muir Glen® Harvest Sunset™ organic fire roasted diced red and yellow tomatoes, undrained
1 carton (32 oz) beef stock
1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes (about 3), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

1. Heat oven to 275°F. In 5-quart ovenproof Dutch oven, cook olive oil and onion over medium heat 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned.
2. Add tomatillos, jalapeño chile and garlic; cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add beef, salt and pepper; cook 4 minutes or until beef is browned. Add tomatoes; cook 3 minutes. Add stock and potatoes; heat to simmering.
3. Cover; bake about 1 hour or until no longer pink. Remove from oven; let stand 20 minutes before serving. Stir in cilantro, and serve in warmed bowls.

8 servings (1 1/2 cups each)

Muir Glen was kind enough to send me away with a gift basket of their reserve tomatoes, so we'll be enjoying some home cooked tomato-y goodness soon enough! Get your own reserve tomatoes here.https://www.muirglen.com/reserve/default.aspx

Health.com Names the 50 Holiday Foods Not to Eat

Nothing says a happy holidays like a list of 50 traditional holiday foods you shouldn't eat. You can thank Health.com for that little treat.  A oui bit heavy handed don't you think? It's not a Ways to Eat Healthy this Holiday or Holiday Treats Are Worst For You Thank You Think, no, it's just a list that flat out says you shouldn't be eating just about everything you'd want to eat over the holidays.

Sure the obvious suspects are there -- eggnog, pecan pie and yule logs. But then so are holiday staples like prime rib, glazed ham, and mashed potatoes.  In fact, just about everything you might eat (and enjoy!) over the holidays is on the list.

I'm all for trying to not totally blow your diet over the holidays (although that's exactly what I'm doing these days), but this article is absurd. If you tell a person not to eat candy canes and to pass on Aunt Sally's green bean casserole, how are they supposed to join in on the holiday fun? I say everything in moderation, at least when it comes to enjoying the holidays!

For the record, I had hot buttered rum, prime rib and potato pancakes this weekend (in addition to some cookies and bread pudding which are shockingly not on the list), and I loved every last minute of it!

Atlanta Restaurants Get Festive with Champagne Cocktails

Latitude's Wild Hibiscus Champagne Cocktail

I get a lot of press releases, some exciting, some not so much. But today I saw one that was right up my alley - champagne cocktails for Christmas! So if you're feeling as festive as I am, put aside the wrapping paper, step away from the mall and drink up!

Latitude Food and Drink 
Micah Willix (formerly of Ecco) has got a new place - Latitude. Check it out and don't miss the Wild Hibiscus champagne cocktail made with Hibiscus simple syrup, champagne, Bittermens Burlesque bitters, and garnished with preserved Hibiscus flower.

MARKET Buckhead
Sip on a Peppered Pear Prosecco with Purkhart Pear Williams Eau de Vie, Prosecco Jeio, NV Bisol, Pear, Black Pepper. I love pair so this sounds most excellent...

Osteria 832
The Osteria Bellini is made fresh with a blend of peach puree and champagne, and the Rossini is a smooth combination of Chambord, a black raspberry liqueur, with champagne.

Serpas True Food
True story, a friend once complained that the Serpas Sazerac didn't taste like it should. The waiter then told us with a totally straight face that the bartender invented it. Clearly there is a 1800s vampire working at Serpas. Ann Rice would be proud! Want to try one that mixologist Brandon Ley really did invent? Don't miss the effervescent hazy sunrise made with fresh orange juice, gin, sweet vermouth and Champagne.

Miller Union
Designed by mixologist Stuart White, the French connection brims with rich flavors to balance the menu’s simplicity, made with spiced cognac, cherry, ginger and sparkling wine.

Bacchanalia
The Plum Delicious at Bacchanalia combines aperol, fresh plums and La Marca Prosecco.

Southern Art
Check out former Oprah chef and Top Chef masters competitor Art Smith's new resto, Southern Art. It bills itself as a bourbon bar, so surprise surprise, the signature Seel Black is made with Black Maple Hill bourbon, sparkling wine, Paychauds bitters and Angostura bitters.

Ocean Prime
The signature Berries and Bubbles consists of Belvedere citrus vodka, marinated blackberries, housemade sour and Domain Chandon brut topped with dry ice for a light, smoky effect.

Mood Lounge
The newly revamped Mood offers their own take on a French 75 with Berkshire Mountain ethereal gin, superfine sugar, fresh lemon juice and Moet Champagne, served on the rocks.

4th & Swift
This O4W resto's seasonally inspired cocktail menu features several libations that suggest the flavors of fall, such as the Chrysanthemum, a vodka-based drink, with Cocchi Americano, spiced apple-pistachio gastrique, Angostura and Prosecco.

Want to stay home but still feeling festive? Try a cranberry champagne cocktail courtesy of Bon Appetit.


Salut!