For my birthday last month (I turned 21 for the 3rd time, but also made the decision to allow myself to age next year), my lovely fiancé took me on a long drive up GA-400 and treated me to dinner at Indigo in Roswell. I picked the place, mostly on memories of a positive review from Food Near Snellville and a number of thumbs up on Urbanspoon. The ride up to Roswell was fairly long, but I thought the meal was worth it.

Indigo

When we parked at Indigo, we were slightly concerned that it wasn’t even open. Ours was the only car in the lot. When we got to the door, there were indeed 2 people at the bar and a few servers milling about, though we remained the only other customers for a good 30 minutes. I understand that Indigo’s outdoor space is the place to be for Roswell’s Alive After 5 event, but on this Sunday evening, it was pretty dead.

I’m going to have to try and recreate dish names from memory since the menu on Indigo’s website is slightly different from what we saw, but we started out with chicken satays with chipotle buffalo sauce & herb-buttermilk dip, basically a fancy name for “fried chicken on a stick”:

Chicken Satays

The plate definitely came with more than one piece of chicken, we just forgot to snap a photo before we dug in The chicken was nice and juicy, but nothing special. For our main courses, Mario had a brown sugar-glazed pork chop with “spicy” mac and cheese and grilled asparagus, and I chose the grilled diver scallops with sautéed spinach and a sort of loaded baked potato:

Pork Chop

Scallops

Mario’s pork chop was beyond excellent. The glaze was delicious and the chop itself was extremely tender and juicy. It was a double chop, and Mario devoured it and cleaned the bones too. I managed to beg a bite or two off him before it disappeared. As for the sides, the mac and cheese was only so-so (but it would have taken a GREAT mac and cheese to stand up next to that pork chop), but the grilled asparagus was done right–crisp yet still tender.

My plate was good, but not great. I felt a little overwhelmed by licorice flavor, which I think came from some fennel sautéed with the spinach and fennel seeds in the crust on the scallops. I am not a fan of licorice, so anything involving a lot of fennel, anise, or tarragon (including Jagermeister–all of these have a licorice-y flavor) has to be something really special for my stamp of approval. Besides the seasoning though, the scallops were cooked well–nice crust on the outside, firm on the inside. I thought my potato was a little overcooked and mostly avoided it on the plate. Despite my aversion for the flavors of the dish, overall it was nice, and would have been better for someone who actually does enjoy a little licorice flavor.

For dessert, we had a white chocolate strawberry shortcake compliments of the house in recognition of my birthday:

Stawberry Shortcake

That golden mound of baked goodness may look like a simple biscuit, but inside was a gooey white chocolate filling; delicious paired with the fresh strawberries. I wish the white mound in the photo had been ice cream, as it would have gone well with the rest of the dessert and helped moisten the biscuit (toward the end, you really began to notice that there was no liquid on the plate). However, it was homemade whipped cream–not that that’s a bad thing, because it was quite good too.

Indigo was a great birthday meal and worth the drive up to Roswell. Service was attentive, though the food took a while to come out. I wouldn’t be surprised though, if this was because they literally had to fire up the grill for us, the only customers on a Sunday evening. I would love to see the place when it’s packed.

www.indigoroswell.com