Easily the most-anticipated restaurant opening this year, Black Sheep Restaurant in Riverside (5 Points if you’re being technical) had a lot of hype to live up to–and seems to be doing a great job. A sort-of reincarnation of Downtown’s Chew (some menu items have been retained) and newest addition to owner Jonathan Insetta’s Black Sheep Restaurant Group (which includes Orsay), Black Sheep’s focus is on food that is sophisticated but still seasonal and locally-sourced. However, I think one of the biggest draws is the fancy new building that houses the restaurant and their just-opened rooftop bar.

I’ve visited three times now, and beyond a few minor gripes have thoroughly enjoyed it. I will say though, that Mario has not been particularly impressed with his meals thus far–and I can understand why. So your ordering preferences can have a big impact on your experience, as with any place. I’ll start with our last–and I think best–visit, where I had the Braised Beef Shortribs (creamy leek and rosemary soubise, wild mushroom and blue cheese bread pudding) and Mario had the Marinated Flatiron Steak (smokey onion-tomato timbale, fingerling potatoes, chimichurri)

Braised Beef Shortrib

Wild Mushroom and Blue Cheese Bread Pudding

Flatiron Steak

Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently invited to check out the new summer menu at 95 Cordova in St. Augustine, a restaurant featuring “New World, Middle Eastern and Asian flavors” located within the Casa Monica Hotel. Full disclosure: invited typically means free meal on this blog, in case you’re worried about any bias I may (but try not to) have. After a tour of the historic hotel (1888) turned courthouse (1962) turned hotel again (1999), we stepped into 95 Cordova to start our meal. Because I am wicked smaht and sometimes rush through things, I managed to delete all but one of my photos of the meal. Wow. Luckily Mario actually photographs his food more than I do these days, so I’ll be posting a combination of his photos and some from the handy Flickr album the event’s organizers put up.

The first course was the Kessler calamari, so named for the entrepreneur owner of the hotel group, an interesting Middle Eastern-inspired take on the typical fried calamari. It came topped with tomatoes, olives, asiago, coriander, fresh cilantro, and Moroccan aioli:

Kessler Calamari

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m starting to think Mario and I should just pick up and move to Riverside/Avondale, since we seem to end up in one of the hip little ‘hoods every weekend. Although it’s further from my dream of a beachfront condo, apparently it’s where much of the good food in Jacksonville is hiding. One of our new favorites is ‘town, one of Jacksonville’s subscribers to the farm-to-table movement. I love the open design of the restaurant, which allows you to watch your food being prepared at the kitchen bar.

'town

Our first experience there was for brunch one unseasonably warm & sunny December morning. Mario decided to try the buttermilk pancakes (with raspberry sauce & orange-scented whipped cream), and I couldn’t pass up the lobster benedict (jumbo lobster meat, grit cakes, lemon hollandaise):
Read the rest of this entry »

I thought it wise to finally get around to writing this post before Chew Restaurant closes its [downtown] doors permanently. Following their New Year’s Eve celebration, the Urban Core fixture will be moving a few miles southwest over to Five Points.

I first visited Chew during Jacksonville’s Downtown Restaurant Week with some co-workers. On that visit, I thought that conceptually everything was good–fresh, local ingredients in creative dishes–but that it just didn’t all pan out (for example: tough, dried-out pork belly chicharrones). I chalked this up to it being restaurant week, during which time the place was churning out the same dishes over & over and maybe not paying as much attention to detail. Since I was still convinced that those details could make something good, Mario and I gave it another try more recently. This visit made for much more exciting dining.

We happened to be famished the evening we stopped in, so I decided an appetizer was in order. Plus, I really wanted to try poutine, a dish I’ve heard much about but never tried. What a great introduction:

Short Rib Poutine

“So, how was that first bite for you guys?” That line from our waitress at Restaurant August in New Orleans sealed my love letter with the restaurant. I made our reservation two weeks in advance, knowing that we had a one night stopover in NOLA before flying out to our Carribbean paradise of a honeymoon. One night in New Orleans. One single meal. After some nerve-wracking research (which included wiping drool from my keyboard while comparing a number of menus), the near-impossible decision was made. We found Restaurant August to be a stellar choice.

Restaurant August

I was also excited to finally dine at one of NOLA darling Chef John Besh‘s restaurants, as August is one of the 8 he owns in and around New Orleans (and 1 in San Antonio). Coincidentally, my dad had reservations for 2 weeks later with some lawyer buddies. When I mentioned where we’d be dining, he said the phrases “absolutely sublime” and “the best restaurant in New Orleans right now” were used to describe it to him. Cue intense anticipation.

Read the rest of this entry »

I was lucky enough to be invited to the Muir Glen Vine Dining Tour at Buckhead’s Aria a few weeks ago. The Vine Dining Tour is a pretty interesting concept: the folks at Muir Glen are going around the country showcasing their reserve tomatoes, kind of like you would with a reserve wine. Their reserve variety is specially cultivated and hand-harvested and changes every year, this year’s being the “Meridian Ruby.” The Dining Tour asked 5 chefs across the country to come up with dishes showcasing Muir Glen’s tomatoes, and Atlanta’s was Gerry Klaskala, chef/owner of Aria.

We started with a number of passed hors d’oeuvres, including grilled cheese with bacon and tomato (OMG), tomato, blue cheese, and prosciutto bruschetta, fire roasted tomato burger sliders (missed these, sad face) and bloody mary’s. Unfortunately, I have no photos of the hors d’oeuvres, but I can assure you they were delicious, especially the grilled cheese. I won’t go into extensive detail on each dish because 1) I don’t think they’re offered on Aria’s regular menu, and 2) everything was perfectly executed, anyway.

So, once we were seated, we started by sampling Muir Glen’s regular and fire-roasted tomatoes straight from the can. Our first course quickly followed: fire-roasted tomato & shrimp bisque:

Tomatoes for sampling

Fire-roasted tomato & shrimp bisque

Read the rest of this entry »

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”:
Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, Buckhead Restaurant Week kicked off and offered 3-course meals for $25 at a number of swank Buckhead eateries. Coincidentally, Mario’s birthday weekend fell during the same time, so I decided to make a surprise reservation at Craftbar Atlanta. Craftbar is part of Top Chef judge Tom Colicchio’s (hm, he doesn’t have his own website) restaurant group, which includes Craft, Craftbar, Craftsteak and ‘wichcraft.

The Craftbar Restaurant Week menu was quite extensive, so it was tough to decide what to try. For starters, Mario settled on the sweet potato soup with mascarpone and bbq’d pecans, and I had the glazed pork belly with jalapeño grits:

Sweet Potato Soup

Pork Belly+grits

This is a long overdue post on an amazing dinner and wine tasting hosted by Mark Beringer of Artesa Vineyards and Winery at Bone’s Steakhouse. Mr. Beringer is the new VP of Production and Winemaking at Artesa and has been touring the country showing off some of the Spanish-owned company’s products. Bone’s is arguably the best steakhouse in Atlanta, so I was very excited to be treated to a meal there complete with wine pairings: an area I know little about but am interested in learning. I also had the opportunity to meet the ATL bloggers behind Atlanta Restaurant Blog, Amy on Food, and Atlanta Foodies, so you can check out their reviews of the event as well!

Our first course was Bone’s chilled seafood platter, which contained a number of beautifully presented crustaceans:

Chilled Seafood Platter

Artesa Chardonnays

Read the rest of this entry »

Another “finally!” culinary experience this weekend was trying the oft-discussed Holeman+Finch Public House burger. H+F offers only 24 burgers a night at 10pm on a first-come, first-served, no reservations basis. The burger is only even listed on the menu for Sunday brunch, when they make ~70, and is also when Mario and I decided to stop in and try it out.

The Burger

Read the rest of this entry »