Duane Nutter Photograph by Martha Williams My heart always beats faster in a restaurant when I see something I have never seen before. It isn’t as if I’ve never spotted a chef expediting his own food at the kitchen pass, checking that everything on each plate is how and where it should be, moving a little sprig of greenery by a sixteenth of an inch or calling for his crew to redo an entire dish. But a chef, let alone one who is the size of a giant, standing in the dining room at a long table and quietly fixing all that needs fixing in plain view of his customers is pretty much new to me. South ..read more

The Lady Edison 36-month ham plate, right, is a little slice of hog heaven—and part of a broadly meaty menu at Holeman & Finch, which finally reopened this year in Midtown’s Colony Square. Photograph by Martha Williams Fifteen years ago, a somewhat hidden South Buckhead gastropub became a local and national sensation, based on an approach to food and drink that made it one of the coolest culinary kids in town. But yesterday’s Holeman & Finch is not today’s Holeman & Finch. You’ll still find the cool kids inside the new space at Colony Square, as I did on a recent visit. It happened ..read more

A tasting of three different grades of Hokkaido uni, or sea urchin at Omakase Table Photograph by Martha Williams I liked eating in Japanese restaurants better before the omakase frenzy took hold. Yes, it could be stressful to tell trusted chefs that you wanted to give them carte blanche: “Omakase,” you whispered (the phrase means something like “I leave it up to you”), and maybe a number between $100 and $200. The chefs then reached deep into their inventory to create menus reflecting the availability of products and their seasonality. When you grew satiated, you said, “I have had enough,” an ..read more

Hearty sandwiches Photograph by Martha Williams Not long ago, on the same morning that I reluctantly forked over $2.17 for a small pouch of M&M’s at my regular gas station, I paid $7 for a cortado and an excellent breakfast sandwich—eggs and bacon on a soft sesame-seed roll. How could such a thing be? In any event, I have since returned almost daily to the Best Sandwich Shop and the Wurst Beer Hall, chef Shaun Doty’s new restaurant combo in the former Moe’s space on Ponce de Leon Avenue. An Oklahoma native who once worked at the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead and has opened restaurants including th ..read more

Whoopsie’s cafeteria-style snack tray is a staple on a menu that changes by the day. Photograph by Martha Williams Take me to a minuscule bar with clever low-budget decor, shove a one-page menu under my nose that doesn’t look like typical pub fare, and I am sure to fall in love before even tasting anything. Whoopsie’s, recently opened in Reynoldstown, checks all the boxes, playful and serious in equal proportion: a sparse 40 seats, lots of thrift-store finds and reclaimed furniture, lights turned way down low. From the exuberant restroom mural—by painter William Downs—to the assorted botanical ..read more

La Semilla’s plant-based offerings—tacos, Cubanos, crunch wraps, and gloriously garnished cocktails—seduce the eyes before they start on the palate. Photograph by Martha Williams Any given evening, most of the with-it young clientele sitting down to dinner at La Semilla aren’t full-time vegans. But that’s a large part of the draw at this new Latin restaurant on a hot stretch of Memorial Drive: It’s for everyone. And everyone appears to be eating here. Every table is full. The noise level is just right—cheerful, not deafening. Your interest is piqued, your instincts are rewarded—if you follow t ..read more

The Kamayan pop-up was famous for its communal feasts—known in the Philippines as kamayan, in which food is spread across the table on a bed of banana leaves. Photograph by Martha Williams The first Filipino restaurant in Atlanta, the long-gone Ms. Honeybear, hid at the back of a crummy strip mall on Memorial Drive near Stone Mountain. It was there that I developed a fondness for lumpia (fried spring rolls) and halo-halo (a shaved-ice dessert akin to an extravagant parfait) as well as the amazing ube—a purple tuber much in use in the cuisine of the Philippines. In subsequent decades, the only ..read more

Long associated with Indigenous rituals of purification, palo santo (“holy stick”) comes from Bursera graveolens, a scrubby species of tree that grows throughout Central and South America. Like frankincense and myrrh, to which it is related, it has an intoxicating aroma thought to dispel negative energy and promote well-being—which is also the promise of Palo Santo (955 West Marietta Street Northwest), a chic new Mexican restaurant near the King Plow Arts Center. Those of us who write about food often focus on seeking out informal little joints and unheralded treasures. But, since it opened in ..read more

Crying Tiger (sua long hai) Photograph by Martha Williams Related to Thai but not as hot, imbued with a unique funk derived from fermentation and the use of fish sauce, Lao food is typically eaten by hand with sticky rice rather than looser jasmine rice. Until recently, it may have seemed hard to find in Atlanta—but it’s been hiding in plain sight. Little Bangkok, on Cheshire Bridge Road, serves standard Thai fare, but its Lao owners have been known to host the occasional Lao dinner. At yearly festivals at the Buddhist temple Wat Buddha Bucha in Decatur, you can find treats such as grilled sau ..read more