Author: Krista Reese

When I first got wind of the new “public house” Restaurant Eugene chef/owner Linton Hopkins was planning, I vowed to be one of the first to try it. Hopkins isn’t just one of Atlanta’s most inventive chefs – he’s one…

If they did nothing else, enterprising young restaurateur brothers Chris and Alex Kinjo would already be assured of a Hall of Fame placement in Atlanta’s restaurant world. First, they opened MF Sushibar in Midtown, the likes of which our town…

Your favorite restaurant? No matter how demanding the gourmet, the reasons usually aren’t all about the food. For most of us, good cooking is just the starting point for restaurants we love. Certain indefinable qualities come into play – maybe…

A faithful reader has been after me for a long time about one of her favorite places, Dawsonville’s Blue Bicycle. But as convincing as her praise about this intimate, French-style bistro sounded, I admit to a certain amount of jaded…

On a recent trek back to Atlanta from the Georgia Coast, my friend and I pondered what to do about the same old, same old route we always take. This time, we found the perfect antidote: a short overnight hop…

For years, I’d been hearing about this little bistro with great food. Somehow, though, I never got around to eating there. Everything about it – its odd location at Piedmont and Morningside in Atlanta, its old-fashioned French bistro menu, and…

Old Business means watchfobs and waistcoats, big martinis and charred steaks. So what’s the New Business dining experience? You won’t find a better example of the contemporary paradigm than seafood-centric-with-an-Asian-twist Bluepointe. Here, steakhouses’ trademark heavy drapes, dark paneling and Persian…

Perched on the lip of the downtown connector’s 14th Street exit in Atlanta, the Niyomkuls’ first restaurant, Tamarind, was a handy place to meet out-of-town guests. But as the place grew more popular, making the left-hand turn got trickier –…

If you’ve been going to the Georgia coast for a long time, you’re probably a little awed by the changes there in the last few years. Once characterized by fried seafood palaces, ’50s motels and small beach bungalows, even stuck-in-a-time-warp…

Has the resurrection begun? A few short years ago, it might have been noted as a sign of the impending apocalypse: Reversing the long march of the last few decades, a successful, acclaimed restaurant moves from a popular, well-trafficked mall…

My seen-it-all, moving and shaking Savannah friends are shocked: A restaurant they’ve never heard of? Though they live nearby, we opt to drive – the restaurant is in an edgy, still-developing part of the historic district, off Forsyth Park. But…

How much you like Capital Grille might depend on what you’re looking for. But its entrees, including the Delmonico steak, are outstanding.

An architect friend has a theory: Places give people unconscious cues on how to behave. That’s why, he says, abandoned, weedy lots are often graffiti-scrawled and crime-ridden, while a neatly ordered street seems to command you to pick up your…

The guacamole, made tableside in the traditional Mexican lava stone bowl, is the number one reason to visit this Atlantic Station favorite.

This upstart’s formula for success involves blending seemingly conflicting culinary influences into a surprisingly unified vision.

So, you’re all grown up now, a successful professional with the tastes to match. But even if you can afford the champagne budget, you still like to indulge your beer taste.

So, have you been to the new aquarium? No, not the giant fish tank across from Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park - Midtown's new aquarium, at the Woodruff Arts Center.Table 1280, the elegant restaurant designed by Renzo Piano, is not so much a bar and dining room as a habitat. Viewed from the outside, its huge, incandescent glass rectangles swim with beautifully languid diners.

In the comic strip "Mutts," the two faithful dog-and-cat pals are forever enthralled with an appropriately named butcher shop: The Fatty Snax Deli. They hang on the gruff proprietor's every muscle twitch, hoping against hope that some small tidbit - a crisp exterior trimming, a sausage link - might be tossed their way.

First, a warning: If you are a serious traditionalist, and you think pizza ought to be a dough circle with cheese and sausage, you're not going to like Piebar.

It wasn't Judgment at Paris. At that historic 1976 event, subject of a recent book by the same name, the most revered French critics blind-tasted the most famed French wines against upstart California labels - and to everyone's astonishment, the California wines won. The wine world was never the same.

Score another point for small-town resurgence: In downtown Cartersville, chef/co-owner Derek Morgan has (with the help of his contractor father) gutted and rehabbed a former furniture store to open a restaurant that seems out of place only until you go there.

Once upon a time, the town square was a business barometer. You could just about judge the area's prosperity by the opulence of the courthouse, and what kind of commerce was going on in and around it.

Fifteen years ago, Karen Hilliard opened Georgia Grille in south Buckhead, after returning to town from Texas.Closing her nine-table restaurant called Peach's and packing her battered old Coca-Cola cooler into a truck, she'd arrived determined to bring Southwestern flavors to the Old South.

Sometimes you can define a place by what it's not. And sometimes those negatives add up to positives.Take, for example, Babette's Cafe, the venerable little restaurant in Proven?al colors near Manuel's Tavern in Atlanta. Despite its big-city, cult-favorite status, it is not: noisy, crowded or loud. It does not treat people as "orders" (as in, "Let me see what happened to your order").

Covering the state's dining scene usually means reaching for the clouds in Atlanta, and digging for rural roots in the country.