Author: Krista Reese

How do you choose 10 barbecue joints to write about? You might as well try to describe your 10 most memorable dates, or your favorite shirts. Barbecue is that personal, and that familiar. It has to do as much with taste as circumstance. In other words, the story involved.

Oh, the poor businesspeople who get stuck in downtown Atlanta. Busy at a conference or meeting, they see only the neighborhood inside their hotel's atrium. The restaurants within a short taxi ride or (for the very brave) walking distance are often unremarkable, except for the outrageous expense.

For years, Georgians who love Japanese food gravitated to Atlanta's Soto, one of the most revered sushi restaurants along the entire East Coast. Chef Sotohiro Kosugi earned a reputation for the freshest and best cuts of raw fish, as well as his inspired, unique dishes -- firmly within Japanese culinary tradition, but also utterly original.

How do you explain the smashing success of Rathbun's, lauded by USA Today and Bon Appetit, and crowned by Esquire as one of the country's best new restaurants?

Like its name, this small restaurant represents a turning point. Like its cuisine, Watershed intersects Southern culture's classic tenets -- black and white, city and country, tradition and progress.

With a little help from readers, Georgia Trend's dining critic selects the state's top 10 restaurants, salutes some long-time favorites and makes a few new discoveries

Some like it hot. One of Georgia's most popular summer getaways, St. Simons Island is packed in the peak months of June through August. But I've always loved the beach in fall and winter. The gnarled live oaks still stand sentry over the sidewalks, but the throngs of tourists are mostly gone. If you're lucky, the night air will be cool, but you might be able to swim during Indian summer, even as the leaves turn.

Ah, September. A little cooler in the air, a little color in the trees. With summer over, it's time to contemplate your annual Leaf-Peeping Tour of the North Georgia mountains. But let's face it: the food is as important as the foliage.

Named for the Mexico City town square that serves as its historic heart, Atlanta's Zocalo is a glorified patio, with the yawning awnings and zippered plastic enclosures that make the place livable in Georgia's summers and winters.

You know something's up when a restaurant inspires passionate debate. But the polarized responses to Athens' eight-month-old Bischero are as extreme as a presidential poll: "It's fantaaaastic," one friend reported, with the languid drawl of the willingly seduced. "I hate that place!" another acquaintance shot back in clipped bullets.

Bacchus has a bad rep. Most people don't know that the God of the Vine grew out of his frat-boy-style vernal binges, called bacchanalia, later becoming known not just for inebriation, but also for the spark of inspiration that informs great work.

In 1981, Elizabeth and Michael Terry opened Savannah's Elizabeth on 37th. Their mid-life experiment quickly became the smart, sensual culinary vision of the modern South.

Being a restaurant critic in Atlanta is a little like being a professional traveler. In the first years after I moved here from New York, I was delighted to find some of the more esoteric treats I enjoyed there and on globe-trotting jaunts - peasant French and Italian cooking, Chinese dim sum, Japanese yakitori, Indian thali.

Which came first, Rocky the Free-Range chicken or the brown organic egg? Woodfire Grill chef/owner Michael Tuohy, like a lot of Atlantans, is an immigrant. The usual word is the oddly horticultural "transplant," but his Northern California background was as exotic and alien as any foreign shore when Tuohy first made his name here in the late '80s. At Chefs' Cafe he drew crowds to his brunches, served in the shadow of a La Quinta Inn and an I-85 overpass.

Ah, the holidays: If, for kids, the season is about toys, for grown-ups it's all about food. Diets go up like wood smoke in chimneys; the eyes of silver-haired patriarchs glitter as greedily as toddlers? at the thought of dessert.

Despite a slow economy, our Silver Spoons reflect few dramatic shake-ups this year. Most of the state's most highly regarded restaurants weathered the storm, although a few reported record slumps.

The drive from Atlanta to the north Georgia mountains is just long enough to tire you a little. In the surprisingly short distance it takes for roads to narrow from expressways to four-lanes to slender blacktops threading through tree-shaded tunnels, you start to yearn to stretch your legs a little in this thin, refrigerated air.

If an army marches on its stomach, Atlanta business must ka-ching along on breakfast. Not the business lunch, nor even the lavish, expense-account dinner can compete with the kind of every-morning commerce ritual that gets your blood moving and your brain thinking about money.

Once upon a time, Tybee Island was just a sleepy little beach for Savannahians. Only a few hardy souls lived there year-round, gathering around the Breakfast Club's sizzling grill on winter mornings as if it were a pot-bellied stove in Maine.

Every job has its pitfalls. And it doesn't take long to learn the related code words: For real estate, perhaps it's a "unique opportunity." (Translation: "Snakebit location.") For sales, it's "creative financing." ("Bankrupt customer.") And for restaurant critics? "Continental menu," "Oktoberfest" and "charming inn" all set off flashing yellow caution lights.

It's Saturday night, and Tamarind Thai Cuisine is jumping: Even at 9 p.m., there's still a wait for walk-ins, but our reservation clears a path past the framed photos of guests like Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh.

I've always wondered why Atlanta doesn't fully exploit its potential as a riverfront town. Other cities have bars and restaurants right on the banks of its lazy streams and rushing rivers; yet, despite the Chattahoochee's bucolic setting, few restaurants offer a perch to contemplate the swirls and eddies.

>If you live nearby, the Blue Ridge Grill is simply a neighborhood hangout. But when those neighbors include the governor, one of the richest women in the country (Anne Cox Chambers), and varied denizens of Atlanta's well-heeled Tuxedo Road, you begin to understand that the perfume curling through the parking lot is a heady mix of hickory smoke and noblesse oblige.

We Georgians have the world in a state. This northwestern corner, along the winding two-lane called Plum Nelly (for plum out of Georgia and nelly into Alabama), is a cloud-misted tip of the Appalachians, which slopes downward into Atlanta's lush Piedmont, and all the way to sea level at Savannah.

It's a quiet, homey street, except for the swarm of valet parking near a squat structure with a purple neon panel. The former residential loft sports a ranch house-style picture window in front, revealing a troop of bandanna-wearing chefs madly whisking and sauteeing.

Who could have guessed, when Harold's Barbecue opened in 1947, the Hembrees' family concern would outlast such ironclad traditions as the Talmadge dynasty and Rich's Magnolia Tearoom?

The Ritz-Carlton's Dining Room is our choice for enabling the fantasy of a perfect holiday dinner, one in which sumptuous surroundings cosset you, like a gem in the satin folds of a Faberge egg. It's a leisurely repast that begins as you walk through the lobby, as Christmasy as the set of The Nutcracker Suite.

If you had a list of don'ts for a successful restaurant, you could just about describe Oscar's. Wildly innovative concept in a moribund location? Lunch that differs dramatically from dinner? A fresh, contemporary design next to... a wig shop? Check, check and check.

No wonder the lowly cricket is the esteemed mascot of this humble, homestyle restaurant in lush Pine Mountain: At dusk, the little critters commence a cheerful, ringing chorale that reaches a late-night crescendo.

Landmark restaurants like the Buckhead Diner always prompt happy memories of previous visits. Like a young star who achieves fame with his first movie, the place crackled with excitement from the day it opened in 1987.

Dark and comforting as a womb, the old-fashioned neighborhood trattoria with incredibly good, authentically Italian food is such an irresistible notion that it's a kind of cinematic stereotype, in everything from The Big Night to "The Sopranos." You need only hear the words "chianti" and "checked tablecloth," and you're off and salivating.

When Carey Pickard gives feedback, he doesn't mess around. "Please give Krista Reese a new map of Georgia - one with Macon on it!" the Tubman museum director thundered (via e-mail) in response to the 2003 Silver Spoons Awards. He was right: I'd left Macon out of the state's best dining spots, simply because the restaurants I'd tried there in recent years ranged from not-very-exciting meat-and-threes to boring upscale chains, often in the suburbs.