macon

Georgia eats, February 2016.

I have a new draft blog post on possible first-rounders Robert Tyler and Kyle Lewis up for Insiders.

So I started my Georgia trip right by going to Ponce City Market to hang out at Spiller Park Coffee, where co-owner Dale Donchey (full disclosure: he’s a friend of mine) is a diehard baseball fan in addition to a coffee expert. Their stand, which is like an open-concept coffee shop located within the hallway of the market but with some cool diner-style seating around a large kiosk, is named for the old ballpark that hosted the city’s Negro League team the Black Crackers as well as several minor league clubs. Spiller Park uses coffee from a variety of small roasters that meet with Dale’s approval, including Intelligentsia and 49th Parallel. I tried an Ethiopian bean called Ageze from Calgary roasters Phil and Sebastian, with a lot of fruit as you’d expect from anything out of east Africa. Spiller Park also offers donuts from Sublime Doughnuts and various toasts made to order, including eggs fried right in front of you. Even better, when you’re done caffeinating there, you can wander the market, which has lots of good eats, including…

Hop’s Chicken, located right next to a Holeman and Finch burger stand, all of which faces Spiller Park. Hop’s has a simple menu: they make fried chicken, and if you want you can get a piece of fried chicken breast on a biscuit or a roll, along with your choice of a half-dozen sauces. I went with the sandwich (roll), having heard the biscuits are not that great, and the crust on the chicken was crispy and well-seasoned. I did think the breast meat was nearing the dry side of things, so I ended up using the honey-mustard sauce more than I’d intended.

Before leaving PCM for Athens, I grabbed a “kale quencher” smoothie from Lucky Lotus to have something for the road, figuring I wasn’t likely to eat anything for another seven hours – and I’m always looking for vegetables when traveling since it’s easy to end up overloading on meat and carbs. The smoothie is all fruit other than the kale, with pineapple, mango, and apple juice, and it served its purpose as I wasn’t hungry again until after the Georgia game.

Dinner that night was a bucket-list place for me, Hugh Acheson’s flagship restaurant 5&10, and man did it ever live up to expectations. I ended up going with four items, going heavy on the vegetables since I know Hugh’s known for such dishes and his latest cookbook, The Broad Fork, is all about them. The carrot-coconut soup with cashews and crème fraîche was just a giant hit of big carrot flavor, with a little spice and both sweetness and crunch from the cashews. It’s simple and elegant and yet delivers the punch of a more complex dish.

The roasted shiitake salad was even more of all of those things: the mushrooms are roasted and chilled, then served with orange supremes, shaved celery, some celery leaves, and a ponzu dressing. The mushrooms remain the stars at the center of the dish, and everything else on there just accentuates their earthy, umami-rich flavor. (I’d probably like it better at room temperature, but that’s probably just me.)

For the main course, I went with a panko-breaded catfish with fennel slaw, tomato chutney, and “buttered Red Mule grits.” No disrespect to the catfish, a generous fillet perfectly cooked, but it may have been the least interesting thing on the plate. You can bury me in a bowl of those grits. I’ve never had grits that flavorful or with that risotto-like texture. And the chutney was like kasundi with less acidity, deep and earthy and complex, with what I assume was garam masala or a similar spice mix that helped give depth to the mild-flavored fish it accompanied.

For dessert, I overextended myself a little bit to try the chocolate ganache tart with roasted peanuts, bruléed banana, and cinnamon condensed milk. I didn’t even finish half of it because it was so rich – not a surprise – but as much as I love chocolate, the tart crust was the best part of the dish, like one of the best shortbread cookies I’ve ever had.

5&10 occupies a converted house, like Husk in Nashville, so every room looks and feels and even sounds a little different, but it’s all very charming and rather distinctively southern. That wouldn’t matter at all if the food (and service) were just ordinary, but every single thing I ate was excellent from concept to execution. I need a reason to go back to Athens soon.

Lunch in Macon before the Mercer game was a treat, as I found Dovetail, a small localvore fine-dining spot that was open for lunch. They do a lot of their own charcuterie (I spied a copy of Ruhlman’s Charcuterie on the host’s stand), so I chose their duck pastrami sandwich with gruyere and whole-grain mustard. Other than perhaps a little more black pepper than I’d like, it was outstanding, and actually well portioned (as opposed to the half-mile high pastrami sandwiches that seem to be the norm at delis that serve it). The roasted Brussels sprouts on the side were a little light on flavor; halved, roasted, seasoned, and tossed with EVOO and lemon juice. Some halves showed very little browning, and the dish needed a little more acidity.

My meal at Gunshow, the new restaurant from Top Chef season 6 runner-up Kevin Gillespie (a.k.a., Yukon Cornelius) and one of Eater’s 38 “most essential” restaurants in the U.S. for 2016, was, to my great surprise, a big disappointment. Gunshow serves food “dim sum” style, so you don’t order anything; servers come by with small plates and you simply say yes or no. It’s a clever gambit because it’s awfully easy to say yes to anything that looks this good when it’s right in front of you, and I imagine many diners end up spending a lot more than they planned to spend, especially once some alcohol enters the mix. But of the five dishes I tried, only one was truly excellent, and two were failures, which is not a word I use lightly.

I started out with the pork belly with Thai-style fried rice, primarily because I have a copy of Gillespie’s book Pure Pork Awesomeness and was not leaving Gunshow without eating something with pork. The belly was superb, served in three slices that were lightly breaded and fried after what I presume was either a long braise or a sous vide spell, but the rice underneath was just ordinary, and if anything a little dry. It came already doused in soy sauce, which might be authentically Thai (I just don’t know) but is certainly not how I like fried rice because you can’t taste the rice any more, and the result is usually very salty, which this was.

The second dish was cacio e pepe with guanciale, a twist on a very classic Roman pasta dish that has become trendy lately, but even though I adore fresh pasta, I adore cacio e pepe, and I adore guanciale (like bacon, but made from jowl meat), this dish was so oversalted I couldn’t even eat half of it. Next up was the egg yolk gnocchi with hazelnuts, black trumpet mushrooms, and black truffle. The gnocchi are some sort of devil magic – they contain no flour or potato, just egg yolks. The outside had the consistency and texture you’d expect from gnocchi, but the inside were almost custardlike, one of the most interesting (in a good way) pasta items I’ve ever had. They paired well with the mushrooms, but the hazelnuts had lost much of their flavor in the pungent sauce, and I ended up with a bowl of bland hazelnuts with the texture of boiled peanuts after I’d eaten the good stuff.

The fourth dish was a quick-cured hiramasa (yellowtail amberjack) with … oh, it doesn’t matter, the fish was awful. It had a slightly fishy smell and taste, and a texture unlike any crudo or cured fish preparation I’ve ever had – I’d compare it to a gummy candy, not to the soft consistency of sashimi or something like cured salmon. The last dish I had was the one I could say was well-executed throughout – the fritto misto, or “mixed fried,” with cauliflower florets, red bell pepper strips, and cipollini onions, served with a finely chopped giardiniera as a condiment. The vegetables were perfectly fried and nicely crunchy in a tempura batter, and the pickled bits of the giardiniera were the ideal complement to the fried bits.

Dishes at Gunshow average about $14-15, reasonable for the kind of food you’re getting and the quality of ingredients, but only if the execution is better than what I experienced. The service was excellent, and when I asked my server if she could grab a specific item I hadn’t seen, it materialized within a minute or two. I just wish I’d had better luck with the food. How this made Eater’s list over other top-notch and well-known spots like 5&10 or Juniper & Ivy or Narcissa or Cochon or Qui or a bunch of other places that come to mind, I just don’t know. Maybe I caught them on the wrong night.

Atlanta, Macon, Greenville, & Baton Rouge eats.

The marquee meal of the trip was Top Chef All-Stars winner Richard Blais’ new “haute doggery,” HD1, located in Atlanta. I went with the Eastbound and Down dog, given its baseball theme and the presence of pulled pork as one of the toppings on the hot dog, along with sweet mustard and cole slaw, and it didn’t disappoint. As you’ve probably heard (I’ve said it enough recently), I ended a ten-year boycott of hot dogs with this meal; I gave them up because, as I told Chef Blais when he came on the podcast last month, in most cases you just don’t know what you’re eating when you get one. I’d also had too many mediocre or worse hot dogs and found that I always felt lousy after eating them, so the easy solution was to just cut them out. HD1’s hot dog was worth making the exception, bringing back a lot of (possibly constructed) memories from childhood – this is what I think a hot dog at the ballpark used to taste like, even though I know it was certainly never this good.

The pulled pork worked surprisingly well as a supporting player, bringing smoky and savory elements that made the final product more complex, so it felt more like real food as opposed to fast or junk food, while the thin layer of mustard gave the sandwich a much-needed sharpness. The waffle fries come with a sweet/spicy maple-soy dressing that defied my palate’s expectation of sweet/salty/sour (that is, ketchup); most potatoes aren’t that flavorful, so the bold sauce works really well on the blank canvas, although I ended up adding salt to mute the sweetness (I love maple syrup, but it is really sweet). The homemade pickles were actually the better of the two sides – large chunks with a subtle yet strong spicy finish. I was there just before 2 pm on a Wednesday, so the place was pretty quiet, but I like the décor and the vibe – the seating is mostly communal – and with a pretty broad menu that features various sausages (I’d like to try their Merguez, made with lamb), at least one vegetarian option, a good beer/wine selection, it seems like a good place to head with a group.

I followed several reader recommendations to hit Atlanta’s Antico Pizza, serving thin-crust, wood-fired pizzas reportedly in the tradition of Naples, itself the pizza capital of Italy (although regional variations abound). Antico’s pizzas are very good, a 55 on the 20-80 scale, a little too spongy in the crust, with high-quality toppings cut way too large for the pizza; the fennel sausage itself was fine, but balls of sausage the diameter of a half-dollar are too big for any kind of pizza, much less a thin-crust variety. That sausage is the star player on the San Gennaro pizza, along with sweet red peppers, cipolline onions, and mozzarella di bufala, a classic combination that, while tricky to eat, brought a solid balance of salty and savory flavors on a spongy dough.

They make several claims that they’re serving “authentic pizza napoletana,” and while what they offer is good, it’s not authentic. There are fairly specific guidelines on what authentic Neapolitan pizza comprises, including a thinner crust than what Antico offers (it should be 0.36-0.44 cm thick, specifically), a wetter center, smaller toppings, and usually fresh mozzarella rather than what I assume was the low-moisture mozzarella Antico used on the pizza I got. This is more a Neapolitan/New York-style hybrid, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Antico offers a very reasonable value ($21 for one pizza that was two meals’ worth of food for me) for what is at heart an artisanal product, but it’s not as good as Scottsdale’s ‘Pomo, which is actually certified as authentic (take that for what it’s worth – I may be Italian by descent, but I lack faith in any sort of Italian authority) and meets the requirements for authentic pizza napoletana. And ‘Pomo isn’t even the best pizza in the Valley.

Macon eats were generally unremarkable; the best meal was at the Bear’s Den, offering southern comfort food in a meat-and-two format, with the fried chicken at least above-average (very crispy crust, not too greasy) but the fried okra very disappointing (crust was soft, inside wasn’t evenly cooked) and the cornbread dressing somewhere in between. Breakfasts at Market Street Cafe and at Jeneane’s were both generally disappointing; Market Street Cafe did have a decent biscuit, but that’s about it. I did have a place in mind in Baxley, Georgia, where Byron Buxton plays – K&L Barbecue, where they serve the meat on a baked potato – but the game ran over three hours, by which point the restaurant was closed, and I can’t imagine I’ll ever be in Baxley again.

Moving on to Greenville, SC, one of the coolest towns I’ve come across in all of my travels – in less than 24 hours I was thinking about whether I could live there, and leaning towards ‘yes’ – after leaving the gorgeous Fluor Field and hitting Main Street at around 10:15 on a Wednesday night, I was shocked to find few parking spots open, plenty of people milling about, and a number of bars and restaurants still open or just closing up. I ended up at Stellar Wine Bar, which offers a small menu of appetizers, tapas, and entrees, and what they do offer they do very well. The server was a little thrown by my open-ended request for suggestions – I told her I eat just about everything and wanted to try two smaller plates rather than one entree – but eventually gave me her five favorites, from which I chose two.

Their veal “paté” is actually a terrine of seasoned ground veal wrapped in bacon and sliced thinly, served with crisp slices of pretzel bread (termed ciabatta on the menu, but that’s not what I got on the plate), spicy whole-grain mustard, diced white onions, and cornichons. It was a tricky dish to eat – the cornichons had no intention of cooperating with my plan to get every element into one bite – but, even as someone who prefers meat dishes hot rather than cold, I was impressed by the layering of flavors and the perfect seasoning on the meat, although the presence of cold, soft bacon on the outside didn’t do much other than hold the thing together (sort of).

The diver scallops over cauliflower puree were perfectly seared, perhaps slightly overcooked in the center but not to the point of toughness, and the cauliflower puree was light and a bit creamy, giving a richness to contrast to the lean scallops. For dessert, I took the server’s suggestion of the flourless chocolate torte (over chocolate mousse or bread pudding), which was dark, rich, had a hint of cinnamon, but was a little too dense, to the point where it was hard to cut or chew.

For breakfast, Marybeth’s promised a slightly more upscale take on basic breakfast items, with my meal somewhat hit or miss. The scrambled eggs with goat cheese and basil were made to order but so massive (it had to be at least three eggs, probably four or five) that they were overcooked on the edges while soft in the center. The hash browns, however, were superb, perfectly browned on the surface, soft and fluffy inside, and not greasy in the least. Just add salt and go.

Final stop was Baton Rouge, good for one meal and one dessert. The meal was very ordinary, Sammy’s Grill on Highland (a reader rec) – the gumbo was thin and the grilled shrimp po’ boy, while made with very fresh shrimp, desperately needed some kind of seasoning. Also, they didn’t hollow out the bread, which I thought was part of the definition of a po’ boy, although I could be wrong about that. Dessert was better, at Rue Beignet, apparently the upstart in competition with Baton Rouge landmark Coffee Call; the beignets (a photo of which I posted on Twitter) were extremely light and airy inside, crispy and brown on the outside, although without the powdered sugar they didn’t have much flavor beyond that of “fried dough” – not that there’s anything particularly wrong with that. They also served the obligatory weak cafe au lait, which I would never drink anywhere except in Louisiana. One warning – Rue Beignet isn’t open as late as Coffee Call, but they did serve me even though I arrived just a few minutes before closing.

Georgia eats, February 2016.

Atlanta, Macon, Greenville, & Baton Rouge eats.

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