Sunday, February 28, 2010

Dinner at Kevin Gillespie's Woodfire Grill

On location - Atlanta, GA

A few weeks back I found myself in Atlanta with the chance to eat at Woodfire Grill, the restaurant of Top Chef Season 6 finalist Kevin Gillespie. North of the city center in the Piedmont Heights neighborhood of ATL, the restaurant is a bit off of the beaten path and if you're visiting not too accessible without a car. It's about a $15 cab ride from the city center or you can take the 37 bus from the North Ave. or Lindbergh MARTA Stations. You'll enter a long, unassuming, bar area that leads to a narrow dining room. I was seated a few tables from Kevin who was firing entrees from a kitchen in the dining room. The full kitchen is off to the right.

The slow food menu changes often. The website says daily, though the posted and dated February 23 is nearly identical to the one that I ordered from a month ago. Gillespie features seasonal, local, and/or sustainable foods for the menu and is heavy on fire-roasting and grilling meats in the dining room kitchen. And it won't surprise any Top Chef fans that he's heavy on what he bills as simple presentations; there's no molecular bells and whistles. But most dishes do have 4-6 accompaniments in the descriptions: cornbread puree, duxelle of roasted mushrooms, black pepper caramel, braised peanut and pickled cherry relish. That's not exactly amateur flair, Michael Voltaggio. It's simple accentuated with complexity and elegance.

Diners have the choice of a 3 or 5 fixed courses or a la carte dining. At the restaurants with 2 college friends, we opted to go the a la carte route. That way, for about the same price as the 5 course prix fixe where we would all be getting the same dish, we could basically order the entire menu. What we got...

One of the better dishes of the evening was a creamy sunchoke carnaroli risiotto.  Roasted apples top the dish with crispy twigs of fried sunchokes at the front.  Pictured is a doubled order.

Duo of wild Washington state steelhead.  The two ways is a tartare and a sashimi.   The fact that it is steelhead and not tuna (which you would be unlikely to ever find here) entices you in.  It's a mild fish, with the slices accentuated with dill and grapefruit.   When asked about all of the components, the server pulls out a napkin where he's listed the 26 ingredients of the dish.






Duck breast (wood grilled sonoma artisan).  A generous portion cooked perfectly.  The black eyed peas, endives, duck cracklins, and pickled squash must be under there somewhere!










Strip loin (wood grilled Painted Hills).  A nice cut of beef, though it was the black olive powder on the right that was the star of the show.










Pork loin (wood grilled berkshire).  Gillespie shows his love of all things pig with the coca-cola glazed country ham underneath the loin.











There are four veg side options, $6 each, which are well worth tacking onto the meal.  My favorite was the roasted local sunchokes (rear right) with zaatar, mint, and pomegranate molasses.  Brussels sprouts  are pictured in the front.  I wished I could have tried Kevin's kale on the Natalie Portman vegan episode, but unfortuntely smokey greens weren't on the menu when I visited Woodfire.  Cooked with benton's bacon and smoked pork broth, however, they would not be for Natalie.




Cocoa nib doughnuts with coconut ice cream.  The plate is also dotted with passion fruit caramel around the doughnuts, cocoa nibs, and passion glass atop the ice cream.  Brittany Emerson's desserts are between $8 and $9.  You can also sip on a port or dessert wine flight, 3 for $14.

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