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.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Leonsis Discusses the Business of Happiness

This is normally a food blog (when I post here instead of DCist). But here is a post about Ted Leonsis' new book and a book talk that he held on Wednesday, February 24...

According to Ted Leonsis, the concept of community is a central component of happiness. That means being an active participant across multiple communities, finding ways to intertwine those communities, and giving back to the community. As the owner of the Washington Capitals, it’s not that he wants to win the Stanley Cup per se says (though he does). It’s that he sees what the success of the team can do for the city and its fans. When he thinks of wins by the Jets and Mets when he was growing up in New York in the ‘60s, he remembers sharing the moment with his father and he thinks of the lasting memories a Caps championship would create for a new generation of families. He chokes up while relaying a story about a man who stayed connected with his son while posted in Iraq by video chatting with him daily about the Caps.


Thus it was fitting for Leonsis to deliver a talk promoting his new book, The Business of Happiness, on Wednesday night at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue. The late Abe Pollin, business partner of Leonsis, famously helped save the synagogue building from being turned into a nightclub in 2002, paving the way to creating a thriving Jewish and cultural community in downtown Washington. Leonsis, who is now negotiating with the Pollin estate to purchase the majority share of the Wizards and the Verizon Center, described Pollin as a man who embodied the spirit of giving back to the community.

Leonsis himself would have liked to have been home with his wife that night watching his star player Alex Ovechkin and Russia take on Canada in Olympic hockey. But he was happier being at 6th and I promoting his book and “creating another community.”

And so Leonsis recounted his early business successes, a near plane crash, a realization that he wasn’t truly happy, and his decision to write down a life plan of 101 personal and professional goals to achieve happiness. He wrote goals in 7 categories. There’s family and financial matters. Possessions like owning a beach and a great collection of watches. Charitable giving. Sporting goals like owning a team and winning a championship, playing several elite golf courses, and going one-on-one against Michael Jordan. Sixteen trips around the world. Miscellaneous “stuff” like going to the Oscars, swimming with sharks, and advising a foreign government.

After you get over wishing that you had Leonsis’ life, that you could accomplish a fraction just a couple of the things he has on his personal list, you’re left with no choice but to admire the guy. Yeah, he’s got more money than God; he’s already checked off #14 from his list, net worth of one hundred million dollars after taxes and is working on #15 ($100 billion). Making money off the Capitals and winning a championship will make him happy, but the way his team can bring the city closer together makes him more happy. Blogging, interacting with fans, and inviting readers of his book to e-mail him personally to let him know what they thought makes him happy. Making award winning movies is part of his bucket list. He accomplished that by becoming a “filmanthropist” making documentaries with purpose and launching a website that links charitable giving with independent films and provides a forum for exposure for small film makers.


Putting such goals to paper is a great start to completing some of them. You may not want to be as ambitious as Leonsis with your list. If you want to know what’s on that list, it’s published in the back of the new book. Or you can check it out here.