Atlanta scored big on this year’s list of James Beard Award semifinalists with a record number of nominees. Thirteen Atlanta chefs and restaurants made the cut (fourteen, if you count The Grey in Savannah). Finalists will be announced on Tuesday, March 24.

Since 2010 Atlanta has garnered more and more nods from, what some call, the Oscars of the food world. In 2010, only six locals made the list. We inched our way up with seven in 2011 and eight in 2012. In 2013 we crossed into double-digit territory with 10 nominees. Last year, we hit 11 (counting Five & Ten in Athens). To state the obvious: things are looking good here. Below are the nominees for 2015 with a cursory look at their award history and a few personal thoughts.

Best New Restaurant: Lusca

Angus Brown and Nhan Le’s seafood restaurant in south Buckhead made Bon Appétit’s list of Best New Restaurants in 2014.

Outstanding Bar Program: Kimball House

Kimball House opened in September 2013 and five months later was a semifinalist for this same category. Not long after, the oyster and cocktail haven took top honors on Southern Living’s 2014 Best New Restaurants. Although one if its chefs, Philip Meeker, left in November, the kitchen under Jeffrey Wall has quietly been ramping up its execution. Oysters still reign supreme, but the dinner menu is showing tremendous heart these days.

Outstanding Pastry Chef: Pamela Moxley, Miller Union

Three words: ice cream sandwich. Moxley was nominated in 2013 as one of “The People’s Best New Pastry Chef” by Food & Wine. In May of this year, she was featured in the New York Times for using beets in her red velvet cake.

Outstanding Restaurant: Bacchanalia

The JBF nominated Bacchanalia in 2013 for Outstanding Service. That same year chef/owner Anne Quatrano was nominated for Outstanding Chef (she won Best Chef Southeast in 2003). Restaurant Eugene, in my opinion, would have been worthy of a nomination as well.

Outstanding Restaurateur: Ford Fry (JCT Kitchen, No. 246, The Optimist, King + Duke, St. Cecilia)

Ford Fry is opening restaurants faster than you can flip an egg. Fry was previously nominated for Outstanding Restaurateur in 2013 and in 2014. I’d say his chances of winning are higher this year in light of St. Cecilia, King + Duke, The El Felix and Superica, although the last two just opened. By 2016 he’ll be an even stronger candidate: Fry expects to open another restaurant in Inman Park and his first restaurant in Houston, State of Grace.

Outstanding Service: One Flew South

This hideaway in Concourse E of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was nominated in 2014 for this category.

Outstanding Wine Program: Miller Union

I’m kicking myself for not seeing this sooner. Neal McCarthy, co-owner and wine director at Miller Union, has built a serious list with fun by-the-glass options and deep pockets (anybody want to go halfsies on a 2004 Biondi-Santi Brunello di Montalcino Riserva for $775?). McCarthy has also proven that he can sniff out one bottle of Trader Joe’s wine from the next.

For next year: I’ve got my eye on Juan Cortes at Restaurant Eugene, who is frontloading the wine list with the most impressive (and expansive) selection of Champagne (1964 Delamotte!). Also: Jordan Smelt at Cakes & Ale. His new wine shop in the bakery is giving him another outlet to showcase his talents.

Outstanding Wine, Beer, or Spirits Professional: Steven Grubbs, Empire State South

Grubbs should pick the song from The Lego Movie as his own personal mantra because “everything is awesome” when it comes to his awards. Look at this: He was one of Food & Wine’s Top Sommeliers for 2011; his selection at Five & Ten was recognized by Wine Enthusiast in its 2013 list of 100 Best Wine Restaurants; in 2014 Five & Ten was nominated by the JBF for Outstanding Wine Program; and in 2015, Bon Appétit called him one of the six sommeliers to watch.

Rising Star of the Year: Landon Thompson, Cooks & Soldiers

Here’s a newcomer to the award scene. Thompson previously helmed the kitchen at Iberian Pig.

Best Chef: Southeast

Billy Allin, Cakes & Ale

Allin has gotten the semifinalist nod every year since 2010, but has yet to become a finalist.

Kevin Gillespie, Gunshow

Ever since his debut on season six of Top Chef, Las Vegas in 2009, Gillespie has made a list of some kind. The JBF named him a semifinalist for “Rising Star Chef of the Year” in 2010, 2011, and 2012. In 2014 his restaurant Gunshow was recognized across the board: a top 50 nominee in Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurants, #7 on GQ’s list of 12 Most Outstanding Restaurants, and Best New Restaurant by Esquire.

Todd Ginsberg, The General Muir

Ginsberg was a semifinalist in this category last year. Bon Appétit recognized The General Muir as one of the 50 Best New Restaurants 2013. GQ did the same in 2014 in their 25 Best New Restaurants. As of the late, Ginsberg has been killing it over at Krog Street Market where his sandwich stall, Fred’s Meat & Bread, and his Israeli street food stall, Yalla, are consistently slammed.

Steven Satterfield, Miller Union

Satterfield got the same semifinalist (and then finalist) recognition in 2013 and 2014. In 2010, Miller Union was a semifinalist for Best New Restaurant. Satterfield has a chance to become a finalist, in part because his cookbook, Root to Leaf, hits shelves next month. The 498-page tome is a comprehensive paean to fruits, vegetables, and nuts.

Rave
All About That Baklava
There’s an ocean of difference between homemade baklava and the oily, syrupy commercial junk stocked on supermarket shelves and pushed out of mediocre restaurants. The good stuff is fragile—composed of delicate, paper-thin sheets of phyllo layered with ground nuts—and falls apart the moment you pick it up. The best place to find it in Atlanta is Leon International Foods, an impeccably organized Middle Eastern grocery hidden in a warehouse on Pleasantdale Road in the shadows of I-85.

You may not know the store, but you’ve most certainly eaten the pita. Sold first under the brand Middle East Bakery and now as Mjay’s, it’s the most widely distributed pita in town, baked in a separate 40,000-square-foot facility on Jimmy Carter Boulevard. The owner—Jean Leon, who just turned 88 and still goes to work every day—was born in Antioch, raised in Aleppo, and came to the United States as part of the Syrian Christian diaspora. He ended up in Boston first, but after an epic blizzard in 1978, he set out for warmer weather and eventually moved to Atlanta.

If you’re throwing a party, order trays of his baklava and other exotic pastries shaped like lozenges, baskets, cigars, and plump little domes. In addition to the sweets made on-premises, Leon has a phenomenal olive and pickle bar; a small snack counter selling stuffed vegetables, salads, and falafel; and two aisles of specialty products and exotic spices. 4000 Pleasantdale Road, Norcross

Rant
Are all the good restaurant names taken?
Naming a restaurant, like naming a baby, is a highly emotional decision. So I can understand how owners might get hung up on silly names that no one can pronounce, memorize, or understand. I can also understand how, like parents, they might get caught up in naming trends. Over the past 25 years, single words (Twist, Canoe, Bacchanalia), eponyms (Seeger’s, Rathbun’s), numerals (One Midtown Kitchen, No. 246), and alliterations (Silver Skillet, Busy Bee Cafe) have all had their turn at the top of the list.

But are all of the good names taken at this point? Why else would we be stuck in the bloody (Abattoir, Gunshow), the obscure (the Cockentrice), the ungrammatical (the El Felix), the unpronounceable (Le Bilboquet), the overly long (Ladybird Grove & Mess Hall), and the cryptic (Cooks & Soldiers, the Pig & the Pearl)? Still, any of these are far better than American Food and Beverage, the ultimate in dullness, and Le Fat, which I’m going to mock even if it means something in Vietnamese.

• Drop what you’re doing and head to Oddbird, a popup that recently hatched inside West Egg on Howell Mill Road serving nothing but fried chicken, pies, and sides like mac and cheese and collards. Chicken—served Wednesday through Saturday—comes in a biscuit, on a bun, and on top of a waffle.
• Looking for lamb? The best halal butcher in town is Marietta’s Tripoli Halal Meat.
• Masti in Toco Hills Promenade is giving Indian mainstays like Chai Pani and Bhojanic a run for their rupees thanks to a fun, contemporary menu that includes paneer tacos and wonderfully spicy fish and chips.

Gunshow’s Kevin Gillespie is ready to open his take on traditional Southern dining next Thursday. Located in the former Harbour House space at 129 Church Street in Decatur, Revival will serve only dinner at first and will offer lunch starting August 10^th. Plans for afternoon tea are in the works as well. The dining room will have 100 seats as well as a covered patio. Gillespie’s right-hand man at Gunshow, Andreas Muller, will be the executive chef.

“It’s very traditional Southern cooking,” Gillespie says. “Atlanta has two distinctive styles of Southern cooking: Appalachian Mountain South and Coastal Wealthier South. My family comes from both sides so I’m trying to bring elements of both types of food.”

He says the Mountain South style is more utilitarian—simple but bold and flavorful with dishes like grilled pork steak with sorghum, while Coastal looks more like continental cuisine with creamed white shrimp with tomato red rice and more composed dishes.

“The gracious style of service will make everyone feel at home even if you’re eating something that’s not what your grandmother made,” he says. “The emotion from it [is intended to] take you back to what came before you.”

Below, Gillespie shares his inspirations, his challenges, and a sample menu for Revival, plus a preview of what’s next for Terminus City BBQ.

What does Revival look and feel like?
It’s very traditional and very homey. It’s an old home. We found the original family who built the home and talked to them about the way it was laid out and merged that with photos of my grandma’s home. So you’ll see a lot of Wainscot paneling and moldings. We kept the interior finishes and exposed the fireplaces. We divided the rooms like rooms of a home so it’s more compartmentalized. We built a brand new kitchen on to the back of the old home. The dining room is the old living room and parlor, and there’s one room we refer to as the sewing room because it has my grandma’s old sewing machine in it.

What does the menu look like?

It’s set up as hors d’ouevres, entrees, trimmings or sides, and desserts. Everything will be offered a la carte but I’m hoping most people order family style. It’ll be the quintessential Southern-style service. You choose your entrée and the table shares cold and hot hors d’ouerves, cornbread, fresh country vegetables and sides, and then you choose your own dessert with coffee or tea. It’s almost an outlandish amount of food—that’s how your grandmother would have wanted it. On Friday nights maybe we’ll do more fish; on Saturdays maybe we’ll do a steak. I’m thinking about the way people eat—more celebratory meals toward the weekend.

What kind of bar program will Revival have?

Bottled beer and wine—more of both than what we have at Gunshow. My wife and I are wine collectors, but I don’t love a huge wine list. It can be very daunting. We’ll have more family-friendly wines—not a lot of high-alcohol wines. We’ll have Rieslings and Gewurztraminers– a lot of the German wines go well with Southern food.

The program is being led by Kat Johnson. As for cocktails, I asked for all classics: juleps, classic phosphate, and a proper martini. We’re doing a couple of punches every night like a hurricane made with actual juices and a Chatham Artillery punch. The Chatham Artillery was a revolutionary war unit based in Coastal Georgia. I have an ancestor who was in it and the original recipe makes 200 gallons of punch. It’s like the Long Island Iced Tea in that it won’t taste nearly as alcoholic as it is.

So far, what dishes are you most excited about? 

Our cornbread. It’s the one recipe I don’t give away and every single person asks us for it. It’s so unique. The ingredients are very specific. Only one type of cornmeal and buttermilk can be used. I believe this recipe is some sort of derivative of a popover recipe from many years ago. It’s made to order with a crispy outside and light on the inside.

We knew people would want fried chicken but most of what we have in Atlanta is all one style. We wanted to do fried chicken that’s underrepresented in Southern cooking—a style that came from the African American communities. It’s a peculiar method of preparation where everything is kept wet. It took 40 iterations to get what we liked, but it makes the juiciest fried chicken you will ever eat. It’s super crispy and very lightly breaded.

How much, would you say, dinner for two at Revival is going to cost?
A la carte might be about $30 per person for food only. Family style is a much better deal for $49. The cocktails are $8-$10.

Courtesy of Tuan Huynh

What’s been the hardest part about this project?
This one is really emotional for me. These are my family’s recipes. It’s a personal expression, something I’ve wanted to do for years. We have a proud history that is escaping us because people want to modernize the cuisine. The biggest difficulty is how do you take something incredibly personal and still make a place that is functional.

I’ve been very committed to not having investment or partners. Our growth comes when we have people who are talented and ready to grow. I finance it on my own because I want it to stay true to its original vision.

It’s also been a challenge because I’ve had to figure out how I can be at two places at once. At the beginning of course I’ll be at Revival. Andreas Muller has worked for me for almost 10 years now. I’m not worried at all about what he can do. Plus, these recipes have been tested and retested. It’s not like at Gunshow where it requires constant messing with.

Is the meaning of the name Revival as obvious as it seems?
Revival is located on Church Street in Decatur so it’s a bit of a double entendre. It’s about reviving these old recipes. Both sides of my family are very traditional, Southern people. I grew up going to church revivals and you always had great food at those places.

When you opened Gunshow, you talked a lot about how you wanted a place where your dad could be comfortable. What does he think of Revival?
None of my family has seen it yet. They’re coming on Monday. I have a lot of family heirlooms and old photography in there, and eight of my grandmother’s paintings. There’s a collage of photos of my grandmothers over the mantle in the dining room. I created this for my two grandmothers who always supported me in not going the traditional route professionally.

My father’s mother, my granny, is still alive and well and the best cook I’ve ever known. She’ll be here Monday. My other grandmother passed away 10 years ago. This was the restaurant I intended to build for her. It was her home that we went to every Sunday and had this type of dinner. It’s her home that we modeled the design after. She advocated that the family has to eat together. I hate that its 10 years too late.

What’s the latest on your barbecue project, Terminus City BBQ? Have you found a location?
It’s very active. It’ll be the next thing that gets announced. I can’t say much more yet, but it’s a 2017 project.

Sample menu

Hors d’oeuvres

• Sliced local tomatoes with cucumbers and sweet onion
• Toasted deviled ham tea sandwiches
• Local kale salad with old-fashioned boiled dressing
• Revival relish tray
• Old-fashioned skillet-fried green tomatoes

Entrées

• Chicken-fried prime beef round steak with skillet pan gravy
• Revival fried chicken
• Grassfed beef and pork meatloaf wrapped in bacon
• Creamed Georgia white shrimp and Savannah red rice
• Wood-grilled Berkshire pork steak
• Spiced Mississippi catfish in low country tomato gravy
• Wood-grilled South Carolina quail glazed with roasted honey and garlic
• Mushroom-stuffed cabbage dumpling with spicy roasted tomato sauce

Trimmings

• Fatback-fried silver queen corn
• Hickory-smoked local greens
• Old-fashioned creamed potatoes
• Fresh field peas and snaps in sweet cream butter and dill
• Green cabbage with confit ham
• Revival mac n’ cheese
• Pan-roasted mushrooms with celery and lemon
• Local zucchini fritters

Desserts

• Geneva’s toasted vanilla pound cake with peach fool
• Butterscotch trifle with butter pecan cream
• Lemon icebox pie
• Rustic peach and nectarine tart à la mode
• Awesome chocolate cake

Photograph by Josh Meister

Rave
First-Class Service
I’m certain that no airport restaurant can compare to our very own One Flew South on Concourse E in the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Since opening in 2008, One Flew South has succeeded in a mission that any restaurant would be lucky to claim: to represent the city with a worthy mix of inspired food, a smart beverage program, and extraordinary hospitality. Much of that buzz and warmth is embodied by head bartender Tiffanie Barriere, an immensely personable cocktail whiz who’s quick on her feet and deliciously dangerous with a shaker (try her sublime Cab Calloway made with Oloroso sherry, apricot, Angostura bitters, and dry vermouth). Executive chef Duane Nutter helms the broad menu, which swings from thyme-roasted pork belly to a Barcelona-style sushi roll with white anchovies. Recently at the bar, I overheard some London executives mention that they always stop in when flying through Atlanta. I can’t blame them.

Rant
Napkin no-no’s
It might sound petty for a restaurant critic to find fault with an establishment’s napkins, but as any chef will tell you, details matter. I frequently wear black, yet I detest black napkins. They may shed less, but they’re absorbency-challenged, since heavy dye has clogged every essential fiber. Limp polyblend napkins are another abomination. You can’t fold them properly, they slip off your lap, and they’re harsh on hands.

In an ideal world, all napkins would be white or cream, starched and ironed, and made of natural fibers. For casual dining, I prefer the new fashion for napkins that resemble striped tea towels or feature a discreet buttonhole. Casual goes wrong at Gunshow, where Kevin Gillespie seems to think that it’s cute to set the tables with bandannas. If I’m spending $100 on dinner, spare me from a thin, nonabsorbent throwaway that belongs on a camping trip.

Field notes

• Brazilian steakhouses may not seem particularly romantic, but they still crawl with couples who look like they’re on a hot date. Buckhead’s Chama Gaucha, which quietly opened in April, is no exception.
• Want to host a pig pickin’ party without putting in hours of hard labor? The Hoa Binh Seafood Market on Buford Highway sells adorable whole roasted suckling pigs by the pound.
• Mind the manners, please. Atlanta bartenders may frequently overhear private conversations unfolding in front of them, but—unless they’re asked—they should keep their opinions to themselves.

This article originally appeared in our September 2015 issue.

Photograph by Raymond McCrea Jones

A rain-soaked, mud-slathered, and at least partially drug-fueled music festival isn’t exactly the sort of place you’d expect to find fine dining. But there it was, adjacent to the main stage at TomorrowWorld, the gigantic electronic music festival that took place last weekend on 8,000 acres of farmland in Chattahoochee Hills.

In one corner of the second floor of a huge white tent, while outside the festival thousands of people were stranded trying to get in or out, chef Kevin Gillespie served a 10-course dinner to a few dozen VIPs on Saturday night. Among them: a writer from Mashable, a well-heeled couple from Venezuela, and a 40-something “spoiled brat with a heart of gold” who believed he’d just met the mayor of Atlanta (he hadn’t), stole my glass of wine while I was in the bathroom (and, reportedly, dropped something into it before he drank it), then wiped his mouth on the white tablecloth.

The menu featured some favorites from the Gunshow team, described by bearded servers who had to shout above the thumping bass: a Southern mezze platter, Kung Pao sweetbreads and Brussels sprouts, spice roasted catfish with charred scallions grits and Funions, grilled octopus panzanella with fried bologna, pork skin risotto, smoked chicken thighs with mushrooms and Alabama white barbecue, grilled pork loin with smoked apple butter and fried okra, churrasco beef with chile toreados and chimichurri, Asher bleu cheese with truffle honey pears and walnuts, and a tasting of Callebaut chocolate.

Down on the ground floor, Gillespie tended a grill while staff from all of his restaurants buzzed by with full and empty plates. (They weren’t just serving the VIPs; the team was also operating a more typical restaurant on the site.) The chef was remarkably calm, considering the environment and the fact that just days before, when he’d traveled to D.C. to do a charity dinner, one of his coolers broke in transit. The rest of the food was lost by the airline. (That made for a harried trip to the grocery store and some frantic preparation.) He also had a broken foot.

“This is the largest food service venture any of us have ever done,” he said while cooking during the VIP dinner. “When you’re competitive, you want to see how much more you can push yourself. This might be as far as we can go.”

He shared some stats from Saturday at TomorrowWorld, including the VIP dinner: 3,000 pounds of barbecue, 2,600 chicken wings, 1,000 fried chicken sandwiches, 500 pounds of coleslaw, 500 pounds of potato salad. The associated logistics were, obviously, a challenge. So too was communicating the Gunshow concept over the sounds of screaming synths while a dude on stilts danced nearby with a woman wearing just bikini bottoms and a pair of pasties.

“I’m tired,” he said after the dinner service was done. “I’ll go home and be back here at nine in the morning to do this again. Considering what we were working with—a tiny commissary in a tent in a muddy field full of rain—I think it went well.”

Photograph by Johnny Autry

If not the flat-out ideal customer for Revival, I’m pretty close. I’ve loved meat-and-threes since the tender age of 20-something, when I made the mandatory stop at Mrs. Wilkes’ in Savannah and saw the vegetables of my dreams: not carefully and stingily tender-crisp but braised to bring out their full flavors, meaning some form of ham or bacon was usually involved. And, oh yes, sugar. I’ve since toured meat-and-threes in their spiritual home, Nashville, and experienced them at their Formica-table, ancient walnut-paneling, barest-bones best. Good or bad, though—and sliced meat on a steam table for hours can get a little dry, if you hadn’t noticed—they all share what brought me to that first love: a family table generosity, a nothing-fancy welcome, a judgment-free license to eat as much as you like. The essential democracy of a meat-and-three transmits powerful messages about community.

Revival, in a cute clapboard house with a wide veranda in downtown Decatur, has my number. It’s Kevin Gillespie’s re-creation of the food he grew up eating at the table of his grandmother, whom he calls the best cook he’ll ever know, and who specialized in flavor-packed abundance. Revival is Gillespie’s first new restaurant since Gunshow, which he opened in 2013 after training at Woodfire Grill, where he gained national celebrity on Top Chef. The story of why he opened Gunshow can’t help but move you: His father didn’t feel Woodfire Grill was the kind of place that would welcome his kind of person. So Gillespie defied those who thought that naming a restaurant Gunshow in honor of some of the trips his father took him on was, well, suicidal, and soon enough it was impossible to get a table there.

The food at Gunshow is freewheeling in several senses: the eclectic styles that frequently change up; the rolling carts that bring plates of food around at the rate the kitchen can cook it, not when the diner commands it. The food at Revival, meanwhile, specifically goes back Gillespie’s family and their roots outside of Atlanta. Very specifically—the recipe for cornbread, unlike any I’ve ever tasted, is a family secret. Each piece comes hot out of the iron skillet, and it’s less like bread than butter and a mystery fat suspended with just a bit of golden corn flour; you have to really, really like butter. The recipe for fried chicken is secret, too, and mighty good. Unlike the cornbread, the chicken is not oily. What it lacks in crunchy batter it makes up for with moist and full-flavored meat.

The welcome at Revival is familial. I’ve seldom had sunnier servers since moving here, or really anywhere, and the smiles did not feel forced; a wee envelope arrives at the end with your name written on it and a tiny thank-you inside. The pictures all over the homey restaurant, with convivial tables placed close enough together that you don’t exactly eat with your neighbors but you can certainly pass pleasantries, are of Gillespie’s family. (The story of his father’s unease at a white-tablecloth restaurant and Gillespie’s need to honor his socioeconomic as well as geographic background makes me feel less discomfited about the fact that nearly every face in the many pictures, not to mention at the tables, was white.)

Revival isn’t an actual meat-and-three, but if you pick any entree and ask for it as a “family-style dinner,” the table will fill with relishes, the “trimmings” that are a whole menu section of side dishes, and the cornbread that isn’t otherwise listed as a side dish (one piece comes with each entree). The charge for the family dinner—not mentioned on the menu, so you might think the table-covering plates simply come with a grandmother’s goodwill—is $42 per person, plus $7 for pork steak or ribeye. The goal is to bring a chef’s care in finding local ingredients to a traditional meat-and-three, to put polish on food that in its native habitat might be served in Tupperware, to make simple things shine.

Does Revival live up to those honorable aims? A lot of the time. Not all of it. I put this down less to Gillespie than to the difficulty that dogs any ambitious chef: a deep bench that will keep a restaurant consistent. Salt is an occasional problem—practically missing in the sides at my first meal, but overabundant at my second. The plate of fresh field peas and snap peas in sweet cream butter and dill, whose vegetal sweetness enraptured me the first time I tried it, was choked with salt at my next visit.

Photograph by Johnny Autry

At our first dinner, the food flew out of the kitchen as if it had been waiting in the steam tables of the most traditional meat-and-three, and we were out the door in a startling 47 minutes. At another dinner, we sat on the pleasant covered patio and could seldom catch a server’s eye to ask what had happened to our food. (The restaurant was about equally crowded both nights.) The friendliness, the warm intentions, were always the same; the delivery was not.

Nor was the food reliably full-flavored. Tomato gravy on spiced Mississippi catfish was a big, indifferent piece of butter-sauteed fish you’d have trouble naming, with a paste of bittersweet glop on top. Wood-grilled Georgia quail was rubbery and betrayed no taste of the grill, with a honey-garlic glaze that was neither sweet nor garlicky. Mac and cheese was all cream—and I mean all cream—the mac overwhelmed and the cheese indiscernible. Hickory-smoked greens were uniformly salty even at the first dinner, but more so at the next two.

But Gillespie is capable of alchemy. The mysteriously named fatback-fried Silver Queen corn turned out to be grated fresh corn slowly simmered with rendered fatback and cream to the consistency of a porridge; the balance of dairy fat, pork fat, and almost pure sugar from the corn was ambrosial. Wood-grilled ribeye had all the char and faint smokiness the quail lacked, plus an ideal chewy texture and mineral flavor that made me want to go back and spend $30 again. Grass-fed beef and pork meatloaf wrapped in bacon tasted more like a carefully slow-baked pâté than meatloaf to me, though the French-born sous chef, Rémi Granger, pointed out that the meat is chunkier than in most pates. It’s also a large portion and, at $12, a bargain. Andreas Müller, the Swedish-born executive chef (he moved to Atlanta at 15 and later worked in Alabama, so he can claim Southernness), told me it took at least 10 tries to get the meatloaf right—and more for the chicken. They succeeded with both (and, at least with the chicken, in stunning fashion).

Photography by Johnny Autry

There is a treasury of desserts from which to choose. Toasted vanilla pound cake, even if a bit dry, had a nice buttery purity, its moistness from a not-too-sweet pineapple glaze and whipped cream. But the rest of Revival does seem Southern and heartfelt. I’m still hoping for an invitation to a Southern grandmother’s Sunday supper. I’m very glad Revival is there while I wait.

Rating
★★★★ (very good)

Good to know
Family-style service isn’t an option at the bar. (All those dishes take up too much room.)

Vital Stats
129 Church Street, Decatur
470-225-6770
www.revivaldecatur.com

This article originally appeared in our December 2015 issue.

Built upon the singular promise of eating well and without pretension, Kevin Gillespie’s Gunshow is our gutsiest restaurant. Although the dining room is short on luxury—stark fluorescent spotlights, metal tables, loud rock music—the format is game-changing, revolving around the weekly whims of eight chefs who cook and then deliver their plates to the table. Expect bold, playful food, riffs on beef tartare and Chinese dumplings, and even throwbacks like a show-stopping beef Wellington. Off meals are not uncommon—the effects of a kitchen in flux—but the chance to try that red wine risotto blanketed in white truffles or charred porchetta coiled in a spicy romesco sauce is a worthwhile risk. The menu’s one constant is Gillespie’s standout banana pudding—warm, custardy, and spiked with vanilla beans.

Meet the chefs

Breanna Kinkead
Kitchen lady
Cooking style Modernist
The downside to an open kitchen Can’t get rowdy

Chris McCord
Kitchen dude
Cooking style New Age Southern
Favorite dish Cured trout and vichyssoise

Joey Ward
Executive chef
Cooking style Modern American
Favorite dish Toad in the hole–style Kobe beef tartare

Spencer Gomez
Sous chef
Cooking style Modern American
Favorite dish Cured trout

Ryan Goss
Kitchen dude
Cooking style Everything (recently Spanish)
The downside to an open kitchen Not allowed to sing Michael Bolton

Tyler Dixon
Kitchen dude
Cooking style Rustic, Italian, Asian
Favorite dish Chinese dim sum dumplings

Nicole Edwards
Kitchen lady
Cooking style Spanish
Favorite dish Crispy pork belly with gingerbread, pickled cranberries, and spiced pecans

Wes Putimahtama
Sous chef
Cooking style Modern comfort food, Asian influences
The downside to an open kitchen Can’t snack on the dessert station

924 Garrett Street, 404-380-1886, gunshowatl.com

Photographs by Alex Martinez

Back to 50 Best Restaurants in Atlanta

13 Questions is a weekly series where we ask chefs 13 questions to get to know them outside of the kitchen. Kevin Gillespie is the chef/owner of Gunshow and Revival.

What’s one thing you wish you knew how to cook?
One of my favorite things in the whole world is American-style Chinese food, and I’m afraid to learn how to make it because I’ll ruin it for myself by making it too fancy. I really love Mongolian beef. My favorite place here is China King.

When you aren’t cooking, what do you do for fun?
I am an extremely avid outdoorsman and fisherman. I hunt everything. That was how I grew up—we kind of relied on whatever we could hunt or fish to fill the freezer. Now, myself and my dad and my uncles, we always plan multiple western hunting trips, like Rocky Mountain goats in Canada, sheep in Mexico in mountains. What we call camping, most people would call survival training. You find water, and you hunt for food.

What’s the last TV show you bingewatched?
My wife and I watched all of True Detective back-to-back. We literally stayed up all night. It was intense. And it was 5:30 in the morning, and Val is an attorney, and she had to go and get ready for office.

What’s your guilty pleasure fast food?
Buffalo wings. They might be my favorite food. When I worked at the Chicken Coop, all we did was fried chicken and buffalo wings. I’ll sometimes go to places like the Local and Fox Bros, but when I want the classic old-school flavor, I make them at home. I’m the only person who has three deep fryers at home.

If you weren’t a chef, what would you be doing?
We actually play this game at work all the time: if you weren’t a chef and economics wasn’t an issue. I would be a park ranger.

What’s the worst dish you’ve ever made?
In my career earlier at the Ritz-Carlton, I really got on this kick that saffron and vanilla went really well with seafood. I suppose it can if done well. I tried to make this roasted scallop with saffron and vanilla dish. It tasted like you were eating hand lotion.

Beer, wine, or cocktails?
All of the above. My wife is really into wine. One of our shared hobbies is wine collecting, so I probably drink more wine than anything else. But I’m about to open a beer garden [in Revival’s backyard] because I really love European-style beers. And as a self-professed redneck by birth, I do love moonshine.

Is there any classic Southern dish you can’t stand?
I’ve never liked fried chicken gizzards.

What’s the weirdest thing about being on Top Chef?
The TV time-out. Unless you’re being recorded and the camera is on you, you can’t speak; you have to remain in complete and total silence. It’s very peculiar and disheartening. They want you to hang out and make friends but only if someone is watching. It was the idea that you were supposed to coexist and live but only if people could watch you, and every other time, you were supposed to hit the snooze button.

Other than your own fried chicken, who makes the best in the city?
My favorite fried chicken in the Atlanta area is Buckner’s; it’s a family-style restaurant in Jackson, Georgia.

Do you have any pet peeves?
Punctuality. All the men in my family were in the military, so on time was late and early was on time. My wife will tell you the first time I ever took her out on a date for a dinner at 7, I texted her at 6:30 and said, ‘I’m running late.’ My wife is always late, so she took it as she could be ready by 7:30. I still showed up before our originally scheduled date time, and she was completely not ready.

Tell me the story behind your newest wolf tattoo. 
I was elk hunting in Idaho last year in the Frank Church Wilderness. One day, it was unbelievably, oddly dead. There were no birds, no bugs, just this eerie silence I’d never experienced in my life. Something just didn’t seem right about it. Later in the afternoon, I spotted with my binoculars this lone gray wolf. There’s this big wolf pack that inhabits the area, and when it shows up, everything hides. If you see one, there are others. It was a very startling experience. You kind of knew you must be surrounded. When they show up, your trip is over. It was eerie and inspiring; it made me feel very in touch with the real cycle of life.

What was the first thing you learned how to cook?
Scrambled eggs with American cheese, and it’s still my favorite. My mom taught me when I was four or five just because she didn’t want to make me breakfast at the hours I liked to get up on weekends.

Big props to Gunshow’s Kevin Gillespie, Miller Union’s Steven Satterfield, and Staplehouse for advancing to the finals of the 2016 James Beard Awards. Staplehouse is a finalist for Best New Restaurant, while Satterfield and Gillespie are up for Best Chef: Southeast. This year marks the fourth time that Satterfield has made this category (and Gillespie’s second). Satterfield’s debut cookbook, Root to Leaf, hit shelves last March and is also a Beard finalist for photography.

Since 2010 Atlanta has garnered more and more nods from, what some call, the Oscars of the food world. In February, the organization recognized 14 Atlanta semifinalists, (15 counting Five & Ten in Athens), one more than in 2015.

Photograph by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for Food & Wine

Chef, world traveler, and television personality Andrew Zimmern recently launched the first season of his latest travel and food show, The Zimmern List, on the Travel Channel. During the fifth episode, which premiered on the cable network last week, he eats his way across Atlanta, which he calls “a city with a dozen different food personalities.”

His first stop is old-school Southern: Mary Mac’s Tea Room. He half-jokes he wants a table for one but food for three—and proceeds to order fried chicken, collard greens, tomato pie, and dumplings, among other things. His favorite is the fried green tomatoes, which he calls “one of life’s greatest pleasures.”

Zimmern hits the other end of the Southern food spectrum at Miller Union, calling it “Southern cooking at the peak of its expression” and gushes over chef Steven Satterfield’s boiled peanut and field pea salad.

He next descends on upscale Jewish deli the General Muir and raves about the chopped chicken liver, calling it one of the few perfect versions he’s encountered. He also finds an ideal burger—perhaps the best in the country, he says: the world-famous Ghetto Burger at Ann’s Snack Bar in Kirkwood.

From there, Zimmern heads to “the hottest market in all of America,” Ponce City Market, where he tries the spicy pork buns at Simply Seoul (which unfortunately closed earlier this year), Georgia coastal oysters at W.H. Stiles Fish Camp, and a Cuban sandwich at El Super Pan.

Zimmern ends his Atlanta culinary tour at the one-of-a-kind Gunshow, Kevin Gillespie’s format-busting spot where “cooks have free reign to make whatever they like and then the cooks themselves bring the food to the table and convince you to order what they made.”

Zimmern’s takeaway? “Atlanta isn’t easily defined, and I think the more you try to define it, the less you’re going to enjoy it. So when you come down to Atlanta, just live it.”

Want to see the episode? The next re-airing is Tuesday, June 26 at 9:30 p.m.

The post Andrew Zimmern shares his Atlanta favorites on his new Travel Channel show appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.

Photograph by Gregory Miller

In 2018, Atlantans can sip mezcal at burger joints, slug a $15 ounce of Japanese whiskey within earshot of a Braves game, and have their pick of bitters—from Angostura to Atlanta-made 18.21—at the neighborhood grocery store. But 10 years ago, barkeep Greg Best couldn’t even get his hands on a reliable supply of decent vermouth. “The handful of amari and fortified wines that were available would come with a quarter-inch of dust on the bottles,” Best recalls of his mid-aughts tenure at Restaurant Eugene. And it was anyone’s guess what would be available the next time he needed to restock. “It was a crapshoot.”

The evolution of cocktail culture in Atlanta happened at such a breakneck pace that it’s difficult to pinpoint a precise moment when the scales tipped, but 2008 was a landmark year by every measure. Prior to then, bar-goers sniffing around for an interesting drink typically found their way to one of a handful of outliers, including Shaun’s, Trois, Repast, or Restaurant Eugene, where Best had landed in 2004 after leaving Emeril’s in Buckhead. It was at Emeril’s where Best, alongside cohorts Andy Minchow and Regan Smith, cultivated a rare thing in Atlanta at the time: a small but rabid clientele of cocktail loyalists.

Bob Amick of Concentrics Restaurants group opened Trois in 2006 with the idea of introducing Atlanta to an artisan cocktail–driven bar on par with New York institutions like Milk & Honey. Amick says that, in retrospect, the concept was ahead of its time. “It was a drastic change to have a popular bar where you couldn’t put the drinks out as quickly as people were used to,” he says. Behind the bar at the now-defunct Beleza, Ricardo Ullio’s sleek Brazilian spot that opened in 2007 on Juniper Street, Lindy Colburn created elaborate cocktails with produce like soursop and passionfruit—yet in the bar’s early days, Colburn says, “half the people that came in would still order a vodka cranberry.”

But soon, the cocktail renaissance that had started in New York City several years earlier would make its way to Atlanta. (Perhaps not coincidentally, it arrived around the time that a certain moody ad man with a penchant for Manhattans introduced viewers to the lowballs of the Mad Men era.) Orders for vodka cranberries and Cosmopolitans gave way to calls for Negronis and Sazeracs. At Trois, Eric Simpkins gently coaxed guests into trying a gin concoction with raw egg whites, and the drink, the Trois Cocktail, went on to become a bestseller. In the Old Fourth Ward at Repast, Kysha Cyrus managed to convince diners to try shochu and smoked whiskey alongside their hake and scallops.

Photograph by Gregory Miller

Starting in 2008, a succession of high-profile restaurants opened despite the looming recession. Perhaps as an antidote to the era, these restaurants had ambitious bar programs—the most innovative cocktails the city had ever seen. Restaurant Eugene’s kid-sister spot, Holeman & Finch, opened its doors that year with Best as a partner and behind the bar. One Flew South set up shop on Hartsfield-Jackson’s E Concourse months later. On their heels came Leon’s, Miller Union, and the Sound Table. At these establishments, cocktails were no longer neon nightclub concoctions or sugar-laden dessert “martinis.” Patrons were, in equal measures, curious about and puzzled by drinks that required a laundry list of unfamiliar ingredients—and a lot of time—to make.

From his perch at Trois, Simpkins watched as interest in craft cocktails swelled, and he became wary of mixed drinks joining the gilded ranks of fine wine. “I didn’t like the idea of people making cocktails feel pinky-in-the-air snobby,” he says. Demystifying cocktails was important to his ethos as a bartender, but he also wanted to ensure that this new movement could outlast the blip of a trend bubble. “There’s always been a challenge in the culinary world to expose people to new things in a way that doesn’t frighten them away. You can’t be an asshole, and you can’t make people feel dumb or stupid.”

But as it turns out, the public’s thirst for cocktail culture could hardly be quenched. It was revelatory, Best says, “like dusting off The Joy of Cooking for the first time in a hundred years to a group of people who really like to eat.” Yet as people’s taste for cocktails grew more adventurous, the ingredients for those cocktails continued to be difficult to source. Simpkins, who had arrived in Atlanta to work at Trois after a stint at the renowned Pegu Club, quickly realized he was working with a fraction of what he had on the backbar in Soho. “Everything we take for granted today, from gin to bonded applejack to mezcal, just wasn’t in the market here,” he says. Bartenders banded together and lobbied distributors to expand the inventory available to them. “We fought hard,” Simpkins says.

They also were each other’s best customers. “I spent every single waking minute that I wasn’t at work going to other bars,” Best says. Jerry Slater, who moved from Louisville to Atlanta to open One Flew South in 2008, was struck by how supportive people in the city’s service industry were. “Because it’s such a cooperative scene, everybody pushed everybody to get better,” he recalls. In 2008, Brick Store Pub traded one of its bartenders for one from Holeman & Finch for about a week. The swap functioned like an informal exchange program to help the Brick Store and Holeman bar teams round out their cocktail and beer skill sets, respectively. The barman that Brick Store sent up to Buckhead? Miles Macquarrie, whose work behind the bar in the decade since has earned him national acclaim. At that point, Macquarrie says, “I’d always thought cocktails were either martinis or super sweet.” The first day Macquarrie set foot inside Holeman, Best sat him down at the bar and made him a Sazerac. It was a lightbulb moment, Macquarrie says. “I was like, ‘I want in.’” He went on to co-open Leon’s the following February, Decatur’s Kimball House in 2014, and, in June, Watchman’s in Krog Street Market. Kimball House now shares with Holeman & Finch the honor of being Atlanta’s only finalists for the James Beard Foundation’s Outstanding Bar Program.

At Holeman & Finch, a jasmine-laced rye drink called the Oracle had long captivated guests with its floating orb of ice. “It became the bane of my bar staff,” Best says with a laugh. (He left Holeman in 2013 to co-open Ticonderoga Club with Smith, Paul Calvert, Bart Sasso, and chef David Bies.) “Once the word got out, people were ordering six or eight of them at a time, and we couldn’t keep up with those stupid ice spheres.” Over in Decatur, the Gutterpop debuted at Leon’s after Macquarrie experimented with making blood-orange soda in a siphon. In 2011, a lively sandwich bar called Victory opened on Elizabeth Street where a parking deck now stands, and a star was born in the Whiskey Coke Slushie. “Suddenly, all the people who were really serious about cocktails were willing to be not so serious,” Best says.

In the years since, cocktail culture has proliferated with such fervor that you can now find almost any creation in Atlanta, from the produce-focused cocktails served out of Gunshow’s roving cart to the over-the-top Zombies and swizzles at SOS Tiki Bar. “We’re very much into the idea that our places need to be fun,” says Simpkins, whose 2017 restaurant, Bon Ton, serves a smoked bourbon mai tai and a spiked, frozen Vietnamese coffee. At Watchman’s, you can find daiquiris, highballs, and a retrofitted Chartreuse shot machine. And right next door, Ticonderoga Club offers its eponymous “Cups” in hammered copper mugs alongside low-alcohol “suppressors.” Post up at just about any cocktail bar in the city, and you’ll see patrons casually calling for drinks bartenders wouldn’t have dreamed of selling in 2008. “We couldn’t give away Sazeracs back then,” Calvert says. “Now, we have people who come into Ticonderoga asking for one like it’s a Budweiser.”

7 Game-Changing Atlanta Cocktails

The Trois Cocktail
by Eric Simpkins
Circa 2006
Simpkins convinced patrons at Trois to expand their horizons with this Trojan horse of a drink, with flavors inspired by ’90s prom dates at Imperial Fez. “To my surprise, we were able to get people to drink gin with egg whites in 2006.”

The Soursop Elderflower Collins
by Lindy Colburn
Circa 2007
After chef Ricardo Ullio introduced Colburn to Marietta’s Brazilian markets, she began playing with tropical produce in drinks at Ullio’s woefully short-lived Beleza in Midtown. The Soursop Collins was her favorite.

The Bufala Negra
by Jerry Slater
Circa 2008
Slater brought this vinegar-laced bourbon drink to Atlanta from Louisville. It made its first local appearance at One Flew South, later showed up at H. Harper Station, and has since been replicated at bars around the world.

The Resurgens Cocktail
by Greg Best
Circa 2008
Best’s peach-infused rye drink with cola bitters gained fame at Holeman & Finch, but its precursor debuted years earlier at Emeril’s, where Best used Pappy Van Winkle rye. Miles Macquarrie calls it “a quintessential Atlanta Manhattan.”

The Gutterpop
by Miles Macquarrie
Circa 2009
Debuting on Leon’s first winter menu, the Gutterpop was born after Macquarrie began tinkering with housemade sodas, including one that paired cardamom with blood orange. Best says it raised the bar on inventive cocktails.

The Socialist
by Paul Calvert
Circa 2010
After Calvert’s three-rum drink won the top honor at a local cocktail competition, it made special cameos at Leon’s and Holeman & Finch. Calvert says it’s an example of how the pioneers of Atlanta’s cocktail scene supported each other.

The Whiskey Coke Slushie
by Ian Jones and Caleb Wheelus
Circa 2011
Victory’s whimsical frozen whiskey and cola signaled “a return to fun,” according to Simpkins.

This article appears in our September 2018 issue.

The post The Tippling Point: How craft cocktails made their way onto every menu in Atlanta appeared first on Atlanta Magazine.