Put that on a bumper sticker.
The New York Times’ Kim Severson recently wrote a glowing piece about the growing strength of Atlanta’s food scene titled “Atlanta Pulls a Chair to the Table for Culinary Greats“.
Revival gets a mention and Decatur is summarized as in the post title.
Take a read and let us know what you think.
Has the Atlanta food scene recently climbed into the ranks of the greatest U.S. food cities? Or as Severson observes, is there is too much fad-chasing and steak-ordering to really be a top tier culinary city?
In the same breath, Severson also says that the drive to Decatur (from where?) seems too long. Well, driving to Berkeley from San Francisco takes a while too.
Yup, it’s only an 11 minute MARTA ride from Downtown to the East Lake Station, 13 minutes to the Downtown Decatur station. Can the BART ride be much shorter?
Or the Metro ride to Brooklyn from anywhere else (never mind driving!)
And that BART train is mind-blowingly-loud.
Another plus for much maligned MARTA. Pretty quiet especially compared to BART and CTA out of O’hare. Try to have a conversation on that train some time.
there was a time, 10ish years ago, when Atlanta had the second most two-starred Michelin restaurants among US cities: Seegers, The Dining Room (Ritz), and Bacchanalia.
great to see the number of really good restaurants rise, but Atlanta’s been a good foodie town for a while, IMO.
Unfortunately two of those three are gone and Seeger was the reason for both. He’s moving to New York and I guess he’ll be close to Sato, who ran the best sushi restaurant in town (twice) before moving to New York.
Atlanta stacks up well against most cities, but isn’t in the top tier. Friends from Charlotte, Knoxville, Jacksonville, and Cincinnati think Atlanta is a food mecca. Friends from DC, New Orleans, San Francisco, Seattle, and Chicago, not so much. It’s nice having what we have and I hope Atlanta can pop up into that tier right below New York and LA (and London and Paris). Things look headed that way.
In related news, James Beard 2016 semifinalists were announced today. Decatur makes the list twice with Billy Allin for Best Chef: Southeast and Kimball House for Outstanding Bar Program.
I’ve been here 20 years–well before the film industry took off here–and I’ve never heard anyone call Atlanta “Y’allywood”.
I’ve got love for NY, but I’ll take Decatur over ANY area of NY any day of the week.
I’m just fine with no attention being paid to our little gem of a city. School’s are getting too crowded as it is.
I’m probably going to leave a comment on the NYT page that talks about how it takes hours to get from downtown ATL to Decautr..
New Yorkers won’t be put off by bad traffic. Better you go to Mellow Mushroom and take a photo of the abomination that they call “pizza” and post THAT on the NYC site!
In the paper the photo of Cakes and Ale is of the old spot — now Pinewood.
Why can’t anyone in Decatur (or Atlanta) sell a pizza that make a native New Yorker say “somebody finally got it right?” (I am a native Rhode Islander and have my own unsatisfied pizza preferences in Atlanta)
I’ve often wondered that but I felt the same even when I lived in Los Angeles. They kept putting wet pineapple all over their pizzas. Even pizzas without pineapple or bean sprouts couldn’t approximate a NYC crust. Could it be something about the water in NYC? It’s hard to get a true NY bagel outside of NYC. And every time I eat a baguette flown in from Paris (or in Paris, the one time I was there), I realize that there’s something unique about how Parisians make their bread. Maybe the minerals/contaminants/whatever in water make a difference in these doughs–whether they be pizza, bagel, or bread dough.
It’s like getting a po’boy in southern Louisiana or Mississippi. I’ve never seen a good version of the French bread used there anywhere else. Locals say it’s the water. Maybe, I just know I can only get a true po’boy there because of the bread.
Jeff Varasano says the water has nothing to do with it.
Because a New Yorker would never say that about a pizza spot outside NY (and especially in the South). Regardless of the pizza. Ever.