Here ’tis…

At the age of 27, Billy Allin gave up his job as a money manager and enrolled in culinary school. After graduation, his cooking skills landed him gigs at renowned restaurants, including Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Watershed in Decatur. With his farm-to-table cooking philosophy fully established, Allin and his wife, Kristin, decided it was time to open “the restaurant where we would want to eat,” he says. That restaurant is Cakes & Ale (from a phrase in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night meaning “the good things in life”), located east of downtown Atlanta. The couple’s ideal restaurant turns out to be a 50-seat neighborhood spot where the kitchen staff often answers the phone when you call to make a reservation, and a chalkboard announces the daily menu, which features simple, precise dishes like braised rabbit grits with saba vinegar and spring onion; buttermilk-rhubarb fool; and the addictive arancine here.

h/t: The Decatur Minute

The Brookhaven Reporter reports that DeKalb County Commissioner Jeff Rader called Sembler’s request for a 20-year, $52 million tax abatement of its Town Brookhaven project “effectively dead” at a July 15th meeting.

So what happens now?  Rader predicts that Sembler “should be breaking ground very soon on the rest of their project to the degree that the market will support it.  I think we are going to see that fully redeveloped, because that is an attractive place for people to be.”

h/t: Clairmont Heights Civic Association