Check out #20 among Bon Appetit’s Best New Restaurants!

The Optimist also made the list at #30 (the restaurants are in alphabetical order).

Photo courtesy of The General Muir’s website

Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh-Jennings look out.

Michelle points out that Cakes & Ale has again made Bon Appetit’s list of “Top 50 Best New Restaurants” for 2012.  Here’s the blurb explaining how C&A can be “new” again…

This one look familiar? In 2009, Billy Allin’s bistro made our list for smart, farm-to-table cooking. A move to a bigger space, a more ambitious menu, and an added bakery mean it’s list-worthy once more.

LOOK FOR

Wood oven-roasted squash and onion with scrambled eggs and trumpet mushrooms; Mississippi mud cake; lemon bar

WE LOVE

At the adjacent bakery’s lunch service, chef David Sweeney’s “good-for-menu” makes healthy food taste great.

Will they move again and try for the three-peat?!

Photo courtesy of Cakes & Ale’s website

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

Wow.  Huge honor for Billy Allin, Cynthia Wong and all the folks at Cakes & Ale.

According to Grub Street New York, which got a “sneek peek” of Bon Appetit’s upcoming issue, which includes “10 Best New Restaurants in America”, Cakes & Ale is among the honored.  The recommended dish from the listing is “Citrus Arancine with Pecorino Cheese”.

They’ll be more when the issue hits newsstands August 11th.  Stay tuned.

For now, I think “Congratulations” are in order!

h/t: Running With Tweezers (via Twitter)