He Eats She Eats: Atlanta Restaurant Reviews: WOODFIRE GRILL

She says:

Oh Kevin Gillespie, how do we love thee? Let me count the ways…

We love you for solidifying Atlanta’s place on America’s gastronomic map through your amazing performance on Top Chef.
We love you for centering your restaurant’s fare on local, sustainable, organic food and humanly-treated animals.
We love you for being insanely sweet and humble even though you are totally famous.
We love you for putting bacon in everything, even your desserts.
We love you for indulging our doe-eyed admiration, for taking a picture with us, and even signing our menu!

But mostly, we love you for your cooking. After months of anticipation, we finally ate at Woodfire Grill this past weekend. Our expectations were high. We weren’t disappointed.

He says:

After much hemming and hawing and deliberating with our excellent waiter, who assured Uptown Girl the red meat dishes could be substituted for vegetarian ones, we opted for the five course chef’s tasting menu. Apparently it changes every night, and even from hour to hour, depending on the ingredients available, so we were completely at Kevin’s mercy.

A bite-size pimento cheese profiterole started things off. The pastry crust was flaky and buttery, but the cheese filling of this amuse bouche lacked nuance.

Fortunately the sliced raw scallops that followed were excellent. They were incredibly silky, and the lemon oil and pink pepper added just the right amount of zing. A stellar peekytoe crab salad completed the dish.

The second course of sautéed California morels was even better. Fungi of this caliber can change the way you think about mushrooms. They were remarkably earthy and smoky, and further enriched by a roasted chicken glace. A huge dollop of duck foie gras mousse threw off the balance of this dish, but after I spooned half of it aside, the resulting union of fat and mushrooms was splendid.

She says:

I was impressed to learn that the artisanal foie gras was “cruelty-free” (rather than force-feeding the animals, they are kept in an environment of constantly available food to fatten them up). Even so, I opted out. Kevin supplied me with a perfectly cooked risotto with morel mushrooms and broccoli. Although rich in all the right ways, the most noticeable characteristic of this dish was the freshness and intensity of the veggies.

He says:

Every great meal has a standout dish, one that you will recall years later because it redefines that what a chef can achieve. For me, Kevin’s slow-roasted pork belly was that dish. Glistening with fat, it melted on the tongue in all its buttery perfection.

The spiced lamb wasn’t quite as marvelous but it was much more inventive. Accompanied by tandoori yogurt, lentil sauce, and a tomato-ginger-cauliflower and potato mash, it’s Indian home cooking masquerading as a fine dining entrée. And plenty fine it was, with spicy and cool notes mingling with the gamy lamb.

She says:

My vegetarian entrée just happened to be the same one that Kevin used to win the vegetarian challenge on Top Chef! A mix of potatoes, Hen of the Woods, and morel mushrooms were prepared on the woodfire grill. Each head of the Hen of the Woods clusters were grilled to a slight crisp, and they paired beautifully with the smokiness of the sautéed greens. A smear of a tangy cream sauce cut the saltiness and rounded it all out.

Dessert consisted of a dense tres leches banana cake topped with three wallops of chocolate mousse and a thin bar of milk chocolate. Next to the cake was a banana sorbet. The sorbet, only mildly sweetened and sprinkled with marcona almonds and sea salt, provided a needed contrast to the sweet cake. Overall, it was a very well balanced dessert.

We say:

Woodfire Grill ranks among the top restaurants in Atlanta. Most dishes were very good, and several were spectacular. In Atlanta’s fine dining scene it is second only to Bacchanalia. And did we mention that we love Kevin Gillespie?