ATLANTA’S SPECIALTY BARS: MORE BOUNCE TO THE OUNCE
Tequila is on the menu at
upscale Mexican Sala—
Sabor de MexicoNo matter what your preferred poison, Atlanta’s specialty bars can prepare it to perfection.
The South practically invented the cocktail—some believe that both the word and the world’s first “cocktail” itself are traceable to the early 1800s New Orleans’ brandy toddies. These were highly popular back then, and even today many people are willing to go out of their way to find a superior “medicinal elixir.”
In Atlanta, bartenders strive tirelessly to set themselves apart with fresh ingredients and interesting drinks selections. As Atlanta’s restaurant and bar scene has matured, drinking has become much, much more than just sharing a Bud with buddies. Here is an overview of the restaurants and bars that are offering singular sensations and raising the bar on specialized drinks.
Following July 2004’s repealing of Georgia’s Prohibition-minded Act 267, which had barred the sale of beer with more than 6% alcohol by volume, Decatur’s Brick Store Pub (www.brickstorepub.com) debuted its Belgian beer bar expansion, dedicated to celebrating international bottle-aged beauties with up to 12% alcohol, especially Belgium’s Trappist ales. With a low ceiling, lantern-style lighting, stained wood lining the walls, and church pews for seating, this Belgian-beer bar feels like a ship’s hold swollen with treasure after searching the globe for the finest craft brews. There are around 120 different bottles and eight revolving taps.
If your idea of sport is sampling the great draft beers of the world, then Summits Wayside Tavern (www.summits-online.com) is your kind of sports bar. It’s got the typical TVs and video golf games, but the real action is to be found on the wall, where the colorful taps are pulled. There are three branches of Summits in Georgia, offering 100 to 140 drafts between them. Included are brews from Oregon’s award-winning Rogue Ales, which also makes Summits’ signature beer. A Passport Club offers rewards and discounts based on the number of beers tasted. Plus, there is a menu of international appetizers and a seemingly exhaustive liquor bar (especially for whiskeys). So you could say there’s much more than pint-sized pleasures.
the stage
bar at Twist. MidCity Cuisine (www.midcitycuisine.com), located at the merger of Peachtree and West Peachtree, bridges American bistro and European brasserie in a retro-modern café that is both breezy and vibrant. Therefore, it’s wholly appropriate that MidCity Cuisine boasts the city’s widest selection of champagne and sparkling wine, with more than 130 bottles— priced $32 to $600 and hailing from several countries. Thursdays remain especially brisk as they feature by-the-glass specials and DJs. So delve into the heart of the city to release the week’s corked-up tensions with some sparkling wine on MidCity Cuisine’s patio.
Located in Buckhead’s pristine InterContinental Hotel is the distinguished XO Bar (www.ichotelsgroup.com). The name isn’t coy shorthand for the “Kisses and Hugs Bar,” but if you are a fan of cognac, you will certainly want to kiss and hug whoever introduces you to this monument to France’s finest brandies. The pewter bar beneath rococo frescos serves cognac in the stately light it deserves, adjacent to bistro Au Pied de Cochon. With 50 brandies, all designated XO (Extra Old), and offered from $18 to $375 a shot, plus cognac and champagne cocktails at up to $550, the XO Bar is undoubtedly the city’s most extravagant lobby bar.
As reward for bringing exceptional New American cuisine and a remarkable 8,000 bottle wine collection to a palatial setting outside the perimeter, Alpharetta’s Rainwater (www.rainwaterrestaurant.com) would seem to deserve a cigar. So, appropriately enough, Rainwater offers the Davidoff Room—a 30-seat, dark-wood alcove with a fireplace, where cigars are welcome. More than 15 varieties of humidor-preserved cigars are offered for sale, to be enjoyed in one of those rare establishments that legally welcomes families to dine, as well as adults to smoke. Along with the cigars, enjoy a list of nearly 40 $7 to $12.50 wines by the glass and a variety of blue-themed cocktails.
No matter how ambitious the chef, there is a limit to how many times the average diner can be brought to rethink sushi. And yet Zuma Sushi and Sake Bar (www.zumasushi.com) offers nearly 30 ways for drinkers to rethink rice, with sakes from $12 to $150. Sake—Japan’s noble, aromatic rice wine—is a sleek, vigorous drink with spicy flavors and fruity aromas that unfurl as it warms across the palate. And Zuma’s lacquered lounge—all glossy black, robust red and dotted with LCD screens—complements it perfectly. Chilled sake helps define Zuma, and Zuma’s cool factor helps redefine sake.
High spirits at ONE.
Midtown KitchenWhether you want a heaping plateful of food, a glass brimming with ouzo or a whole lot of “opa!”—that’s a traditional Greek cheer—Taverna Plaka and Café (www.tavernaplakaatlanta. com) celebrates the exuberance of Greek culture, cuisine and cocktails. And first and foremost is ouzo, the national drink of Greece. An aperitif made of grape must (grape juice, pulp and skins) distilled with herbs, ouzo has a distinct, heady, black licorice flavor. Taverna Plaka offers six small-batch ouzos, over 20 ouzo martinis, with fruit and nut flavorings balancing ouzo’s potency, as well as several selections of retsina—Greek white wine with hints of pine resin.
Part of the Here to Serve Restaurants group, Twist (www.heretoserverestaurants.com) offers an environment where plates, drinks, looks and laughs can be shared—stressing “fun dining” over stuffy fine dining. Installed in ritzy Phipps Plaza, the curvaceous “stage bar” is like an opalescent conversation pit. The only chilly vibe comes from the custom-designed, oneof-a-kind vodka freezer, which keeps the wide array of luxury vodkas at their perfect temperature. Specialty $5-martinis imbued with the same bracing booze are also offered, keeping the spirits at Twist high indeed.
Don’t let the trademark laughing skull confuse you, The Vortex (www.thevortexbarandgrill.com) hosts a sociable heart within its roadhouse ambience. But, in a way, the skull is appropriate, because this bar and burger grill filled with biker bric-a-brac allows you to pick your “poison.” And if that poison is whiskey, you’re in luck. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more extensive list of bourbons (15), Irish whiskeys (16) and especially single malt scotches (97) within the city. No matter what your taste, the Vortex offers a wee dram to put hairs on your chest.
the InterContinental’s
sumptuous XO Bar.There are no straw hats, piñatas or Aztec frescos at Sala—Sabor de Mexico restaurant (www.sala-atlanta.com). Instead, this Virginia-Highlands outpost offering upscale Mexican food is as graceful and sleek as the service. Not only does Sala celebrate the authentic cuisine of Mexico, but also Mexico’s national liquor, tequila. More than 60 tequilas (almost equal numbers of blanco, reposado and añejo) and a half-dozen mezcals are featured at an average of $7, as well as a range of shaken, salt-dusted margaritas. A tasting club celebrates and rewards adventurous tequila aficionados.
Cocktails aside, Atlanta also offers a wealth of wine cellars. So many, in fact, that it’s impossible to pick only one as representative of the noble grape on this red Georgia clay.
While the sommeliers at both Joël (www.joelrestaurant.com) and the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead (www.ritzcarlton.com) are stellar, there are still those who prefer to choose for themselves, expanding their familiarity with wine without pressure or prohibitive pricing. For such burgeoning oenophiles, there are tastefully wrought wine bars such as The Grape (www.yourgrape.com), located in Buckhead’s Phipps Plaza. The Grape—one of several such tasting/take-out establishments dotted throughout Atlanta’s northern suburbs—offers around 120 wines arranged in 10 classifications based on body and palate, and available by the glass, half-glass and retail bottle.
It might seem that those living in Buckhead have all the best wine selections bottled up in one area. But around Midtown, you’ll find three of the city’s top options for wine by the glass. Eno (www.eno-atlanta.com), a Mediterranean eatery on Peachtree that has the cosmopolitan buzz of New York’s 46th St Restaurant Row, is a breezy bistro with an extra pinch of panache. The entire spectrum of wines is covered, with an emphasis on Italian and Spanish varieties. Around 60 can be ordered as 2oz tasters, over 80 by the glass, and even more by the bottle.
A sleek warehouse conversion bordering the Ansley Park neighborhood, ONE. Midtown Kitchen (www.onemidtownkitchen.com) features the cuisine of lauded executive chef Richard Blais. Complementing the experimental flair of his food is a 75-bottle, four-tiered wine list offering a “bottomless glass” option that allows for whimsical samplings.
Finally, Poncey-Highlands district’s TWO Urban Licks (www.twourbanlicks.com)—the less flirty and more feisty sister to ONE.—offers a meaty feast for the appetite and the eyes. In a soaring post-industrial space, a 14-foot rotisserie and elephantine lanterns are dwarfed by the floor-to-ceiling array of stainless-steel barrels containing winery-direct vino offered in 3oz, 6oz, 9oz, 16oz and 32oz pours.
In addition, there are Grape franchises scheduled to open soon in Midtown and nearby Inman Park. Surveyed together, this assortment presents a plethora of juicy options.
WORDS TONY WARE