Hayakawa is the most delightful character in Atlanta’s food scene, a master of his craft who’s as skilled at handling fish and rice as he is at charming his guests. Not only is that your entry fee to the restaurant’s 14-course, two-and-a-half-hour honkaku (authentic) omakase (a Japanese feast in which the diner lets the chef steer) it also gets you front-and-center seats at Atsushi “Art” Hayakawa’s sushi counter. You don’t have to spend $185 to eat at Sushi Hayakawa, but if you can, you should. Rui Liu, a certified master chef from northeastern China, came to America on an O-1 visa given only to “individuals with extraordinary achievement.” Just wait til you bite into the other 125 dishes on his menu. The second will transport you to another dimension of taste by simultaneously mellowing and somehow extending the pleasure of the first. The first bite will blow your mind with its electric intensity. The second bite: Masterpiece’s Dong Po Pork, a braised brick of pork belly lacquered in a mahogany-hued glaze that tastes as if it were a syrup extracted from a mythical tree. The exterior is crackly-crisp and salty, the interior creamy and sweet, the level of ma la (numbing spice) precisely calibrated with a liberal but not obnoxious dose of fragrant, crunchy Sichuan peppercorns. The first bite: Masterpiece’s dry-fried eggplant (Eggplant with Chilli Powder and Pepper Ash Powder), which sits at the pinnacle of every iteration we’ve encountered of the beloved Sichuan dish. The average human tongue has 10,000 tastebuds, and we have discovered a way to stimulate each and every one of them with just two bites of food. Behind the scenes and on the plate, Miller Union is a vision of an evolving South. With Miller Union hitting the 10-year mark in November, Satterfield and co-owner/general manager/sommelier Neal McCarthy have firmly established their Westside gem as a beacon of Southern hospitality, both in the warm, all-welcoming dining room and in the inclusive, equitable kitchen. At Miller Union, he has proudly picked up where his mentor, chef Scott Peacock, left off Satterfield spent a decade working for Peacock at Watershed, the iconic restaurant that similarly modernized Southern food in that era. When Satterfield won the James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southeast in 2017, he was only the second Atlanta chef in 10 years to bring home the honor. That they’re served in the most unpretentious high-end restaurant in Atlanta-equally suitable for the laziest of lunches or the most special occasion-makes the fried pork chop with creamed greens and the duck breast with hoecakes and strawberry even more exceptional. What’s left: dishes that are understated revelries (that silky farm egg in lush celery cream, oh my) and honest explorations of the modern South (see: Seasonal Vegetable Plate). Steven Satterfield dotes on a grouper dish.Īt Miller Union, Georgia native Steven Satterfield gathers every misguided notion about Southern food and tosses them in the compost heap. (We’ve removed restaurants that have closed.) And keep your eyes out for Atlanta magazine’s October 2021 issue, when we’ll publish a fresh list of Atlanta’s Best New Restaurants.Ĭontributions from Mike Jordan, Christiane Lauterbach, and Jennifer Zyman Best to call ahead, or check a restaurant’s website or Instagram for details on current menus and accommodations. And yes, all of them are worth the drive-especially that Oaxacan joint in Suwanee.Įditor’s note: This list was published before the pandemic, and some of the offerings at the restaurants listed here may have changed in the interim-in fact, that’s pretty much guaranteed. As for the 30 newcomers, they’ve been around for as little as four months and as long as four decades, specializing in everything from vegan wraps to modern French cuisine, $1.50 tacos to a $165 tasting menu. 1 pick that’s been open for nearly 10 years yet has never before topped this list. One of the first questions we asked ourselves: Would we drive across town to eat there? In determining the top 10 specifically, we thought less about where we most want to eat when we’re celebrating than where we most want to eat, period.
But even settling on 75 restaurants was hard.
To properly reflect the Atlanta of today-its many cultures, neighborhoods, and iterations of dry-fried eggplant-a reckoning was in order. 75 Best Restaurants When we set out to determine who should be included in this year’s 50 Best Restaurants issue, one thing became immediately clear: