Fine dining times three: A fresh look

I can’t quite pull all this off in a short dining guide blurb, so I thought I’d use this space to expand some observations on the three most ambitious and expensive restaurants in our guide.

For more than a decade the queen mama of Atlanta fine dining served a four-course menu that went something like this: cool appetizer, understated main course, fantastic “cheese and contrast” course, seasonal dessert.

Then, more than a year ago, it changed to five courses. Instead of one main, there suddenly were both a fishier and a meatier course (with, of course, vegetarian and pescatarian options). At the time, owner Anne Quatrano said the extra course came in response to changing times. Just about every other fixed-price restaurant of note in the country starts with a five-course menu.

I was dubious. Why mess with something that felt so inimitable? Those four courses were Bacchanalia — the script for a experience engineered to make you sigh with pleasure.

Quatrano was right, though. The five-course format brings a new energy to the experience (and makes the $85 price tag seem a little less splurgy). This kitchen succeeds best when it can shift from the kind of simplicity needed to celebrate the ingredients on the plate to cooking with more bravura and wit.

There are dishes such as Hawaiian hamachi with radish, preserved lemon and pickled kohlrabi, or different cuts of Jamison Farm lamb with seasonal vegetables and a wisp of sauce, that show the alchemy of what happens when fine ingredients meet an instinctive palate. Then there are glamorous dishes, such as kumamoto oysters out of the shell with lobes of sea urchin roe over a flavor-mined chowder custard, that delight the fancy-restaurant part of your brain as it ambushes your soul with deliciousness.

If you don’t mind turning your meat over to the vegetarian option, don’t miss the rye “fregulini” — a kind of couscous-sized rye pasta with a poached egg and more flavors and textures that you could imagine.

1198 Howell Mill Road, Atlanta. 404-365-0310. $$$$$, five stars

During its nine years in Atlanta, Restaurant Eugene has never stopped evolving.

In its first stage, it was a place that a certain kind of well-dressed, graying Buckheader favored thanks to its veneer of formality — the sharp suits on the staff, the sheer drapes on the windows and the gentle Southern gourmet stylings on the menu, such as foie gras with strawberry jam.

Then along came its boisterous little brother, Holeman & Finch Public House, which connected with everyone who loved to eat and drink with merry abandon. Owner-chef Linton Hopkins started to get more intellectually engaged with the questions, “What are the origins of the Southern table?” and “What does Southern food mean today?”

He referenced centuries-old cookbooks and local farmers on the menu (before anyone else did). He introduced a menu filled with small plates and divided it into fish, meat and vegetable columns, rather than the traditional appetizers and entrees. He encouraged guests to sample multi-course tasting menus, to try as much as possible. A meal at Eugene became a kind of conversation.

A couple of years ago, I have to admit I found it interesting but uneven, and perhaps a little weird. I recall a kind of molten root beer-flavored marshmallow served with a duck entree toward the end of a seesaw dinner. It was fascinating, but I wasn’t sure if I needed Metamucil or a cheeseburger after that meal.

A recent meal makes me think Eugene has settled into a third stage in its evolution — one where it now comfortably hoists the fine-dining standard. This is a restaurant that serves not one, but two small pre-dinner gifts from the kitchen, including a terrific and luxurious update on a famous dish from Arpège in Paris, a warm egg custard served in the shell and sweetened with a hint of sorghum syrup.

The menu is much more brief, and the kitchen seems to have a surer hand on the preparation of these dishes.

Hopkins’ Symphony of Southern Greens is always pretty brilliant — sure-handed preparations of beet, turnip and collard greens side by side, cooked with enough skill, time and pork fat to create pure soulfulness. Other dishes feel less Southern and more classic. Among them, look for precision cooked pheasant, the breast moist and beading with juice, the leg tender enough to fall to shreds and gamey.

Though I wish there was more simple pleasure and a little less fennel soup and parsley sorbet on the dessert menu, it fulfills its mission to challenge and invent.

This was the best meal I’ve had at Eugene in several years, and it makes me eager to return.

2277 Peachtree Road, Atlanta. 404-355-0321. $$$$$, four stars

During Kevin Gillespie’s time at the helm of Woodfire Grill, the restaurant subtly turned from the convivial neighborhood bistro it opened as into a culinary destination. The burgers and salami at the bar were out; the tasting menu was in. Adding to the luster: owner Nicolas Quinones’ wine list, which is filled with Old World finds in all price ranges.

Tyler Williams, formerly of Abattoir, has taken over and given the personality of the kitchen a major overhaul while keeping the menu format as it was. You can still order off a trim list of first, second and third courses, but you can feel the unsaid encouragement to go for it and try one of the fixed-price menus.

There’s a five-course ($70) and a seven-course ($90) option, and after you discuss your allergies, tastes, intolerances and religious edicts with the waiter, the courses come as a surprise.

Williams did good work goosing the menu at Abbatoir, which needed to have more fun. He has brought his good cheer to Woodfire, with an extra serving of razzmatazz. The food comes out on vessels such as granite tiles, superheated salt and gargantuan tiles that the waiters have a hard time carrying to the table. Buffalo carpaccio gets topped with frozen mint fished from a smoking pan of liquid nitrogen. One grain salad, seemingly not content to rest in its oversized bowl, climbs up the side of the dish as if escaping a gulag.

The presentation is silly, but that’s a pretty delicious salad — all kinds of crisp and crunchy pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, toasted black quinoa and farro in a shallow pool of dashi broth. A bit of shaved bottarga mirrors the dashi and adds another level of umami pow.

Williams does angular, light dishes well. There was just a taste of spring pea soup with carrot, coconut and cardamom as a between-course fillip. But I wanted a bowl. A small mound of chopped hamachi poke seasoned with a healthy hit of toasted sesame oil came on that superheated salt slab. It seemed kind of obvious at first, but as the fish cooked the dish did get more interesting.

Other dishes showboat too much. Hickory-smoked pork is as springy as a canned ham, and its little rillette fritter, house sauerkraut and soubise sauce suggest lusty flavors but are just tweezered elements on a busy plate.

Speaking of busy: That espresso-crusted carpaccio, with its pickled blueberries, blue cheese and billowing frozen mint, was awful in the manner of a particularly egregious Oscars gown.

But, like that dress designer, Williams isn’t afraid to take chances. He shows talent, and it will be interesting to see where he takes things.

Judging by a smartly updated Sacher torte, pastry chef Karie Brown also has something to say.

1782 Cheshire Bridge Road, Atlanta. 404-347-9055. $$$$-$$$$$, not yet rated