Lucky Star’s Taiwanese comfort food shines in West Midtown

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

The restaurant is inviting, comfortable and attractive, but it’s located in the heart of the Star Metals building in west Midtown, meaning prospective diners must seek it out.

Then, there’s the parking. Unfortunate parking situations have killed many Atlanta restaurants, but Lucky Star thankfully has begun validating for up to two hours in the Star Metals deck. Parking without that validation can be expensive; I paid $16 on one visit.

Lucky Star serves coffee throughout the day, but the menu of typical cafe drinks is enhanced with an impressive tea program. Taiwan is a proud tea producer and Lucky Star honors that heritage with expertly made matcha, as well as interesting loose-leaf varietals. Co-beverage directors Kirk Gibson and Nik Soukavong also have mixed coffee and tea together in a handful of drinks on their “creations” list. The refreshing alchemy drink — made with cold brew, Taiwanese alpine tea, cantaloupe and lime — was crisp, subtle and complex.

On the food menu, the humblest dishes often turned out to be barn burners. Both the soft-boiled tea eggs and duck fat scallion pancakes stopped conversation around our table, getting raised eyebrows and slow nods that translated into: “Wow.”

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

The eggs are Liang’s take on a dish that he said is ubiquitous at convenience stores in Taiwan. The soft-boiled eggs are marinated and generously dressed in a savory, tea-based sauce that was addictive. The scallion pancake, an incredibly common street food, took a starring role thanks to the inimitable richness of duck fat.

Another Taiwanese staple, beef noodle soup, benefited from Liang’s touch. The beef broth’s almost bottomless flavor was offset by a zing of acid from pickled mustard greens and crisp but tender bok choy.

Alongside the soup, Lucky Star served a Sichuan peppercorn tincture that allowed the diner to add their preferred amount of that unmistakably numbing spiciness. Gibson said that tincture is a byproduct of a cocktail, a nice illustration of how the food and beverage menus work together.

That cocktail is the prickly ash vesper, made with a distillate of Sichuan peppercorns that Gibson and Soukavong call “flower pepper.” With the help of high-tech equipment, they separate the floral flavors of Sichuan peppercorns from their numbing spice compounds (saving the latter for the beef noodle soup). The resulting gin cocktail is bracing but flowery, a truly sophisticated drink.

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

Other cocktails also used the bar team’s techniques to great effect, such as the bourbon-based sabai, which got its silky texture by being clarified with coconut milk.

Like Brush Sushi, Lucky Star manages to offer an incredible breadth of options for different types of diners, albeit in a more casual environment and at a lower price point. You just as easily could drop in for a quick lunch, work on a laptop while sipping coffee or enjoy a glamorous date night, all at the same restaurant.

If that doesn’t make Lucky Star a destination, what will?

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

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