A prism of flavors ingeniously blended, a setting where taste rules by divine right: Bacchanalia restaurant in Atlanta can turn a celebration into an almost transcendental experience.
By COLETTE BANCROFT
Published May 21, 2003
ATLANTA - At Bacchanalia restaurant, chef-owners Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison know that the eggs in their kitchen are fresh. They raise the chickens that lay them.
"Oh yeah, we always have our own eggs here. I'm so used to it, I forget" to mention it, Quatrano says.
Getting Quatrano on the phone for a few minutes is no easy task. She and Harrison, her husband as well as business partner, run two of Atlanta's top restaurants, a food and kitchen supply shop, and a 60-acre farm.
On May 5 they were named Best Chefs in the Southeast during the James Beard Foundation Awards in New York City. Lucky enough to get lunch reservations before the awards were announced, I dined at Bacchanalia this month in a family celebration. The delicious meal confirmed the judges' ruling: The food is divine.
"It's a huge honor in our profession," Quatrano says of the award. "And it also says a lot about Atlanta as an evolving city. It has really turned into quite a food city. I'm glad we're here."
Quatrano and Harrison met in 1985 at the California Culinary Academy. Harrison apprenticed with Kusuma Kuray in Hawaii, while Quatrano did her apprenticeship with Judy Rodgers at San Francisco's Zuni Cafe (which won Beard awards this year for outstanding restaurant and best cookbook).
In 1987 they moved to New York City and worked at several restaurants. They were named Beard Foundation Discovery chefs in 1991 while working together at the Grolier Club in New York.
In 1992, they left the big city for Cartersville, Ga., northwest of Atlanta, where Quatrano's mother's family had owned a farm for four generations.
"We took a big chance," Quatrano says. "We had been looking to open our own restaurant, and Atlanta had just been awarded the Olympics. It had a big airport, lots of midlevel business headquarters. It just looked like a place with potential."
Harrison and Quatrano opened their restaurant in 1993 in a cottage in the fashionable Buckhead neighborhood.
"Bacchanalia was much different then," she says. But its refined, inventive cooking and devotion to high-quality local and seasonal ingredients quickly built a buzz that turned into a solid reputation of a decade's standing for some of the best New American food in the region.
Harrison and Quatrano opened a second restaurant, Floataway Cafe, in 1998 in Atlanta's Virginia-Highland neighborhood, with a menu of country French and Italian fare.
Quatrano and Harrison live in Cartersville at Summerland Farms, among dairy cows, goats, organic gardens and orchards (and those chickens). Quatrano designed their home, which has been featured in Metropolitan Home and Food & Wine magazines.
"In every season we have produce from our farm" on their menus, Quatrano says. "This year we're making our biggest investment in farming," hiring an employee to tend the gardens for the first time. "We always did it ourselves."
Bacchanalia moved in 1999 to a gentrifying warehouse district west of Midtown Atlanta, near the city's waterworks. It occupies part of a former meatpacking plant on the West Side, a chic complex that also houses clothing and furniture stores and several other restaurants.
To get to Bacchanalia, you have to make your way through Quatrano and Harrison's shop, Star Provisions, which offers specialty foods and charming retro kitchen goodies. My husband stepped through the door first, then turned to me and warned, "Look neither left nor right."
Fat chance. If the pastel crocks and fruit-print linens don't catch your eye, there are the butcher shop, the wine shop, the gorgeously aromatic cheese shop and the bakery to tempt you. (We took home an intensely chocolate tiramisu for the next day's family barbecue that was one of the best versions of the often-botched dessert that I've tasted.)
Where Star Provisions is homey, Bacchanalia is understated elegance. The yellow-brick walls, huge windows and massive dark wood bar speak of the building's past, and the sleek banquettes and glassed-in kitchen add modern touches. Tones of honey and caramel warm the serene room.
The menu changes daily to take advantage of seasonal and local ingredients. At lunch, there's a prix fixe tasting menu of five courses for $48, or $68 with four wines. We spent $310, including tip and wine, for four people.
The wine list is a beauty, with thoughtfully chosen bottles in a range of prices. Because we were celebrating, we tried a Champagne new to us, a toasty Bricout.
As soon as our order was placed - three courses each from the a la carte selections - bites of gravlax with creme fraiche for the ladies and nibbles of duck breast for the gents arrived.
Our lunch partners had peekytoe crab fritter with citrus and Thai pepper essence. It was a plateful of contrasts: delicate crab (peekytoes are cold-water Atlantic rock crabs), crunchy panko crumb coating and the sweet, tart and hot notes of the sauce.
My simple, superb starter was a plate of fat, fresh asparagus, steamed crisp-tender and strewn with buttery bread crumbs, finely chopped hard-boiled egg and salty slivers of prosciutto. The only dish I never got a taste of was my husband's platter of Malpeque, BeauSoleil and Kumamoto oysters. Served on a thick cake of crushed ice with a sparkling mignonette sauce, they disappeared so fast, I never got a fork in one, but John reported them perfectly fresh.
My entree of wood-grilled duck breast was another little song of flavors. The rich duck sauced with an intensely flavored game reduction shared the plate with tiny whole onions, grilled long enough to bring out their sweetness, and grits that would convert a Yankee.
"They're from an heirloom corn, ground fresh. We get them weekly from Anson Mills in South Carolina," Quatrano says. The extraordinary earthy flavor is simply, she says, "the quality of the ingredients."
Two of our party had the tortelloni, stuffed with lemon and sheep's milk ricotta and floated in basil broth served in tall, elliptical bowls shaped like ocean liners. When two waiters whisked the lids off, the aroma made us all go "ooooh." Once again, balance made this dish, the counterpoint of the bright flavors of the herb-laced broth and the creamy lushness of pasta and cheese.
The best entree, though, was sauteed gulf red snapper in shaved fennel and lemon nage. The nage, a subtle fish-based broth, brought the zip of lemon and pungent note of fennel to the perfectly cooked snapper.
Rosy scoops of rhubarb sorbet and French press coffee, brewed at the table, steeled us for the third round: dessert.
"How convenient," one waiter said as he delivered profiteroles, golden puffs of pastry filled with toasted almond ice cream and caramel sauce. "Four of these, four of you."
But we each had our own treats to keep us busy: Luscious Medjool dates with broad ribbons of shaved Parmesan cheese and a warm Santa Rosa plum clafoutis, thin slices of plum in a rosette atop a soft, thick crust.
John had the extravaganza: a three-part local strawberry tasting. The strawberry sorbet and the sliced berries macerated in lemon juice, sugar and lavender were lovely, but the best was a blintz stuffed with fresh ricotta and topped with strawberry preserves.
The service at Bacchanalia was informed and attentive, never obtrusive. We spent a couple of hours at our table and never felt rushed, while several parties that weren't lucky enough to be on vacation were served more quickly. It's good to see pros at work who can make the distinction.
Did we have an award-winning lunch at Bacchanalia? As more and more independent restaurants get steamrolled by chains, it's a thrill to see a jewel such as Bacchanalia going strong. The only thing I could possibly complain about is that it's not here.
Nation's best chefs
Here are the regional winners of the James Beard Best Chef awards:
California: Hiro Sone, Terra, St. Helena
Mid-Atlantic: Jose Andres, Jaleo, Washington, D.C.
Midwest: Takashi Yagihashi, Tribute, Farmington Hills, Mich.
New York City: Marcus Samuelsson, Aquavit
Northeast: Barbara Lynch, No. 9 Park, Boston
Northwest/Hawaii: George Mavrothalassitis, Chef Mavro Restaurant, Honolulu
Southeast: Clifford Harrison and Anne Quatrano, Bacchanalia, Atlanta
Southwest: Chris Bianco, Pizzeria Bianco, Phoenix
If you go
Bacchanalia, 1198 Howell Mill Road NW, Atlanta, is open for lunch 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and for dinner 6-10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. Reservations strongly recommended. (404) 365-0410.
