Great Atlanta Restaurants (Alpharetta, Duluth, Decatur: houses, middle school, price)

[pignchick]

Originally Posted by cittic10

Yeah but it seems like that unlike SF an NYC, our restaurants are fast/junk fooderies, fried crapperies, waffle houseries, or grease-burger jointeries. Which explains why that's all anyone has suggested so far.

God help ya if you're not in the mood for a burger.

That or tacos. Blech.

what are you talking about... give me some specific restaurants.

ATL has some of the best foodie joints in the country.
Best restaurant areas are around Midtown/Virginia Highlands/Decatur/Vinings. BTW every food genre is represented in some fashion in ATL.

so before you bash the city with a baseless attack... tell me what restaurants you are referring to...

[pignchick]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

With apps like Yelp and GPS enabled devices, it's relatively easy to avoid the terrible places.

I'd do a quick bit of research on any unknown place before going to make sure it doesn't have universally terrible reviews.

AGREE! I use Yelp every time. Go by the # of reviews and not the stars (elite members and few reviews can skew the average).

Also, Scoutmob was invented in Atlanta. Use Scoutmob to try restaurants without a lot of reviews (they are usually just opened or really bad restaurants but if they are bad you only pay 50% + gratuity).

[cqholt]

Also, Scoutmob was invented in Atlanta. Use Scoutmob to try restaurants without a lot of reviews (they are usually just opened or really bad restaurants but if they are bad you only pay 50% + gratuity).

ScoutMob is a great way to discover new restaurants in the city and get a deal.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by pignchick

Best restaurant areas are around Midtown/Virginia Highlands/Decatur/Vinings.

I would add the Buckhead neighborhoods, Inman Park and Roswell Road. There are zillions of other great eating places around town but they are not quite as concentrated.

[shivtim]

Heck, Atlanta is so chock-full of good restaurants that even the AIRPORT has a unique top notch place to eat (One Flew South).

[vamos]

Yeah! Burger for, well, burgers.

Canoe in the summer for outdoor dinner.

Alfredo's for Italian.

El Nuevo Laredo Cantina for Mexican.

Desta for Ethiopian.

[PeteATL41]

Rathbun's & Rathbun's Steak are both great. So is Woodfire Grill, Blue Ridge Grill; Restaurant Eugene etc. etc. Yelp & Sagat could quickly render this thread useless.

[ATLTJL]

I gotta say, the management at Rathbun's steak doesn't know what it is doing.

I remember eating there a couple of years ago and it was on a night where there were pretty bad thunderstorms. The power went out when we were eating our salads and the staff was pretty good about telling us we could wait if we wanted to in case the power popped back on. After about 30 minutes it didn't, and they decided to close down food service for the night.

I felt kind of bad for them because they probably did have to throw away a lot of expensive food that went bad. The server then came to close our bills and had to write down our credit card info since the machines were down. And that was it, we paid and left.

Now, I know the power outage was not the restaurant's fault at all. But it seems to me that you would at least give a discount coupon to come back another time. Or offer a complimentary drink voucher. Or comp the salads for that night. Or say "we're going to throw everything on the grill so it won't go bad, if you want to have some food you didn't order, it will be half price." Or just any incentive to make the inconvenienced people want to come back. Of course they aren't obligated to do anything, but it shows that they don't know what you would hope a high-end restaurant would about service recovery.

I don't know if the steaks are good or not because I didn't get to have one, but there are way too many places to get good steak in Atlanta for me to go somewhere that doesn't know how to treat customers right. It's not a huge flaw, but it just shows a level of oversight that was enough to make me never go back.

This was a couple of years ago, maybe they have better management now. That's just my soapbox on Rathbun's Steak!

[researchnerd]

My current favorites are:
Sun In My Belly
The Shed at Glenwood

[billl]

Originally Posted by PeteATL41

Rathbun's & Rathbun's Steak are both great. So is Woodfire Grill, Blue Ridge Grill; Restaurant Eugene etc. etc. Yelp & Sagat could quickly render this thread useless.

Sagat? You mean Zagat? I don't trust Zagat. I've read too many glowing reviews on sub-par restaurants in Zagat. The ratings seemed rather inflated for some places, too.