When we go on buying trips to Atlanta we shop all day and into the night. At the end of the day we enjoy going out to eat. Atlanta has lots of special, independantly owned restaurants. This is a pic of one of our faves in Virginia Highlands called LA TIVOLA. It's a well run, cozy Italian Bistro with low lighting, excellent service, and "right on" food. This is the view from our booth across the room. It reminds me of those French cafe paintings.
We started with Warmed Olives, simple and delicious. What a variety!
Then we shared this healthy Beet Salad with pistachios and shaved Parmesan. Another winner!
These Roasted Brussel Sprouts were so good. You won't find this at the chains.
Now on to another fave, SOUTH CITY KITCHEN. This is a contemporary restaurant that serves Southern classics with a gourmet twist. Make sure you have a reservation or you won't get in, even in a snow storm. I LOVE starting with their breads: Homemade Bisquits and Corn Bread.
The Fried Chicken is one of their signature dishes. It's piled on top of their impossibly good Mashed Potatoes, covered in gravy, and served with collard greens. YUM!
WISTERIA is another place we don't miss. It's only five minutes from our B&B. How I wish we had this bistro close to our house. I would go every week.
This is one of my all time favorite dinners... anywhere... ever. Believe it or not it's their Vegetable Plate. It has samplings of all the gourmet veggies on the menu that night: mashed potatoes, corn pudding, amazing stone ground grits, purees, and roasted veggies. Who needs meat?
But then again, how can you pass this up?
At Wisteria you must save room for dessert. They are all house made and you can pick 3 for $10 and share. We had the Coconut Cream Pie, Watermelon Gelato, and Apple Crisp with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream. Why don't more restaurants do this??? Maybe if they did they would be PACKED, late, on a weeknight, during an ice storm like Wisteria was.
Each trip we like to try someplace new. MISO just opened in "the hood" where we stay. I took this pic so you can see what we observed during many of our dining excursions. All the restaurants are trendy, low lights, playing "restaurant style" retro music from decades gone by. There are some serious foodies in this city. Another trend we saw was how young everybody seemed to be everywhere we went. Look at who is sitting here. Where were all the people our age? Where were all the people from the Gift Show?... Actually we finally did see some, but now I'm watching this trend. Maybe they are all in the suburbs?
MISO was great. We started with lightly battered Tofu.
These Fried Oysters were so good we ordered a 2nd batch.
And then on to the good stuff! Hope you enjoyed this blog. I have wanted to write about this for a long time. Can you imagine getting PAID to review restaurants??? Sign me up!
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