The Capital Grille, Dunwoody GA

This is Marie, contributing an article about the The Capital Grille. Grant and I were invited to their media preview night for their newest location, in Dunwoody. This is a restaurant that concentrates on making their guests comfortable, in a dressy, low-light setting, as much as concentrating on presenting good food.

My general theory on food is to go for the good stuff. I have looked for years at people eating low-cal diet food, or been out to dinner with someone and heard them say how much they’d like X while ordering a serving of Y, and just had to shake my head. My personal experience is that if I really, really want X, and settle for Y, I’ll wind up going out and getting X after all – so I would have saved calories, money and time by just getting X in the first place. I can’t help but think that if people in general would have a really satisfying meal at least a couple of times a week they’d wind up happier and not wind up gaining weight on things they’d rather were something else instead. That’s no way to live.

We started out with a salad and the lobster bisque, which were both quite good, and suitable for a light lunch all by themselves. My bisque could possibly have had a little too much lobster. While we did not have any of the entrees that was pointed out in the invitation as a particular specialty of the house (I will not confirm or deny whether that has anything to do with contrariness on our part) Grant did have one of their really excellent dry-aged steaks – a 24-ounce tenderloin – and I had salmon. He still claimed menu envy because my choice, the salmon, was so good, but that may just have been to hold up tradition. I have to say that if you are in the mood for a steak, the number of differences between what we got and those you get at someplace like the local chain restaurant is just not a short list.

This Capital Grille is the newest of 47 locations across the country, and it has an excellent reputation for wines as well as the steaks, but we chose to concentrate on the food. They have put a fair amount of work into customizing the dining room to the location, with large portraits of locally-famous individuals such as Margaret Mitchell and Asa Candler. The latter looked over our dining area and he looked so familiar I had to go check the label on the portrait, upon which one of the waitstaff helpfully mentioned he was one of the co-founders of the Coca-Cola Company. I am so bad with faces.

It wouldn’t be a real entry from me without a dessert, and we had quite a good one. It was a ricotta cheesecake with berry compote and an excellent caramelized crust. Such a shame they can’t do the flambe at the table. We got a substantial portion with a nice, simple presentation and even with the two of us working on it we didn’t quite manage to finish. Perhaps if Grant’s steak had been a tad smaller he would have been more help.

Other blog posts about Capital Grille:

Atlanta Restaurant Blog (June 1 2010)
Mr. Kitty Eats Atlanta (May 5 2011)
Twin Cities Restaurant Blog (July 26 2011)
Amy on Food (July 29 2011)
The Food Baby (Jan. 22 2012)
Eating Orlando (Feb. 17 2012)

(Naturally, this was a media event and our meal was complementary. It’s our policy to always note when we’ve received our meal without charge. If you would like to invite us to your restaurant’s media events, please drop Grant a line at gmslegion@gmail.com .)

You can see all the restaurants that we have visited for our blog on this map, with links back to the original blog posts. It’s terrific for anybody planning a road trip through our area!