10th & Piedmont, Atlanta GA

Last week, Marie and I were invited to 10th & Piedmont to meet Executive Chef Javier Rivera sample some of this two year-old restaurant’s popular menu items. It’s in a really lovely space on the corner of… well, you know… in the former home of a bookstore, OutWrite. It’s more than just a restaurant; every other Wednesday evening, they open the huge windows and move some of the tables around for a painting class! Co-owner Gilbert Yeremyan was there to talk with us as well, His company, Communitas Hospitality, also owns two sister restaurants in midtown: Hobnob, which is on the corner of Monroe and Piedmont, and G’s, which is in the space next door.

Our small group, including our friends Erica from A Taste of Our City and Milla from Happily Eating, were moving back and forth from the darker bar area where we were seated into the nice open area where the light was much better and we could not only take some pictures that looked a little bit nicer, but also see all the great, enthusiastic work that the amateur painters were doing. The food was all quite good, but what really sold me on this being an unheralded gem in Atlanta was how incredibly happy everybody is here. From staff to guests, everybody was having a really fine, fun evening.

10th & Piedmont’s signature dish, as spotlighted on The Today Show just last week, is a really creative chicken and waffle dish. Rather than serving tenders atop a waffle, however, the chicken is wrapped in bacon, fried in waffle batter, and served on a stick with drizzles of hot sauce and sorghum syrup! A little of those go a long way, though. What I really enjoyed most were the Phyllo Bites, pictured above. 10th & Piedmont is all about small plates intended for sharing, but give me an order of these and I’ll defend them with knife and fork. Inside the little corn chip “bowl,” you’ll find smoked salmon, pickled onion, cilantro, a slice of jalapeno, and diced tomatoes with a lime-ranch drizzle. I’m always impressed when a chef can make flavor combinations that I’d have never come up with work as well as these do.

My shellfish allergy prevented me from trying either Javi’s fried oysters (which, served on a little avocado mousse and drizzled with creole mayo, looked amazing) or the crab cakes, shown above, which are served with a spicy red pepper cream and topped with a caper aioli, but everybody agreed that they were terrific.

Marie was quite taken with the short rib spring rolls. I thought they were pretty good, but I was really impressed by the terrific chipotle sauce that they were paired with. Oh, heavens, I wished Chef Javier would have sent us home with a gallon of that. We were also very pleased with the octopus, which is boiled rather than grilled as you see in many restaurants around Atlanta (where octopus seems to be appearing on more menus every month), prepared here in the style of Galicia, in northwestern Spain. The octopus is served with pickled onions and parsley over mashed potatoes and olive oil.

Speaking of mashed potatoes, my second favorite dish of the evening was the Sunday Supper Chicken. These are organic, boneless thighs from Springer Mountain, done in a marinade with thyme and lemon that leaves them incredibly juicy. They’re served with mashed potatoes and green peas with bacon crumbles, with roasted cherry tomatoes.

We had a truly fine evening and really enjoyed the food. As a great bonus, Communitas does a great job keeping the parking experience so much simpler than visiting other midtown restaurants. Valet parking, complimentary with a validation at the restaurant, is available in the adjacent space, which is also used for guests at Blake’s. The entrance is on Piedmont, so you’ll need to approach from 9th Street going north. Whether you want to have some drinks or paint or enjoy some of the delicious food, it’s a good choice for a nice evening, and I’m glad that we finally got to try it.

(As noted, this was a media event and our meal was complimentary. 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 .)

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