Chicken Feet & Clam Chowdah

We’ve just returned from a trip to Atlanta, where we ate a lot of excellent meals. Here are our picks and pans from the Big Peach:

• Eclipse de Luna: The best tapas we’ve ever had, bar none. Eclipse de Luna is located in an upscale shopping plaza, but once inside you’re transported to Spain. Colored lights hang from the rafters, brightly colored artworks catch the eye, and Latin American music—live, on the night we went—fills the air. We ordered peppers stuffed with goat cheese and honey, which were absolutely sublime. The sweet honey was balanced out by the tang of the goat cheese and the tomatoey taste of the peppers. Other favorites included a braised pork belly so tender it melted in your mouth, some gamey and succulent lamb ribs, an empanada filled with chicken and Spanish cheeses, and mussels in coconut milk. Eclipse de Luna also does a strong classic mojito.

• Café Intermezzo: Every city should have a place like this: a café where you can get drinks, coffee, and dessert late at night and hang out for as long as you want. Café Intermezzo is a European-style coffeehouse that looks like something out of the Moulin Rouge era: one glance at the globe lamps, huge mirrors, wood paneling, and wrought-iron tables and you’ll be expecting to see Oscar Wilde or Toulouse-Lautrec slumped over at the bar. The café’s vast menu lists almost every kind of alcohol imaginable, from wines and beers to cognacs, cordials, brandies, sakes, and, yes, absinthe. They also serve light meals, crepes, and a wide selection of desserts. Intermezzo is a popular date spot in Buckhead and it’s a mite pretentious: they call whipped cream ‘schlag,’ forcing you to ask your server what it is and have her smirk at your ignorance of German. They also employ two embittered young people whose sole function is to stand by the pastry cases and tell you what the desserts are. It must be disheartening to know your job could be obviated at any moment by a label printer.

Pretention aside, though, Intermezzo is nothing if not atmospheric. We sat out on the patio, a romantic, dimly lit spot where candles flickered and trees grew up through the ceiling. I ordered crepes Suzette, which were roll-your-eyes-to-heaven good—soft crepes enhanced by a warm emulsion of butter, brown sugar, and orange liqueur. Each bite left a taste of burnt caramel lingering on the palate. We also enjoyed a generous slice of cookie dough cheesecake, which was so soft and rich that we needed a pot of tea before we were able to finish it.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You will have to pay $4-$5 to park near Café Intermezzo. Bring cash.

• Anis: This charming bistro serves French food in a relaxed, utterly unpretentious atmosphere. Opt for the patio, where you can dine amid lush plants and a smattering of antiques that includes a vintage VW Bug. Their crusty bread is excellent. John had the steak frites, and his steak bore a lovely black crust on the outside but was tender on the inside. And, though nothing compares to Les Halles frites, Anis’s were very tasty. I had the house-made wild mushroom ravioli, which came in a piquant thyme-cream sauce. They were delicious, but overpriced at $15, especially since there were only four to a serving.

• Taka: This small, pleasant restaurant serves very good sushi, including some more unusual items such as live clam and sea urchin nigiri. We first tried sea urchin here, and it was amazing: a huge slab of buttery-soft roe that melted away into pure seawater in our mouths. It tasted like the bellies of fried clams (for all you New Englanders familiar with that treat), but subtler and more complex. The spider, eel, and crawfish salad rolls we had were also very good, and the giant clam nigiri flavorless (not the chef’s fault – giant clam has very little flavor of its own, so he paired it with a schmear of wasabi), though nothing could compare to the culinary marvel that is sea urchin. Taka, sadly, had very few customers on a Friday night; it deserves to be better-known.

• Meehan’s Public House: One of the few restaurants on Peachtree Street that’s not either ridiculously expensive or touristy, Meehan’s surprised  us with its quality cuisine. I expected it to offer good, basic pub grub and Irish favorites, but its food was a cut above this level. John got the beef ribs, which were meltingly tender and came with a sophisticated blackberry-wine sauce. I had the lobster ravioli, served in a perfectly balanced vodka-cream sauce accented with heirloom tomatoes from Athens, GA. We also noticed several diners enjoying the house-made potato chips, which came in paper bags.

• The White House Restaurant: A classic diner located in a strip mall, White House features decent diner food like omelets, bacon and eggs, pancakes, and sandwiches. It’s been around since the sixties and employs veteran waitresses who, in a perfect world, would be named things like Flo, Marge, and Ethel.

• Atlanta Fish Market: Décor is emphasized over food at this restaurant, which boasts a three-story-high copper fish statue outside yet serves mediocre dishes inside. The “Maryland crab chowder” we ordered was a misnomer on all three counts: the “crab” was imitation (eww!) and came in a sweet cream-based soup laden with red and green peppers. The lobster roll I had was drippy and the lobster meat soggy and less than fresh, and the “Hong Kong” style sole John had was bland and came with an overly sweet, teriyaki-like sauce. And the “fish market” this restaurant contains offers not whole fish but precut fillets. On the whole, it’s a touristy place that doesn’t expect its customers to appreciate real seafood.