Review: Southern National offers impeccable dining experience in Summerhill
THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
The menu at the new restaurant features flavor-packed, globally inspired dishes with strong Southern roots. It’s a succinct list: eight small plates, six entrees and four sides.
The expansive canvas above the restaurant’s partially open kitchen provides the backstory on Southern National.
The piece by local artist William Downs is modeled after Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Cheekily titled “The First Supper,” it depicts a rowdy group at a long table about to dig into a feast. The fellow in the center is illuminated by a golden glow and has six octopus-like hands outstretched, passing bowls of food.
That person is chef Duane Nutter. And the tower penciled behind him is Midtown’s Bank of America Plaza. That’s right, Duane Nutter is back in the ATL.
Nutter and business partner Reggie Washington returned to Atlanta after opening (and closing) their first iteration of Southern National in Mobile, Alabama. The Southern National 2.0 reunion includes beverage pros Greg Best and Paul Calvert. The four hospitality veterans’ relationship spans more than a decade, beginning in 2012 with the debut of One Flew South at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
The menu at the new restaurant features flavor-packed, globally inspired dishes with strong Southern roots. It’s a succinct list: eight small plates, six entrees and four sides.
Nutter has said the restaurant is “Southern in feel, national in flavor,” and inspired by every place he has lived and worked. That includes kitchens in Louisiana, Kentucky and the Pacific Northwest, all of which come into play in the Creole-cured salmon with cornmeal blini. Add pineapple mascarpone, cucumber, capers, shallots, caviar and a mustard-seed vinaigrette and you get a flavor explosion.
Credit: Rebecca Carmen
A dish of mussels and collard greens has become one of Nutter’s calling cards. “I thought these things make really good pot liquor,” he said. Really good is an understatement. Steamed mussels and braised collards are a heavenly match, especially when studded with smoked bacon.
Both the loaded sweet potato and the lamb burger helper take playful inspiration from the Hamburger Helper meals of Nutter’s childhood. For the latter, ground lamb subbed for beef in a rigatoni Bolognese. But the slightly sweeter, gamey undertones of lamb didn’t provide any wow factor. In contrast, the beautifully composed sweet potato brought delightfully unexpected Indian flavors, as lamb was paired with a yogurt curry sauce and mounded over the half spud with shaved fennel and red onion.
Plenty of other dishes boasted unexpected flavors and technique. A vegetarian plate coaxed out the juicy tenderness from a thick base of za’atar-laced bok choy stalks, while maintaining the crispiness of the charred leafy edges. It’s the only veg entree on the menu, but with coconut curried cauliflower, black-eyed peas, mushrooms and fingerling potatoes, it didn’t feel like an afterthought.
Carnivores have lots to choose from, but the standout was the extremely tender coffee-rubbed grilled pork chop. Accompaniments of a celery root and apple salad and sauteed mustard greens made this a plate to repeat throughout autumn.
Credit: Rebecca Carmen
Apart from a fried chicken thigh whose crispy skin was too salty for my taste and an undercooked side order of fingerling potatoes, every dish at Southern National was one I’d order again.
Menu items that looked fairly basic on paper turned out to be refined plates. Something as ordinary sounding as chocolate cake surprised and delighted, thanks to ground coffee that lent some grit, a quenelle of white chocolate cream cheese frosting — spooned on the side instead of slathered over the top and sides — and dots of raspberry beet sauce with earthy undertones that countered the cloying sweetness.
A short listing of classic-leaning cocktails likewise is refined and well-executed — from the smooth, well-rounded Armagnac Old Fashioned to a Negroni made with a coconut fat-washed gin that lends subtle depth of flavor. A concise wine list, featuring producers in France, Italy, Spain and California, is accessible and interesting, with broad appeal.
The final reason why your first supper at Southern National will not be your last there is the service. Perhaps you’ll notice the attention to minutiae by the waitstaff, who discreetly refill water glasses, refold napkins and pace your meal without making you feel rushed. If you don’t notice, well, you’re not supposed to. Southern National promises an impeccable dining experience because, contrary to the Nutter who commands the spotlight in “The First Supper,” at his restaurant, you get all the attention.
SOUTHERN NATIONAL
3 out of 4 stars (excellent)
Food: globally influenced Southern cuisine
Service: impeccable, without being stuffy
Noise level: low
Recommended dishes: bread, Creole cured salmon, loaded sweet potato, mussels and collard greens, zaatar-spiced bok choy, coffee-rubbed grilled pork chop, herb butter broiled red fish, grilled Chatel Farms New York strip, chocolate cake
Vegetarian dishes: little gem and frisee salad, grilled okra and shishito pepper, bread, spiced bok choy, sauteed cauliflower and asparagus, sauteed sugar peas and bok choy
Alcohol: full bar
Price range: $$$-$$$$
Hours: 4-10 p.m. Mondays and Thursdays-Saturdays; 2-9 p.m. Sundays
Parking: free on street and nearby lot
MARTA: none
Reservations: online and phone
Outdoor dining: none
Takeout: not recommended
Address, phone: 72 Georgia Ave., Atlanta. 404-907-4245
Website: southernational.com
Credit: Rebecca Carmen
Written by: By Ligaya Figueras