After nearly a week of intensive reader voting, today we announce the winners of the ninth annual Eater Awards, celebrating the chefs and restaurants that made the largest impact on all 24 Eater cities over the past twelve months.
Here now are the establishments and chefs — from a French-American restaurant above where the ladies dance in an old Atlanta hotel to a pop-up joyfully celebrating the flavors of Mexico — that have taken the ATL food world by storm.
Thank you to everyone who voted last week, and congratulations to the winners of the readers’ choice and editors’ choice awards. Read on to learn more about this year’s best of the best. Editors’ choice winners will receive an illustrious tomato can trophy via FedEx, along with a full feature on Eater Atlanta in 2019.
Restaurant of the Year
Tiny Lou’s at Hotel Clermont, Poncey-Highland
Hotel restaurants never caught on as a dining option for local Atlantans. That is, until Tiny Lou’s opened on the ground floor of the newly-renovated hipster paradise, Hotel Clermont on Ponce De Leon Avenue, above the infamous strip club, the Clermont Lounge. The French-American restaurant’s eponym danced at the hotel’s Gypsy Room in the 1950s. The timeless design of Tiny Lou’s includes elegant touches — white marble floors, brass accents, and bold wallpaper — harkening back to the golden age of fine dining at luxury hotels. With a dream team of culinary talent, including executive chef Jeb Aldrich, who worked alongside his father, Jay Swift, at 4th and Swift, veteran manager and director of restaurants Nick Hassiotis, and young pastry chef dynamo, Claudia Martinez, the restaurant is a breathtaking example of a nouveau French brasserie. The menu, which neither alienates diners new to French cuisine nor feels too stodgy in its more classically composed dishes, includes Viennese and Southern touches on the menu — duck consommé with foie gras dumplings, radishes, and pickled apricot served table side or Hudson Valley snails with parsley pistou, caper cappelletti, pickled champagne grapes, and frisée. Word of advice: Don’t skip Martinez’s beautiful, Parisian-inspired savory and sweet confections, presented on a 1950s dessert trolley.
Readers’ Choice Winner: Snackboxe Bistro
Chef of the Year
Thip Athakhanh, Snackboxe Bistro in Doraville
Thip Athakhanh, co-owner of Laotian restaurant Snackboxe Bistro in Doraville, doesn’t consider herself a chef, simply a home cook sharing the cuisine of her native Laos with fellow Atlantans. Inspired by a trip to Laos two years ago, Athakhanh made the leap from the home kitchen to professional cook when she opened the counter-serve restaurant in the Super H Mart complex on Peachtree Road with husband and general manager Vanh Sengaphone earlier this year. It became an instant hit. Athakhanh mixes traditional Laotian dishes, like larb (meat salad), khao poon (spicy rice noodle soup), and mok pha (steamed fish,) with street food, such as fried garlic-pepper wings, lemongrass spare ribs, and tapioca pearl dumplings, known as saku, on the menu. A quote from the late Anthony Bourdain along the back wall of the restaurant reads, “Laos is the kind of place that can easily capture your heart and not let you go.” While this may be true, it is Athakhanh’s humility and genuine love for cooking and sharing Laotian cuisine, that has captured the hearts of Atlanta’s diners.
Readers’ Choice Winner: Nolan Wynn, Banshee
Restaurant Design of the Year
Watchman’s Seafood and Spirits, Krog Street Market
The vibe at Watchman’s inside Krog Street Market is more dressed-down than its Decatur sibling, Kimball House. A relaxed yet polished design, invoking a breezy mood, flows seamlessly throughout the dining room into the bar, filled with people sipping daiquiris and slurping oysters. This is local architecture firm Square Feet Studio’s third project with Watchman’s owners Bryan Rackley, Miles Macquarrie, Jesse Smith, and Matt Christison. The firm was responsible for maintaining the historic integrity of the old train depot, now home to Kimball House and its weekend cocktail lounge, Bonanza. The busy food hall beyond Watchman’s is cleverly hidden from view with unassuming curtains. Bursts of verdant green from hanging plants and succulents deftly weave through the space, against a backdrop of crisp whites and coastal blues. Natural light flows from the large patio windows and skylight above the bar with its pool tile backsplash. Jute macramé hangers, handmade by Smith’s mother, adds texture and a personal touch to the restaurant. Walking into the airy dining room at Watchman’s, one almost feels as though a weight is lifted.
Readers’ Choice Winner: Mission + Market
Food Pop-Up of the Year
Chicomecóatl, Maricela Vega
Maricela Vega, whose kitchen work includes Empire State South and Sun in My Belly, first began selling tamales under the name Chicomecóatl a couple of years ago. But, tamales soon turned into a full-blown (and extremely popular) pop-up, often hosted on weekdays at the Spindle Kitchen at the Studioplex in the Old Fourth Ward. Chicomecóatl is now a vehicle for Vega to bring Atlanta’s diners her fresh takes on modern Mexican cuisine. Dishes are mostly plant-based, creatively highlighting the techniques, traditions, and recipes of her ancestors, using Georgia grown ingredients. An ardent supporter of the local food movement and its farmers, Vega also sees her cooking and Chicomecóatl as a way to promote food justice and provide educational opportunities for children. Vega takes Chicomecóatl on the road, teaching cooking classes at area schools and providing nutritious meals to school children in underserved communities around the city, like Peace Prep Academy on English Avenue in northwest Atlanta. Like any good pop-up, word of mouth and a loyal following on Instagram indicate where Chicomecóatl will head next. The only other advice is to make the effort to go an experience Vega’s wonderful food in person.
Readers’ Choice Winner: Ok Yaki
New Cocktail Bar of the Year
Paper Crane Lounge, Old Fourth Ward
What was the private dining room of the award-winning Staplehouse in the Old Fourth Ward is now a cozy and quiet cocktail den called Paper Crane Lounge. Located on the second floor of the restaurant, the space is appointed with a hodgepodge of vintage and repurposed chairs and cocktail rounds, a gold love seat flanked by two mismatched armchairs, and twinkling lights woven throughout the beams in the ceiling and along the fireplace. It’s like walking into a dear friend’s home, only with impeccable cocktails. Drinks at Paper Crane, concocted behind a one-person wooden bar, are classically-based, ever-evolving, and organized on the menu by flavor intensity and strength. Guests to Paper Crane rely on descriptors on the menu to choose their cocktails, which, like Staplehouse, incorporate local and sustainable ingredients, and are paired with a highly-focused selection of spirits, liqueurs, bitters, and garnishes. Reservations aren’t necessary to enter the congenial little bar above one of Atlanta’s most esteemed restaurants. Simply check in at the host stand in the Staplehouse dining room to be lead up. Then, order a drink, sit back, and relax.
Readers’ Choice Winner: Little Spirit
All previous Eater Awards coverage [EATL]