Bon Appetit Magazine

Atlanta is our new second home. It’s Hollywood’s new second home too, well one of them. It’s up there with Los Angeles, New York and Vancouver as the biggest hubs of TV production in North America.

My husband, Alan, has begun work on the CW’s Dynasty reboot and to celebrate, we somehow managed to get a Saturday night table on the patio at Staplehouse, voted by Bon Appetit magazine as the hottest new restaurant in the USA last year.

It’s an unassuming, casual eatery whose home is a 100 plus year old brick building in the historic and hip Old Fourth Ward district. We’d been vacationing up at Lake Lanier and didn’t really bring dressy clothes. It was OK. Anything from shorts to a sexy slip dress works at Staplehouse.

The back patio is nestled into the chef’s herb garden. We also had a view of the prep kitchen (a cute little shed at the rear of the property) and two of the restaurant’s three Green Egg cookers.

It was a true foodie experience. A fun procession of wait staff, all well-versed in the incredibly complex but fresh and exquisitely styled dishes of the day, brought us delicacies like chicken liver mousse with burnt honey gelee, and warm potato bread.

It was a complete experience where amazing food and a beautiful setting combined with the personalities of the people who make up Staplehouse. And theirs is an extraordinary story, completely apart from the sensations that come with a night out at Staplehouse.

Read about the owner, Jen Hidinger, her sister Kara and executive chef Ryan Smith and how Staplehouse came to be, here:    

http://www.bonappetit.com/story/staplehouse-atlanta