Restaurant Review - Grazing: Blissfully bland

Good taste is less subjective than Duncan Hines and Col. Sanders told us, but it takes a load of chutzpah to call a restaurant “Bliss.” One man’s bliss is another’s corn dog. So, when my friend Will Bonner and I recently visited the newly re-opened Bliss (1829 Peachtree St., 404-350-6755), I was nervous about the restaurant’s self-boasting. And, far as I could tell from a cursory review of the menu, “bliss” was recently redefined not to include junk food or its gourmand opposite, either. Instead, it’s apparently come to mean “middle-of-the-road standards.”

Why so blah? This restaurant, which closed for repairs after some flood damage, has a chef with a background edgier than the cuisine here. Brandon Carter formerly worked at Mumbo Jumbo and (defunct) Terra Cotta, both well known for their kinky takes on classic dishes.

Here, the blissfully kinky edge is mainly gone. If you’re into vanilla, you’ll do fine. A starter of grilled, vague-tasting asparagus ($6) features a warm vinaigrette studded with bits of pancetta. Fried ravioli with mozzarella and basil ($8) taste like little more than decent bar food despite the sauce made with esteemed San Marzano tomatoes.

On the other hand, the restaurant’s crab cake — a custardy, almost unctuous version — approaches the blissful ($12). It’s garnished with a pepper compote and arugula sprouts.

I am going to presume something beyond the kitchen’s immediate control was amiss with Will’s lamb shank ($18). The poor guy normally doesn’t eat lamb and decided to be a bit adventurous by ordering the dish. He took a taste and didn’t say much. I speared a chunk from his plate and was pretty shocked. I eat a lot of lamb and it was the gamiest-tasting meat I’ve encountered in years.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“It seems OK,” he said.

I took another piece.

“It seems incredibly gamey to me,” I said. “Don’t you think?”

“Are you referring to the way it tastes like liver?” he said.

“And not calf liver but pork liver,” I said. “Maybe it’s a new version of lamb made out of organ meat.”

“Maybe I’ve lost my appetite,” Will said.

Were I not reviewing, I would have returned the dish to the kitchen. I even asked the server to find out where it was from. Transylvania? Nope. The usual New Zealand source. I did like the side dish of long-grain cous cous with goat cheese.

My own dish, recommended by our server, was better but not exciting. It was a house-cured pork chop served over red beans and rice ($18). The server was right when she raved about the red beans. They were much tastier than the rather dry pork.

Other entrées here include roasted chicken with fries, a grilled flank steak, a fish of the day, a sesame-crusted salmon and a couple of pasta dishes including bucatini with a whole lobster ($28). There are also soups and salads. The BLT salad, I’m told, is a primo choice.

The restaurant décor continues the bland theme of the cuisine. If you like brown — brown wood, iron, brick and pictures of brown cigars — you’ll love it. Honestly, it’s pleasing. At the least, it’s a relief from the theme restaurants that haunt so much of Buckhead. But come on, guys. You’re going to have to get a lot kinkier to deserve your name.

The Biscuit gets a boost

It’s hard to believe the Flying Biscuit (1655 McLendon Ave., 404-687-8888) has been open seven years. It started as a neighborhood café and now, three times its original size, draws diners from all over the city.

I confess I lost my affection for the place a few years ago. In the way success tends to stagnate many enterprises, the Biscuit’s cuisine seemed not to evolve very much the clever but wholesome. Worse, I had several poorly executed versions of well-designed dishes. I stopped going there for dinner and became an occasional breakfast visitor.

Recently, the restaurant hired a new chef, Jameson Proctor, to assist April Moon, who is spending most of her time in Asheville now. Wayne and I visited last week and had a very good dinner.

Zucchini griddle cakes ($5.95) are an appetizer vaguely like the delicious pancakes Koreans make with vegetables. As is often the problem at the Biscuit, the dish, garnished with a “tapenade” of artichokes and feta, suffers from too much of a good thing. Though still delicious, way too much ratatouille is piled on the pancakes, making them a bit soggy.

For an entrée, Wayne had his longtime favorite here — the warm chicken salad. At $7.95, it remains a tasty bargain. Grilled chicken breast is served over rosemary-roasted potatoes and field greens with blue cheese. I ordered a chicken breast fried in a tempura batter ($10.95). It was certainly heavier than the classic Japanese tempura but who can resist smiling at sumo-fried chicken? On the side were mashed potatoes (inadequately) spiked with wasabi, a pool of soy-shitake gravy and ginger-glazed carrots.

While we were told April Moon remains fully in charge of the menu, we look forward to Proctor’s influence. Maybe he’ll even wrestle the lemon Shaker pie recipe from April and give us back what we all miss most!

Here and there

It won’t be long before Sotto Sotto opens its next door café, Fritti. We took a tour of the work in progress a few weeks ago and were very impressed. Look for the city’s most authentic pizzas to be baked here. The café will also serve the fried antipasti so popular in Italy but so poorly done in most Atlanta restaurants.

I dined on exquisite arroz con pollo during a visit to Mambo last week. It appears there’s something of a turf war occurring between the restaurant and neighboring gelateria, What’s the Scoop? Visitors to the latter, which has no interior tables, park themselves at Mambo’s sidewalk tables. You can imagine what that means. Mambo has to shoo away gelato eaters to seat its own diners and has to clean up their sticky mess.