Restaurant Review - A room with a view

The woman at the Sun Dial’s hostess stand on the lobby level of the Westin Peachtree Plaza had that tired, blank look in her eyes, that weariness that only reluctant customer service can bring about.

“What’s the name?” she asks.

“We don’t have a reservation.”

“Reservations are recommended but not required,” she answers, and her tone is like that of an unenthusiastic airline hostess reciting the safety speech; institutional, informational and unfriendly. “Are either of you wearing flip flops or shorts?” She asks, in a deadened accusatory tone. We are not, although it seems like she should be able to tell that from looking at us, but I guess her high podium is in the way. Perhaps she is just hoping. It seems as though she would relish turning us away. “Take the elevator up to the 72nd floor,” she says, and we are out of her hair.

Pay attention to that elevator ride — it may be the highlight of your evening. The glass walls afford you a 280-degree view outward as you shoot up the side of the building, and Atlanta becomes small and then huge and expansive below you. “Look at that code-red smog,” someone in the elevator sighs, lovingly.

The Westin’s website claims that when the hotel opened in 1976, it was the tallest building in the world. Rising 723 feet above Atlanta’s skyline, it is certainly a tall building, but it was never the tallest in the world (the Empire State Building, built in 1931, is 1,472 feet tall if you count the broadcast tower and 1,250 feet if you don’t). If the building and hotel was incredibly modern for its time, it now serves as a step back in time, and everything from the hotel lobby to the restaurant’s decor looks like it could be a set piece from one of the original Superman movies. The Sun Dial has an incredible view, informative and map-like in the daytime, glittering and magical when the sun sets, and in the course of a meal you get to see it from all sides, courtesy of the revolving dining-room floor. All of this serves as a distraction from the almost-drab brown 1970s decor.

Despite the decor and somewhat of a reputation as a tourist trap, the Sun Dial has made a recent PR push to revamp its image. It hired a new chef in June, Christian Messier, to woo back some of the Atlanta dining scene. Messier’s career began at the Country Club of the South in Alpharetta, and he has been working his way up in the hotel and resort world ever since, most recently as chef at the Renaissance Grand Downtown St. Louis-Convention Hotel. After waiting the requisite time to allow Messier to settle in, I visited the restaurant in August and found the food overpriced and under-cared for.

The mixed baby lettuce salad boasted grilled peaches that were mealy and lacked sweetness. Mussels with leeks and “melted tomatoes” were so salty that the flavor of even the whole roasted garlic cloves that floated in the broth was obliterated.

One night, our highly capable waiter highly recommended the salmon entree, and I jumped — Jeff seemed like such a nice guy, he wouldn’t lie. But despite its pedigreed origins (organic, Scottish), the huge slab of fish lacked personality, and came with an “herb butter” that was cloyingly rich, with a hint of something like amaretto. I suspected an unhealthy reliance in the kitchen on the canned and the powdered. A vaguely Greek-themed roasted chicken had a jus that tasted of bullion, and the artichokes and kalamata olives hardly sang with freshness. I concluded that it was the view you were paying for.

Then I was informed that Messier, despite having been there for almost two months, was still cooking from the previous chef’s menu. The Sun Dial makes a point of calling its menu “seasonal,” the term here stretched to mean that selections change twice yearly, and perhaps chef Messier was not given authority to tweak things until he rolled out the fall/winter menu in early October.

So, back I went after Messier’s menu debuted this fall. Things have improved. Gone are the canned-tasting bizarre sauces. Ingredients have some integrity. But it’s not enough — at well past $30 for most entrees, I expect more than a nicely rich short rib with undercooked Brussels sprouts and mushy turnips on the side. I’d like to see a shrimp bisque that seems more updated than the decor. The siren song of a saffron-broth seafood stew was not only a strangely named “pot au feu,” a term for French beef stew — perhaps they confused it with another French term “bouillabaisse”? — it was also a letdown, its broth lacking the aroma and complexity that might bring out the ocean in the shrimp, clam and fish components. Messier has taken the menu from bad hotel food and brought it up a notch to uninspired Continental cuisine.

As the evening turns slowly, the dining room fills up, mainly with couples on special-occasion dinners, and families, all of whom look like they’ve come in from out of town, or at the least the distant suburbs. Once you get beyond the army of disgruntled hostesses, service here is commendable, a little formality with a little jokey shtick. If the out-of-town couples celebrating their anniversary don’t get the best meal of their lives, at least they’ll be well taken care of by their servers.

They also may get a decent dessert. Skip the super-sized eggy crème brulee, and go for the manjari tart, a rich round of brownie under macadamia brittle ice cream. The dessert is a little brash, but pure childish pleasure.

The Sun Dial could be one of Atlanta’s best restaurants. It has the space — if the dining room was spruced up a bit, it would be awe-inspiring. It has the view. It even has the waitstaff. What it doesn’t have is the welcome or the food. And as you take that exhilarating elevator ride back to earth, the letdown is both literal and figurative.