Restaurant Review - Ray’s in the City brings fresh seafood downtown

“It’s just like San Francisco,” Wayne said, as we trudged up a hill to Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta, after parking three blocks away.

A panhandler shook a super-size McDonald’s cup full of change as we walked by. “Hey, fellas, how’s about some change!”

“You’re right,” I told Wayne. “It’s exactly like San Francisco.”

Actually, downtown Atlanta, especially the Fairlie-Poplar district, is looking better than ever, although finding a parking space that doesn’t cost as much as a dinner entree isn’t easy if there’s any kind of event happening. The Peachtree Center area, where we were headed, still retains John Portman’s hideous architecture, but, here and there, flourishes have been added to humanize it.

We thought about taking a nostalgia trip and dining at Sundial, the revolving restaurant atop the Westin Peachtree Plaza, which is without doubt the ugliest hotel I have seen since we were marooned in a huge honeycomb in the middle of nowhere in Turkey five years ago. We checked out Sundial’s menu at the concierge’s stand. Its prices resemble a report of payoffs to lottery winners. “We’ll be back for brunch,” I said.

We landed at Ray’s in the City (240 Peachtree St., 404-524-9224), which opened recently in a location that has been home to restaurants like Rio Bravo and Siesta Grill in recent years. It’s owned by the same people who have, for the last 20 years, operated the popular Ray’s on the River in Marietta on the banks of the Chattahoochee.

Of course, the clientele here is mainly convention and business people, but to the restaurant’s credit, prices are not larcenous. And service is spectacular. In fact, I have seldom encountered a server as good as Julie, Waitron of the Week. I am guessing her real job is poetry, or the restaurant colorfully scripts the staff’s language. Her description of each fish was more complex and sensual than you get from wine tasters. The slightly flaky texture, the hint of oil, the sweet notes and the tendency of the skin to caramelize. ...

We ate well. A $12 sampler from the raw bar included three varieties of oysters and a Top Neck clam. The Steamboat oyster was the best by far, splashed just slightly with vinegar. Please don’t dunk these subtle beauties in ketchup! The restaurant, which is quite sprawling, also has a sushi bar. We sampled a spider roll, made with fried soft-shell crab: average.

Wayne and I fought over who got to order the “day’s recommendation,” wahoo from Dulac, La. Julie’s description convinced us both that our lives would make considerable turnarounds if we would just try it. I relented and ordered the restaurant’s best seller, horseradish-crusted grouper.

Of course, the restaurant was out of the life-changing wahoo and Wayne contented himself with halibut from Alaska. Unless you order from the fancy entrees, as I did, all fish here is simply grilled with olive oil and lemon. The halibut was the better choice of the two entrees we sampled, although I did not care for its accompaniment of commercial-tasting saffron rice.

My grouper was a mixed success. The fish itself was just fine, nice and meaty with the usual al dente texture, but I didn’t care for the horseradish crust, which was basically tasteless. “Are my taste buds dead or does this have utterly no zing?” I asked Wayne. He confirmed its tastelessness. Nonetheless, plenty of flavor could be picked up in the whipped potatoes encircled by an electrically yellow-orange sauce that was in turn encircled by a thick balsamic vinegar. The plate looked rather like a fried egg whose yolk had just been pierced.

For dessert, we shared Key lime pie, which also had psychedelic plating. This time, the plate was decorated with a kaleidoscopic circle of mango and raspberry coulis. The pie was fine, but, just like the grouper’s crust, it lacked zing. Wayne squeezed lime on it.