Omnivore - Portion control meets disaster at the Globe

When my friend Gregg told me he’d never eaten at the Globe (75 Fifth St., 404-541-1490), I insisted we lunch there today. We’re both trying to exercise some “portion control,” and I told him it was the perfect place to eat something light. You know, a salad. Of course, we ended up eating a huge number of other “small” dishes, plus two salads.

Chef Joshua Perkins has tweaked the menu lately. Among the starters we sampled were bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with chorizo over a tomato sauce, cucumber-mint soup and steak asada with radishes and cabrales blue cheese. My entree salad (foreground, above) was slices of seared lamb with celery, feta, Italian parsley, mint, pine nuts and cumin vinaigrette. Gregg ordered a Nicoise salad (rear, above) made with high-quality seared tuna, haricots verts, yellow tomatoes, olives and capers.

Having blown our portion control, we moved onto desserts — three of ‘em. A peach tart was amazing, made with the best of Georgia’s most famous fruit I’ve tasted in several years, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Then there was a dark cherry sorbet and a strawberry ice cream with two macaroon-like cookies (at left). And a lemon tart with blueberries.

The restaurant has also designed a new cocktail menu and Gregg had to try a whiskey sour topped with chamomile foam. It was sweeter than the desserts. I settled for two shots of espresso.

The Globe is one of the best restaurants in our city. The interior is probably the city’s best example of Euro-style minimalism. And it’s fun. The restaurant screens a film every Wednesday at 8:45 p.m. and hosts other events and specials throughout the week. Click here for details.