Southern Empire

Since I've been in Atlanta, I've been wanting to try Empire State South, one of Hugh Acheson's restaurants.  My friend, Jo has been raving about their breakfast for about a year now, so we went for Sunday brunch yesterday.  And despite the fact that it's been awhile since I've been to church, it was close to a religious experience....

PS - if anyone knows what this font is, I need it now!  

We started with coffee, since medical school has made me an addict.  I had a plain ol' cup of Joe and Jo got a mocha.  It tasted like hot chocolate, which in my opinion is exactly how a mocha should taste - delicioso!

Jo got pimento cheese with bacon marmalade, plus toast and a biscuit.  Just heaven.  If you haven't had true southern pimento cheese you are missing out.  And despite the fact that I usually don't eat bacon I just couldn't avoid it and it was worth it...

I got a mixed lettuces salad that was interesting and delicious.  It had a pickled egg, radish, pickled cauliflower, housemade goat cheese and a pecan vinaigrette.  Yum!  The purple egg and yellow cauliflower were gorgeous and it all went together perfectly!  Why can't I make fancy salads like this at home?

 

They even have a bocce court - if you want to be totally hipster!  Or you can be hipster my simply taking instagram photos of the bocce court...

They had a great deal for dessert called a Goodie Plate.  3 desserts from their illustrious pastry bar for $5.  So we took them home and devoured them straight away.  Our choices were the Phatty Cake - two soft ginger cookies with vanilla mascarpone cream in the center,

a mini blueberry pie,

and a strawberry cupcake with vanilla cream.

I think if all this med school stuff backfires, I've definitely found my calling as a pastry chef - or maybe a pastry critic!  But then I'd also have to pursue becoming a professional runner so I didn't inflate to 500 lbs.

This is definitely what I love about this cross-country journey.  Finding great little spots and eating my heart out.  Again, I'm also finding great running routes so I can still fit into my white coat...  Off to run 2.5 miles!  And then eat some more...