Au Pied de Cochon in Atlanta

[micropundit]

The Intercontinental Hotel Buckhead Atlanta,scheduled to open in November 2004, has announced that it has contracted with the Les Freres Blanc group of Paris to open a AU PIED de COHON in the hotel.This will be the first american location for the famed restaurant.According to press reports,the restaurant will have the same menu as its french sibling and be open 24 hours a day.

[halland]

Wow! I just read this, forgot where I was and thought "I need to post this on EG"!

Hal

Edited June 25, 2004 by halland (log)

[Gifted Gourmet]

According to press reports,the restaurant will have the same menu as its french sibling

voici le menu de Paris

Si c'est n'importe quelle indication de la nourriture, Atlanta est le plus chanceux!

(if this is any indication of the food, Atlanta is most fortunate!)

Et merci de ces bonnes nouvelles, micropundit !

(and thank you for this good news, micropundit!)

Edited June 26, 2004 by Gifted Gourmet (log)

[therese]

Here's to hoping that they have somebody re-do the English version of the menu.

Loved the "grilled chitterling sausage"---they might want to translate that one back into French.

[therese]

Cut off the "anglais" bit at the end of the web address and you can get to the French site. Way more appetizing.

[Gifted Gourmet]

Here's to hoping that they have somebody re-do the English version of the menu.

With the magnitude of their investment, I rather assume that this will be done forthwith!

I am personally looking forward to this .. even though I stayed in the First arrondissement in Paris, I definitely should have tried it .... Perhaps a new opportunity now in Atlanta!

[Gifted Gourmet]

Cut off the "anglais" bit at the end of the web address and you can get to the French site. Way more appetizing.

Quite true once again, therese!

I would order Côte de Bœuf Grillée et son Os à Moelle, Poêlée de Haricots Verts et Pommes Frites Maison over steak frites any day!

[winesonoma]

Does the name translate into the" feet of the pig". Only have Petanque french translations to go by.

[therese]

Well, pig's foot, anyway. Which is the house specialty, so altogether appropriate.

The "au" bit in this instance means "at", with an implied "the home of" or "the place of" or "a restaurant that serves really kickass". You could also think of it like the name of a pub, as in "The Crazy Rooster" or "The Big Anchor" or whatever.

[micropundit]

Until I had read the website provided by GG,I had no idea what a big deal this is.This is not just 5 guys named Moe here;the owners are like the Buckhead Life group of Paris,only they have been in business longer.What is most impressive to me is how they have survived and grown in what is generally regarded as the restaurant capitol of the world.

Is Atlanta ready for this?

[therese]

Is Atlanta ready for this?

I'd say the question should be more along the lines of "Are they ready for Atlanta?"

[Gifted Gourmet]

Until I had read the website provided by GG,I had no idea what a big deal this is.This is not just 5 guys named Moe here;the owners are like the Buckhead Life group of Paris,only they have been in business longer.What is most impressive to me is how they have survived and grown in what is generally regarded as the restaurant capitol of the world.

Is Atlanta ready for this?

I will wager that indeed this city will not only be ready, but will welcome just such a level of dining with open arms. This is the New South and, as the posts on the eG Southeast Forum will cheerfully attest, we ain't just about 'cue 'n' sweet tea any longer.

There is a thread by jeffj, complete with a photo essay on his dining experiences here in Atlanta: here

I think Atlanta is actually on the precipice of a new growth spurt both business-wise and culture-wise. Restaurants and sports and entertainment will all compete for the dollars .. whether one will prevail over the others or all will reap success remains a moot point. Time will tell. But, after all, why would such restauranteurs sink this kind of investment in a city about which they had doubts??

[Kevin Tran]

I think you are exactly right about the Atlantan palate, Gifted.

Atlanta may be the unofficial capitol of the South, but you'd be hard-pressed to find someone that actually grew up in the area. Most residents have migrated to Atlanta over the past 15 years because of the job growth. The diversity in Atlanta is on par with any other metro area. The market is there for any type of cuisine.

The failure of a great unique restaurants may not have anything to do with the cuisine, which many place the blame (eg. Atlanta being a steak-and-potatoes town re: Blais demise). A restaurant is a business and every one is different in the way they click with their customer base.

I know nothing about this French restaurant. I hope they don't rely on their fame alone.

Kevin

[Gifted Gourmet]

Has anyone eaten here since this thread began last summer?

Read anything or heard anything of interest?

[therese]

Has anyone eaten here since this thread began last summer?

Read anything or heard anything of interest?

←

We ate at Au Pied de Cochon soon after it opened a couple of months ago. Food uneven, service truly dreadful (server very nice but entirely untrained), management pleasant, dining room pretty.

We'll go back as soon as we hear that things are improving. We haven't yet, so any more recent reports welcome.

[Gifted Gourmet]

the update I had been waiting for ...

The raw bar and towers:

Everyone else is ordering towering displays of seafood in grand French fashion: "le degustation," "le royal" and the whopper of them all, "le super royal." These are basically the big, bigger and biggest versions of raw bar offerings that come in woven red baskets filled with ice and set in tiers. They look like something Carmen Miranda would have worn as a hat, minus the bananas.

The pig's feet:

I understand the delicacies of this dish and its gelatinous powers over cultures from Mexico to China. And, indeed, I've had pigs' feet that I found to be halfway palatable. But I'd rather consume any other part of a pig than his feet, no matter how they're cooked or who's doing the cooking.  So perhaps I am biased in my dislike of the pigs' feet at Au Pied de Cochon, where they are encrusted in breading and roasted, yet left stringy and fatty, with connective tissue abounding. (There are, after all, more than 30 bones in a pig's foot — a fact the manager will gladly point out as he splits the hoof open for you.)

[gwilson]

(First of all, sorry to be so long-winded.)

I ate there recently - I believe it was during November, but I honestly don't remember exactly. (Could that be a sign?)

As an aside (skip this paragraph, if you're squemish about asides), I had attempted to eat there much earlier - somewhere around the third week they had been open. I drive through to the valet and ask, to be sure, that they valet for the restaurant also. He says yes, and asks me if I have a reservation. No I don't - it was a spur of the moment thing. "There's no way you'll be able to get a table, sir." I think, that's very nice of him to inform me ahead of time instead of charging me for the parking and letting me find out on my own. But maybe I'll get a seat at the bar. No, that's also impossible. So I go to Fat Matt's and have a blast.

Anyway (if you're still with me), I go back around the middle of November. It's the approximate same time and the same day of the week as my first visit. I walk through the beautiful lobby and around the nice lounge/sitting area. (The valet this time has no idea if the restaurant is busy or not.) I see that the bar is not packed, but quite full. I ask the host for a table for one, and he had no problem sitting me. Besides myself, there was a couple a few tables away and a group of 6 across the room. That was it. (Oooo - another sign.)

My waiter was very nice and pleasant, if not very well informed. There is a little blurb in the middle of the menu that says, paraphrased, "Ask about our own cocktail: Eaux Grasses Surestimées!!!!" Intrigued by the phrasing, I ask about Eaux Grasses Surestimées!!! Having taken a few years of French, I believe my reading and pronunciation of the language to be passable. And yet, the waiter looks at me quite quizzically. "Do you mean the pig's foot?" Um, no. So I say it again and point to the menu. "Oh, I believe that is the sauce. Yes. That is the sauce." Er? Sauce? For what? Cocktails have their own sauce now? Those crazy French!

So I order a house Cape Cod (which was nine dollars by the way). I also decide on the pig's foot, but order in English as to not receive some exotic cocktail sans sauce. And I throw in some creamed spinach to boot, since the $19 pig's foot is only served with a side of bearnaise.

I should admit now that I have never eaten the feet of a pig, even the pickled variety that is popular in the South. So my review is somewhat blind in that respect.

But I'm pretty sure this is not what it's supposed to be about. The foot arrived on an unadorned plate (not including ramekin of bearnaise). Noting the intense brown color of the breading, I tear into the foot with knife and fork. A bit fatty - but fat's good, right? I take a bite of meat, and it's quite tender and very moist. I take a bite of crust. Ew! It's actually hard to describe for some reason. It didn't really taste burnt, more like singed. I guess. Burnt equals black to me. And the crust was not black - but definately not GBAD. Think of dark khaki.

I'm taking a second bite of meat to clense the taste out (and I recognize the taste - I just can't place it for some reason). And the waiter stops by, "That's not really how we usually eat the pig's foot. But that's okay if you want to do it that way. We kind of slice it (with hand motions added) kind of. Um, I can show you." No, I'll just use the old Neanderthal-hack, but thanks. And why didn't the person delievering the food offer to do that, if that's the way it's 'done'. And how do you slice something with so many bones in it?

So anyway, I try a couple more bites of crust along the way of finishing the meat. And a bite of fat - which reeks of the same taste/odor as the crust. (Singed fat maybe? I haven't tasted burnt flour in a long time - maybe that's all it is.) The bearnaise tasted like bearnaise. The creamed spinach was good, but nothing special by any means. At the end of it all, I still had quite a carcass on the plate.

I would like to go back and visit the XO bar. They have quite the selection of cognacs, and it seems to have a nice vibe. And the lounge area seems very cozy. But I think I'll keep getting my pig from Fat Matt's.

-Greg

[Gifted Gourmet]

It appears from your wonderfully detailed description of Au Pied de Cochon, gwilson, that not only is their service sadly lacking in the finesse one would expect from something at this level of dining, but that their signature pig's foot is not even worth making the trip there .. thank you for an outstanding, a very objective, view of this place!

No wonder the papers here raved about their raw bar towers!