2011 Fall Dining Guide
By Tom Sietsema
Sunday, October 16, 2011

Nostalgia draws me to Vidalia, the city's most sophisticated Southern lair, but the cooking at this 18-year-old downtown destination keeps me coming back. The bread basket makes a proper first impression: It would take an iron will not to finish the warm corn bread, onion-laced focaccia and old-fashioned potato roll. Alice Waters, the Mother of California Cuisine, could have tossed the gorgeous salad of fluffy greens, Marcona almonds, shaved cauliflower, butter beans, dried apricot and lime dressing. Chicken-fried sweetbreads gathered on a raised waffle with buttery asparagus and a base of bacon "fondue" sends a down-home dish to a master class. Sliced duck breast with creamy Carolina rice and charred peach approaches bliss but misses by a block... a block of tough duck confit, that is. More often than not, chef de cuisine Hamilton Johnson provides fresh reminders that the city is below the Mason-Dixon line. The non-edible drawbacks include a windowless dining room and the occasional obsequious server. Yet, surrounded by a palette of soft yellows and pale greens, we forget about the most miserable summer on record for the duration of dinner. A chorus line of scored scallops interspersed with corn agnolotti and treated to snips of white truffle, and a trembling corn pudding sweetened with strawberries for dessert, will do that to a diner.