Table Talk: Top Restaurant Openings + Peaches and Cream Pound Cake
July 1 — Just like that, it’s July. Welcome to the table!
In today’s “Family Meal,” I’m rounding up the top five spring restaurant openings – the restaurants I have my eye on as possible contenders for the best new restaurants of 2025. Rough Draft Dining Reporter Sarra Sedghi and I will award the winners in early December after spending the year eating at each restaurant multiple times and evaluating our meals and service experiences. The top restaurant openings of summer will drop at the end of August, with the top fall restaurant openings dropping in early November.
This week, Sarra brings you a recipe for Leftie Lee’s Korean braised beef, used to make one of the Avondale Estates bakery-cafe’s most popular sandwiches. And, for “The Move,” I tell you where to enjoy peaches and cream pound cake on Moreland Avenue, paired with a glass of brut-dry prosecco.
Cheers!
🍸 Beth
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The Move:
Peaches and Cream Pound Cake at Whoopsie’s
🍑 One of my off-duty spots in Atlanta, those places where I like to wind down with friends, is Whoopsie’s on Moreland Avenue. This little bar, owned by Chef Hudson Rouse (Pure Quill Superette, Rising Son) and Tim Faulkner, cranks out superb cocktails, but the food here is equally serious business.
While I could go on and on about prime rib nights on Fridays and Saturdays or the blue plate specials on Tuesdays, I need to shout out the desserts at Whoopsie’s. Rouse’s menu features my favorite pecan pie in all of Atlanta. But it’s not pecan season yet, so you’ll find a cream-layered pound cake on the menu with fresh seasonal fruit. Earlier this spring, the pound cake included fresh strawberries. For summer, the peach is the IT girl of the desserts and even the salads at Whoopsie’s.
🎂 Two mini rounds of delicately moist pound cake are sandwiched together with semi-sweet whipped cream and slivers of fresh peaches. Another layer of peaches and cream tops the cake, a triumph of seasonal simplicity in dessert form, which I paired with a glass of brut-dry prosecco.
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Top 5 Spring Restaurant Openings
Today, I’m giving you my picks for the top five spring restaurant openings of 2025. It’s the second batch of new restaurants I am watching closely this year, and will continue to monitor each restaurant’s progress over the coming months. These restaurants join my previous picks for the top five winter restaurant openings of 2025, including Arepa Grill and Kitchen in Roswell, Yuji on the Eastside Beltline, Heaps in Decatur, Madeira Park in Poncey-Highland, and Fawn in Decatur.
🥪 Sammy’s ($$)
565 Northside Dr., Adair Park
Located at Abrams Fixtures on Northside Drive, Sammy’s opens early in the morning for breakfast sandwiches and coffee, before shifting to lunchtime sandwich options in the afternoon. And while the sandwich shop is only open until 3 p.m. on weekdays, Furst and Pinner plan to expand those hours into the evening this summer and add weekend brunch. Cocktails are also in the works, as is providing space for chefs to pop up during off days at the sandwich shop.
🍷 Side Saddle Wine Saloon ($$-$$$)
680 Hamilton Ave., Boulevard Heights
Backed by Finca to Filter coffee shop’s Kayla Bellman, Side Saddle brings the Southeast Beltline trail a natural wine bar with food from veteran Atlanta chef Carla Fears. Fears isn’t afraid to push boundaries when it comes to flavors and techniques, so the menu features everything from antipasti of olives and vegetables brined and pickled in-house, local charcuterie, and hearty seasonal salads to confit chicken wings, a cheeseburger, and a Monte Cristo PB&J. Side Saddle heavily features wine and spirits produced by women, people of color, and small estates and distilleries, focusing on sustainable and low-intervention production. Most wines by the glass average around $16.
🌮 Communidad Taqueria and Market ($$)
655 Highland Ave., Old Fourth Ward
Chef Nick Melvin opened Communidad Taqueria and Market in June in the old Highland Bakery space. The Tex-Mex restaurant and market serves an all-day menu of tacos, burritos, and margaritas, along with Mexican pastries and breads, such as conchas, and generous slices of cake from Teresa Finney of At Heart Panaderia. There’s plenty of seating here, including at tables, the bar, and outside on the sidewalk and small front patio, which includes a garden where Melvin and his team grow fresh herbs to use at the restaurant. While tacos and burritos are always the move at Communidad, I can also highly recommend the chilaquiles.
🍜 Laghman Express ($$-$$$)
3070 Windward Plaza, Alpharetta
New York City-based Uzbek-Uyghur restaurant Laghman Express opened off of Windward Parkway in Alpharetta earlier this spring and is already drawing crowds. The halal restaurant features dishes from the Central Asian country of Uzbekistan, including hand-pulled noodles, wontons, lamb-stuffed manti (dumplings), savory naan, and grilled meat and rice entrees. Try the Moroccan tea service. Check out the story on Laghman Express published in 285 South, a news publication dedicated to Metro Atlanta’s immigrant and refugee communities.
🍕 Phew’s Pies ($$)
The Municipal Market, 209 Edgewood Ave., Sweet Auburn
The wildly popular pizza delivery service owned by Matthew “Phew” Foster opened at Sweet Auburn Curb Market in May. Here, Foster leans into Atlanta with the flavors for his pizzas, like a lemon pepper wet pie topped with lemon pepper wet wings and an oxtail and ricotta cheese pizza topped with stewed carrots, butter beans, green and yellow onions, and Scotch Bonnet. I’m thrilled to see Foster finally land a more permanent spot for his roving pizza operation, which he tirelessly ran as a pop-up delivery service on Atlanta’s west side for years.
Leftie Lee’s Korean Braised Beef Recipe
By Sarra Sedghi
🇰🇷 This week, we’re bringing you the recipe for Leftie Lee’s Korean braised beef. Leftie Lee’s owner, Viv Lee, said this recipe is based on galbi-jim, a Korean short rib dish served on special occasions.
“It’s a huge part of our culture,” Lee said. “I love the flavors, and I thought one day, why can’t this be a sandwich?”
Leftie Lee’s utilizes the Korean braised beef in multiple dishes on the menu. It’s available in tacos, which come with kimchi, griddled cheese, in-house perilla ranch dressing, and crispy potatoes, and as a sandwich, which comes topped with perilla ranch, scallions, and the option of provolone on a milk bread bun. Lee uses perilla instead of chives to make the ranch dressing. Perilla, an herb in the mint family, commonly appears in Korean barbecue. Lee said the herb is often served in the basket of greens and has a flavor reminiscent of mint, basil, and anise.
🥩 The Korean braised beef has been in Lee’s culinary repertoire since the early stages of Leftie Lee’s, a pop-up she started before the pandemic.
“It’s a protein, but it seems like it can almost be a condiment or a topping,” she said.
And while it may seem like a lunch or dinner option, it’s also been used in breakfast dishes. Lee recalls serving a Korean braised beef scramble over crispy potatoes, topped with scrambled eggs, black pepper gravy, micro cilantro, and pickled onions.
Related stories:
• The top five recipes readers raved about in 2024
• Other recipes from the Rough Draft archives
The beauty of Lee’s take on galbi is its versatility and simplicity. Think of it like a Korean take on Sunday sauce or a meal-prep staple.
“If you throw it in the oven Sunday morning, it’ll be ready for dinner,” Lee said. “It’s well worth the wait, and it makes enough where you can utilize it for several meals.”
🌿 Lee’s recipe is more casual and cost-effective, instead calling for ground chuck. All of the ingredients are easily found at the supermarket; however, Lee recommends checking an international market for perilla.
Ingredients
- 4 lbs beef chuck, cut into palm-sized pieces
- 3 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tbsp black pepper
- 3 tbsp canola oil
- 2 medium sized onions, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 6 cloves of garlic
- 2 inch sized piece of ginger, peeled and sliced diagonally
- 1 cup low-sodium soy sauce
- 1 cup low-sodium beef broth
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup dried shiitake mushrooms (optional)
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Toss beef with kosher salt and black pepper and set aside. Heat canola oil over medium-high heat in an oven-proof pot or dutch oven.
- Sear beef for about 2 minutes on all sides and remove from the Dutch oven.
- Add the chopped onions, carrots, and garlic cloves to the Dutch oven. Sauté for 3 to 5 minutes. Add ginger, soy sauce, beef broth, brown sugar, and dried shiitake mushrooms, if using.
- Place beef back in the Dutch oven, making sure to get the pieces into one layer, if possible. Cover the Dutch oven with a lid and place in the preheated oven. Cook for 3 to 4 hours, or until easily shredded with a fork.
- Remove beef from the Dutch oven and reduce the liquid on the stovetop over medium-high heat for about 10 minutes.
- Serve immediately, or refrigerate and use up throughout the week.
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