Chai Pani's achari baingan recipe revealed

Chef Interview Outtakes + Friday Night Smashburgers and Martinis

Aug. 20 — Happy Tuesday, and welcome to the table!

In today’s “Family Meal,” I’m bringing you a few outtakes from my interview with Chef Craig Richards, who opens French-Italian restaurant Elise tonight at the Woodruff Arts Center, home to the High Museum of Art, Atlanta Symphony, and Alliance Theater.

➕ For “The Move,” I tell you where to get a Friday night smashburger with a $9 martini in Adair Park. And Rough Draft Dining Reporter Sarra Sedghi provides you with a recipe for Chai Pani’s achari baingan (eggplant with pickling spices).

Cheers!

🍸 Beth

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The Move: Burger Night at Sammy’s

🍔 Sammy’s, owned by former BoccaLupo general manager Jason Furst and Chef Sam Pinner, has quickly become the neighborhood spot for sandwiches and coffee since opening this spring in Adair Park.

Located at Abrams Fixtures on Northside Drive, the small jewel-box restaurant often teems with customers lining up to order sandwiches throughout the day, like the meaty Italian sub Samborghini and the Samuel with smoked brisket pastrami and Swiss cheese served on rye toast. While currently open for breakfast and lunch until 3 p.m. on weekdays, Fridays include extended hours.

🍗 Every Friday, from 4-8 p.m., Furst and Pinner serve single and double-stack smashburgers, drinks, and specials like barbecue nachos and whole smoked wings. But the compact smashburger, which comes with a single ($8) or double patty ($12), is the main attraction on Friday nights, evidenced by the tightly packed dining room and people huddled around tables filled with Samburgers during a recent visit.

Pinner doesn’t monkey with the simplicity of the smashburger, giving it a little zhuzh with mayo, melty American cheese, pickle chips, and red onions sandwiched in a toasted brioche bun. Pair with a glass of bubbles or the “champagne of beers,” Miller High Life. There’s also a $9 50/50 martini made with Murrell’s Row Tulsi gin and La Quintinye Royal Extra Dry Vermouth.

🗣️ BTW, a little birdy tells me Sammy’s will open soon for weekend service. Stay tuned!

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Elise Interview Outtakes: Five Facts to Know

✍️ Yesterday, I published a story on Elise, the new French-Italian restaurant from Chef Craig Richards, opening this evening at the Woodruff Arts Center. You may know Richards from his Michelin-recognized Italian restaurant, Lyla Lila, near the Fox Theater in Midtown. But Richards has been on the scene for years, making a name for himself via his pasta prowess at restaurants like La Tavola in Virginia-Highland and St. Cecilia in Buckhead.

I spoke with Richards last week about Elise, who discussed his culinary career, his pasta-making skills, and how he felt about opening a restaurant in one of the city’s most iconic spaces. I’m bringing you some outtakes from our conversation, including five facts you might not know about Richards, Elise, and the restaurant space designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.

🍝 Mastering Pasta

Richards learned the craft of making pasta from his mentor, renowned Italian chef and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich, while working at her eponymous Kansas City restaurant, Lidia. A Nebraska native, Richards was working as an editor for a publishing company in Kansas City by day and as a cook by night. Wanting to make restaurants his full-time career, Richards’s roommate encouraged him to apply to be a line cook at the restaurant where he worked. That restaurant was Lidia’s.

Landing the job at Lidia’s was life-changing for Richards, who traveled to Italy to work in restaurants and immerse himself in the country’s culture and cuisine.

🫂 Opening His First Restaurant

In December 2019, Richards opened Lyla Lila with restaurateur Billy Streck. He called it a career-defining moment. Three months later, the pandemic would force Richards to temporarily close Lyla Lila and navigate his fledgling restaurant through months of uncertainty. Richards said he leaned into what everyone was craving at the time: comfort and connection.

“That opening was trial by fire. I remember calling restaurant owners and chefs and asking them what they were doing. No one knew what to do. It was completely foreign territory for everyone. In many ways, I feel like being so new may have saved Lyla Lila because no one had any expectations,” Richards told me.

“We pivoted our menu to more comfort food as that was what people were craving, and it was comfortable for us to cook that way,” Richards said. “It helped us make real personal connections with people. The pandemic actually helped us figure out the menu at Lyla Lila once we reopened. It also taught us the importance of personal connections, whether it’s food, at the host stand, at the bar, or in the dining room.”

🎨 Landing at the Woodruff Arts Center

Richards first dined inside the future home of Elise back in 2005, when the space was home to Table 1280, led by Chef Sean Doty.

“It’s an absolute iconic space with the scalloped ceiling that kind of looks like eggshells. It’s so airy and minimalist, like an art gallery,” Richards said. “I first asked about it in 2023. One of our [Lyla Lila] regulars sits on the board for the symphony, and I told them I was looking for a space. That conversation got the ball rolling.”

🏢 The Renzo Piano Design

You’ve likely seen Renzo Piano’s work in your travels. The renowned Italian architect is responsible for the designs of The Shard in London, The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the New York Times Building in New York.

The restaurant space and one other building on the Woodruff Arts Center campus were designed by the Renzo Piano Workshop, an architecture firm led by Piano and his partners. Piano’s designs feature open, airy spaces filled with natural light and a mix of traditional and modern building materials.

Table 1280 opened in 2005 as part of the expansion of the Woodruff Art Center. Twenty years later, Elise opens as part of a $67 million renovation of the campus set to debut in full this winter.

🦪 Richards’s Favorite Elise Dish

At Elise, Richards showcases his love of seafood on the menu, seen in a handful of entrees and pastas, and four raw fish preparations. But the smoked oysters are his favorites.

“The smoked oysters with crème fraîche and panisses stand out to me. Right now, we’re working with Murder Point oysters and oysters from Virginia that don’t have super high salinity,” Richards said. “We cold-smoke the oysters so they’re still served raw, then mix the crème fraîche with the panisse to create little chickpea fries. I found fantastic vintage oyster plates from France to serve them on to bring a bit of antiquity to the modern space.”

➡️ Read more about Elise here.

Chai Pani’s Achari Baingan Recipe

🍆 This week, we’re bringing you the recipe for Chai Pani’s achari baingan (eggplant with pickling spices).

For Chef de Cuisine Sahar Siddiqi, searing eggplant is synonymous with summertime.

“Achari baingan is very much a dinner my mother would make when it was too hot to make anything that involved standing in front of a hot stove for too long,” Siddiqi said. “My sisters and I loved this dish so much we dubbed it ‘bangin’ baingan’ and were often caught eating it cold out of the fridge.”

Like most South Asian recipes, this recipe begins with blooming, or heating spices in warm, neutral oil. Don’t skip this step. In addition to fully dispersing the aromatics, blooming spices provide a toasty, and if using seeds, delightfully crunchy texture.

You can really tell if the spices and aromatics are cooking well by the way they smell,” Siddiqi said. “Don’t be afraid of keeping the heat on the higher side so everything gets a chance to bloom.”

🛒 Siddiqi likes to shop for produce, meat, and bread at Grant Park Farmers Market on Sundays. But for South Asian ingredients, she heads to Cherian’s in Decatur. Siddiqi also enjoys having lunch at Cherian’s, often ordering idli sambar (steamed rice cakes in lentil stew).

Although the Chai Pani’s achari baingan recipe was written with fairy tale eggplant in mind, it will also work with Indian (aka baby) eggplant, Italian eggplant, or long, skinny varieties such as Chinese and Japanese.

“Steer clear of globe eggplants as they tend to be seedy and watery and don’t hold their shape as well as other varieties,” Siddiqi said. You can salt your eggplant before cooking to remove excess moisture and cut the bitterness.

And if you can’t find Thai bird chilis, opt for Serranos instead. Simply dice one to two peppers, depending on your heat preference, and use accordingly. Siddiqi said nigella seeds and fresh curry leaves can be omitted, although they lend a unique flavor to the dish and are worth the drive to Cherian’s.

🍳 This recipe calls for a rondeau pan, a two-handled, flat-bottomed sautéing pan with straight sides. A rondeau pan is deeper than a typical frying pan or skillet, but shallower than a Dutch oven or cocotte. You can also use a 12-inch stainless steel braiser, a 12-inch sauté pan with a lid, or even a six-quart Dutch oven.Ingredients

1/2 cup neutral oil, such as canola or grapeseed
1.5 lbs Asian, Indian, or fairytale eggplant, divided with the stem on, then cut into 2-inch pieces
1.5 lbs Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 2-inch cubes (skin on)
3 cups red onions, small diced
1 cup diced Roma tomatoes
1/4 cup minced garlic
1/4 cup minced ginger
1/2 cup fresh curry leaves
3 to 4 Thai bird chilis, split in half (less or more depending on heat preference)
2 Tbsp cumin seeds
1 Tbsp fennel seed
1 Tbsp nigella seed (kalonji)
3 Tbsp salt
2 cups water
1/2 cup whole milk plain yogurt
1 lemon, juiced
Cilantro to garnish

Directions

Turn heat off, add juice of 1 lemon and a handful of chopped cilantro. Serve with Basmati rice.

Heat oil in a wide rondeau pan over medium-high heat. Once hot, add cumin seeds, nigella seeds, and fennel seeds, and let the seeds crackle and sizzle for 30 seconds.

Add curry leaves and Thai bird chilis, and let them pop, and immediately add onions. Reduce the heat to medium and let onions sweat until almost translucent, about 7 minutes. They should not brown.

Increase heat to medium-high, add diced potatoes, stir with the onion mixture, and let brown and cook for 5 minutes.

Add diced tomatoes, ginger, and garlic, and 2 Tbsp salt. Mix and cook until the tomatoes have broken down and are soft.

Next, add eggplant, remaining salt, and stir. Let everything cook until the eggplant starts to soften. Add 2 cups of water and decrease heat to medium-low. Cover and let cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking, until the eggplant is soft and the potatoes are 90 percent cooked through.

Add yogurt, mix, increase heat to medium, and cover again. Let simmer for 5 to 7 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked, eggplant is tender, and oil has separated out.

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🍔 Smashburgers + $9 martinis