Kaleidoscope Bistro & Pub - Atlanta, GA (March 2012)

One of the greatest opportunities / challenges to living in Atlanta is the sheer number of restaurants.   Finding a new restaurant.  Deciding if tonight is the night to try something new or whether you want to go to some place again that you've been before.  But the biggest challenge is hearing about the new restaurants.  There are a number of great apps that I use to find places:

• Burger GPS (the gospel that inspired this blog);
• Open Table (particularly the user reviews);
• Yelp (the ability to click on "Nearby" and let it find places);
• Urban Spoon (love the "Shake" feature that rolls like a slot machine to make a recommendation);
• Foodspotting (when you just need to SEE what the food looks like); and, lately
• The Atlanta Magazine Dining Guide

These apps, along with print and web sources, primarily those from Atlanta Magazine, help me to find new spots.  We're blessed in Atlanta to have a vibrant magazine that appeals to foodies.  The "A-List" section is the genesis of their app above.  It has provided me with lists, like:

• Atlanta' 100 Best Restaurants
• Cheap Eats (these two have been in paper form in my trunk for three or four years - they do reside in a sealed plastic envelope to protect them from the elements <g>)
• Atlanta's Best Barbecue (June 2011);
• The City's Best 50 Best Restaurants (August 2011) - you can see my attempts to conquer these two lists here; and, most recently,
• Eat Cheap (March 2012).

The new Eat Cheap gave me the heads up on three new burger joints that weren't previously on my radar: Seed Kitchen & Bar in Marietta and Kevin Rathbun Steak and Kaleidoscope Bistro & Pub in Atlanta.

So, when driving near Buckhead on a weekend afternoon, I took the chance to swing into Kaleidoscope.

The place was fairly packed, but there was a seat available at the bar, so I grabbed a stool, ordered a Diet Coke and took a look at the menu.  The first that that I noticed was that the chef was a fan of duck fat - the fries were battered in it and the mayo was made with it. 

I ordered the double Kaleidoscope burger - slaw, pimiento cheese, green tomato chow-chow, pierced on a skewer with a bread and butter pickle).  The burger was offered as either a double or single 4 oz. patty.  When I think of a 4 oz. patty, I expect a flat thin burger.   When this one came out, it was surprising in its smaller diameter and thickness.  And this was some seriously good pimiento cheese.   When I commented on the quality of the PC to the bartender,  he said that the signature burger had recently won Burger Battle of the Highlands and part of the reason was a change in the pimiento cheese recipe - the addition of duck fat mayo and bacon.  How can you make ANYTHING worse by adding bacon?  I was given two choices for the way I wanted my burger: brown (medium well) or pink (medium rare).

I went with pink.   This was a very good burger.  The kind that if I was nearby, I'd make the decision to go there and have one again.  And the single is more than enough burger for one.  But I'd have a double, again.   Unless I decided to have the pimiento cheese app, followed by a single Kaleidoscope burger.  Decision, decisions, decisions...