Woodfire Grill: An Appreciation

October 16, 2006

Woodfire Grill, in Atlanta, is my favorite restaurant. Woodfire Grill is a fine restaurant that prepares Northern California style food with local, organic ingredients from Georgia, in a daily changing menu of olive oil tasting and dishes prepared traditionally in the wood oven, braised, or grilled.

Because I am interested in food and I love Woodfire Grill, I decided to talk with Chef/Owner Michael Tuohy and I learned how much food is important to him. Chef Tuohy thinks that "dining out should be pleasurable."

And a dining experience at Woodfire is just that. As you walk into Woodfire Grill, you enter through the beautifully decorated room that is the Café at Woodfire, a more casual version of the main restaurant, with a few of the signature dishes from the main menu, as well as cured meats, cheeses, a selection of antipasti and a robust, juicy burger. When you pass the café, you get to the bar, and since I can't experience that now, being twelve, I will write about that when I can fully experience the bar. My mom says that the wine list is great but for now I will have to stick with tasting olive oil instead of wine.

After you pass the bar, you enter the main dining area with the "chef's table" across from the wood-fire grill, where people can sit and watch the chefs preparing the wood-fired food. Then you move into more dining area, and then to the rooms where you can have small private parties.

Chef Tuohy thinks that "Life is too short to cook with bad ingredients!" and that is why he opened Woodfire, so he could share his love of great ingredients with everyone. I enjoy eating at Woodfire because they use fresh and organic ingredients that make really great food.

I relish almost everything at Woodfire, but my favorite things to get there are probably the wood fired pizzettas, or the wood grilled painted hills hanger steak with fingerling potatoes, steel pan greens and roasted shallot sauce. My family usually gets the olive oil tasting, and the fritto misto of calamari, white fish, white shrimp, onion, lemon, capers, parsley, and homemade aioli. In the fritto misto there are fried lemon slices that are divine the way that they are tart but salty and melt in your mouth. (The menu changes daily, so the items I have listed may no longer be on the menu.)

The pizzettas are usually different each day, and some of the variations in the past have included: house made Italian sausage, san marzano tomato, and fontina val d'aosta; margherita: bufala mozzerella, san marzano tomato, and bazil; artisan cured meats, san marzano tomato, fontina, and pecorino. The pizzettas at Woodfire are made with a thin crust that is crisp on the outside but tender in the middle, made fresh every day. I enjoy the pizzettas because they are the size for one person (although I usually take home the leftovers and have them for lunch the next day) and they are rich and the crust is so delicious.

There is usually a steak choice but side dishes change seasonally according to what produce is in season. I have only had the steak with fingerling potatoes, steel pan greens and roasted shallot sauce, but in summer the steak is served with fingerling potatoes, summer squash, and summer truffle butter.

Whenever I go to Woodfire I always try to have something new or different so I will have had a wide array of food. And even if I get something new I usually steal off of my mom and dad or sister's plates. When we sit in the café my sister usually gets the burger, which is one of the best hamburgers I have ever had, so I usually eat whatever she doesn't.

The dessert menu usually changes a lot but some of my favorite deserts that I have had are the boca negra cake which is a flourless chocolate cake with a white chocolate sauce, a cookie platter with different types of cookies, and an ice cream combination that was really delectable.

In general I adore everything about Woodfire, from the sublime olive oil tasting to the last scrumptious little crumb of the last ginger cookie.

Isis is fourteen years old and is really interested in food because her dad is a good cook. She was practically raised in a Vietnamese restaurant, and as a baby ate her first solid foods there, which were rice noodles. She tries most foods that are offered to her and her parents urge her to also. For example, when she was 7 years old, she was at a French restaurant and her parents were having snails and they easily talked her into trying them. They ended up being pretty good! Isis takes ballet, plays soccer, sings in a choir, and loves to travel. Isis went to Italy for two weeks and when she came back she went on and on about the food, especially the gelato. Isis thinks that if you are going to eat, why not eat well if you can? There seems to be no reason not to.

Email questions or comments for these two young women to webmaster@drgourmet.com.