Review: Pop-up Gigi’s Italian Kitchen marries checkered-tablecloth nostalgia with modern technique

Photograph by Martha Williams

Atlanta has Italian places to eat of all stripes, but what it has lacked—until now—is a position combining the tacky romance of an previous-school Italian American crimson-sauce joint with fashionable culinary strategies and refined displays. The strategy for Gigi’s Italian Kitchen area came to Eric Brooks in 2019 whilst he was checking out North Beach—San Francisco’s bustling Tiny Italy neighborhood, the place popular chefs like April Bloomfield had injected new strength into beloved traditional destinations like Tosca Cafe. Why, he questioned himself, never we have a little something like that in Atlanta?

Brooks and his friend Jacob Armando had been conversing about launching a pop-up in 2019, soon after San Francisco, they started laying out the vision for what would be Gigi’s, and started carrying out gigs all around town. Their existing predicament is a three-night time-a-7 days residency at Gato, Nicholas Stinson’s Candler Park restaurant that, more than the a long time, has served as an incubator for a broad array of talented cooks and promising ideas. (See sidebar at the conclusion of this post.) Gigi’s menu changes noticeably from 7 days to 7 days the consistent is the thoroughly outstanding foodstuff.

THE Team

Both of those companions are youthful Southern dudes with encounter in great dining—they achieved in the kitchen area at Bacchanalia, where by Brooks was a sous chef. Armando, who not long ago turned 28, grew up in Stone Mountain and Decatur, in which his family members ran a humble meat-and-a few. Brooks, 30, was born in East Stage. His father has a modest organic and natural farm in Fairburn and has offered greens to areas like Bacchanalia and Kimball Property. Assisting his father out gave Brooks his entry into the restaurant globe, and gave him a nickname: “Green Guy,” shortened to “GG” and at some point the inspiration behind “Gigi’s.”

Photograph by Martha Williams

THE Food items

“Don’t give people today also several alternatives,” Armando informed me. “They’ll make the erroneous 1.” I really respect the partners’ tightly curated menu. The ultrathin eye-of-round carpaccio—painted with a lick of arugula salsa verde and showered with young arugula leaves, torn rice crackers, and huge flakes of Manchego—is magical in its tender depth. The beautiful fried polenta cake with creme fraiche and caviars (both of those trout roe and sturgeon eggs) blew me away the to start with time I stopped by. The cooks also have a way with brassicas, as evidenced by a mixture of cauliflower, broccolini, cabbage, and broccolo fiolaro (from Bartram Trail, a farm in Winterville specializing in seasonal organic and natural greens for cooks) that they prepare dinner in excess of coals on a yakitori grill, season with Calabrian chilis, and provide with a briny white anchovy condiment.

Brooks and Armando make use of the exact yakitori contraption—which has been utilized at Gato for years—for a 6-ounce key New York strip, which they plate with bordelaise and collard greens (from Brooks’s dad’s farm) glazed in cacio e pepe sauce. There’s normally a solitary pasta, manufactured in-residence: spaghetti alla chitarra in tomato sauce, or cavatelli with paper-skinny hakurei turnips, fleshy maitake mushrooms, and a sauce of pureed turnips. Anything on the menu, from crab-stuffed arancini to chicken Milanese, is as exactly ready as everything you’d uncover in a great-eating institution. For dessert, the associates received a recipe for cloudlike, classically manufactured tiramisu from Poor Hendrix’s Aaron Russell—a friend, as very well as a person of the city’s most effective pastry cooks.

THE Beverages

The restricted beverage alternatives, curated by Brooks, Armando, and Stinson—a couple of cocktails, a short wine list—are clever and proper for so little a menu and so little a crew. I was rather a fan of the Godfather—a smooth, two-ingredient cocktail of Scotch and amaretto—but chosen, in standard, to stick to wine, specially the white Monferrato from the Piedmont.

THE VIBE

Running Sunday via Tuesday, Gigi’s transforms Gato’s slim, intimate dining home into a room that Stanley Tucci would surely appreciate—checkered tablecloths, candelabras dripping with wax. The latter are loved ones heirlooms obtained many years back by Armando’s grandmother, an antiques dealer and restaurateur. Gato’s diner-style counter serves as a hangout for people who like to enjoy the cooking and, pretty much like in a sushi restaurant, acquire their food items instantly from the palms of the cooks.

Photograph by Martha Williams

THE VERDICT

Gato keeps finding best roommates, and Gigi’s shares some of the enjoy for refreshing generate and great element as the restaurant whose house it occupies part-time. Seasonal, spontaneous in the most effective of means, the cooking can take complete benefit of the location. The cooks will without doubt swap to a spot of their very own. Catch these youthful abilities early, and guidance a career that holds numerous claims.

Score
★ ★ ★ ★
Fantastic
1660 McLendon Avenue, Candler Park
@gigisitaliankitchen

All Gato’s small children

Considering the fact that having it about a decade in the past, Nicholas Stinson has turned his Candler Park place into a launchpad for formidable meals pop-ups—some of which have long gone on to turn out to be total-fledged dining places.

Little Bear
In advance of settling into his Summerhill brick-and-mortar, Jarrett Stieber made a title for himself with Eat Me Talk Me, a pop-up collection that served as a showcase for his certain artwork: high-strategy meals that doesn’t just take itself as well critically.

Talat Current market
Parnass Savang and Rod Lassiter’s endlessly interesting culinary project—Thai strategy satisfies Georgia produce—came to prominence through a residency that introduced here in 2017. Now, they have Summerhill digs of their own their lots of enthusiasts, in the meantime, love far more steady obtain to Talat’s crispy rice salad.

Mighty Hans
No long lasting place however, but here’s hoping. Considering the fact that last calendar year, Fu-Mao Sunshine has been drawing crowds on Saturdays with excellent Taiwanese breakfast dishes, such as scallion pancakes with bacon, egg, and cheese, and supporter tuan, a handheld snack of sticky rice wrapped all-around assorted savory fillings, like pork floss and pickled radish.

This posting appears in our March 2022 difficulty.