Your Next Great Meal

Hog & Hominy
Memphis, TN
Like a Fiat at a NASCAR rally, this newest creation from Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman (of Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen) places a brick pizza oven in pole position on a menu stuffed cheek to jowl with pork. Think crispy headcheese with a fried egg followed by a quattro formaggi
pizza. Or a good bourbon cocktail and a game of bocce. Ticer and Hudman make their case for this Italian/Southern mash-up by serving dinners family style. hogandhominy.com

 

The 
Ordinary
Charleston, SC

Expect the “anything but” comments to pile up once guests get a taste of this curiously named newcomer from FIG chef Mike Lata. He and his business partner have taken a historic bank with Palladian windows in the city’s Upper King Street district and transformed it into a rollicking oyster bar and seafood hall. The name is an archaic term for a set menu—here, one that will draw mostly from Lowcountry waters. Look for bodacious shellfish platters, pickled local shrimp, and banded rudderfish tartare. 
eattheordinary.com


Oxheart
Houston, TX
Husband-and-wife chefs Justin Yu and Karen Man worked their way through California, Chicago, and Europe before returning home to open this small gastronomic theater with a ten-seat chef’s counter. Although they make room for Gulf seafood and lo-
cal meats, vegeta-bles take center stage on the fixed-
price menus. Guests
and critics rhapso-dize about the paint-
erly plates of plant life, such as slow-roasted okra set like the pillars of Stonehenge on a hillock of creamed corn and wheat berries. oxhearthouston.com


R’evolution
New Orleans, LA
John Folse, the dean of Creole cuisine, has teamed with lauded Chicago chef Rick Tramonto for this ambitious French Quarter venture in
the Royal Sonesta Hotel. The menu proposes more than fifty items that evoke the “seven nations” of the Creole melting pot, from German wursts to Italian pastas to crab-stuffed frog legs. The bar mixes cocktails with camellia-infused ratafia, and the dining room features actual gaslight and a historic turtle soup recipe hand-lettered on an antiqued mirror. What to pair with turtle soup? You’ll find something in
the 10,000-bottle wine cellar.
 revolutionnola.com


Watershed on Peachtree
Atlanta, GA
An icon reborn. When Watershed moved uptown, it more than doubled its space and chucked just about everything from its menu—save former chef Scott Peacock’s legendary fried chicken. Now Louisiana-born chef Joe Truex brings more Cajun and Asian flavors to the mix. Goujonettes
of catfish come in the style of Vietnamese
lettuce wraps, and Truex’s reconfigured jambalaya combines fried oysters, butter-poached shrimp, and a rice fritter over a pool of rich étouffée. watershed
restaurant.com