Empire State South

Empire State South sits in Midtown, and the room reads exactly the way the Atlanta dining establishment expects a modern southern kitchen at this address to read — considered, particular, and exact about the things it cares about. Open-kitchen polish — Midtown power lunch.

The cooking turns on signatures the Atlanta regulars order without looking at the menu: Shrimp & Grits, Pimento Cheese, and Buttermilk Pie. The kitchen runs at the $$ register, with a wine programme that is either deep where the room is loud and tight where the room is quiet, and a service floor that has clearly worked at this register before.

For a close a deal dinner in Atlanta, this is one of the addresses you should already know about. Reservations skew hard; dress is smart casual. The averaged Food/Ambience/Value line sits at 8.9/10 — high enough to mean the room is doing more right than wrong, calibrated against the sharpest other tables in the city.

Open-kitchen polish — Midtown power lunch. For a deeper read on this occasion across other cities, the Close a Deal guide is the canonical reference.