Room

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A few weeks ago was Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week, when downtown restaurants come up with special prix fixe menu for $25 per person. This can be an OK value or a stunningly great value. This year we only had time to partake at two of the restaurants, Maxim Prime and Room. Guess who the winner was. =)

I neglected to take pictures at Maxim Prime. They are located off a hotel lobby, but the foyer is stunning...black walls with backlit purple foliage trailing all over them. This motif continues into the circular stairwell, which takes you to the rather small restaurant. The decor is understated and mildly interesting once you're up there. The food was excellent for a hotel restaurant, but I probably wouldn't go back. The service...meh. It may have been because they were busy, because it was DARW, or because we didn't order alcohol, but none of those are good excuses.

When we went to Room, we thought ahead and invited the lovely Maria to join us. Her other half is in Colorado right now, but she's more fun, anyway. ;) Plus, she remembered her camera.
The decor's still nothing to write home about, although we were enamoured of the candle holders (which had stems of beads on bendy wire and were more fun than crayons and placemats)...
...and fancy virgin drinks. The sushi was competent, though not outstanding. Their sushi offerings seemed to be standard rather than innovative.

The drinks were very yummy...
...though $7 for a virgin drink (essentially just a mix of fruit juices) was, I thought, way too much. Cocktails were at least twice that. The goat cheese and arugula salad, though...
...YUM! It compared favorably with Maxim's version. While the goat cheese in Maxim's was shaved (scwunh? Who ever heard of shaved goat cheese), you could actually taste the plentiful portion of goat cheese in this one. It had all the salad components I require...fruit, cheese and nuts! Not to mention the great sugar snap peas! (Oh, wait...I just did.) I nearly licked the plate.

Here, Michael eyes his "Warm Gougeres". We had to look that one up when we were perusing menus while deciding which restaurants to visit. These included prosciutto.
They tasted like teeny ham sandwiches. Good, not incredible.

The best part about dining with three? You can share and each taste...
...all... ...of the entrees.
That's the aforementioned lovely Maria, holding the seared tuna (yum). My tenderloin, at the top, was very good. Michael's lamb, in the middle was good, but its accompaniments were ridiculous! We think we tasted peaches and fresh mint puree in amongst the capers and mashed potatoes. I gotta try to recreate it!

And dessert...
...um, yeah. Can you tell it was good by how we forgot to take the picture until we'd already dug in?? Carrot cake, no raisins, with an icing somewhere between the plain cream cheese (ugh) and overly sugary versions I hate. Well, I don't really hate the overly sugary versions, actually, but I feel like this icing is a great compromise for "normal" people. =) The mousse cake with raspberry sauce was the perfect strength and density; not too heavy and not so light you wondered if you'd put anything in your mouth. Kind of like dessert with Goldilocks...just right. The three layers had different textures, just to keep things interesting.

If you're interested in dining at Room, they have their own "restaurant week" with some sister restaurants (most of which are also excellent) next week. I believe the menu for Room will be the same.

JiffNotes
You gotta catch Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week...and bring a friend.