For Saturday night , we had a change of times for dinner, necessitating a change of locations.   Horseradish Grill won the coin toss.  I’ve known of Horseradish Grill for years but, for whatever reasons,  we’ve never been.  Arriving about 6:30, we were surprised at how empty it was.  And even moreso that we were seated at a table directly next to a party of twelve, pretty much the only other folks in the place.  It filled up, however, by the time we left.

We were started with a basket of bread, which may have contained one of the worst biscuits that I’ve ever eaten in my life.  It was either too salty, had too much baking power or was an alien’s first attempt at a biscuit.  This was the consensus of all at the table.  No amount of butter could make it taste good, even when the butter:biscuit ratio crossed 1:1, you could still taste that biscuit.

I started with the pimento cheese and grit fritters, served with bread and butter pickles and a country ham aioli.

The fritters were extremely cheesey and oddly named as fritters – they were more like the texture and shape of hush puppies. They would have been more aptly referred to as arancini (Italian fried rice balls), but that wouldn’t have fit the Southern oeuvre.

Jo started with a half spinach salad,

which was served with grilled Portobello mushroom, the sweetest candied bacon I’ve ever tasted, goat cheese and a shallot and whole grain mustard sherry vinaigrette.  Her plate, as well as the other spinach salad at the table were returned to the kitchen clean.

For dinner, she ordered one of the specials, a grilled halibut with shiitake mushrooms and roasted cauliflower over risotto.

She said that it was one of the best fish dishes she had eaten in the last couple of years.  And the couple with us both also had fish (the same halibut and a pan sautéed flounder) and they argued about whose fish was “better”.  This place does fish well.

I ordered the pan fried chicken, which was served with four cheese macaroni and sautéed garlic green beans.

This was a heaping mound of chicken.  The batter was thin and not terribly crispy and the chicken was fairly moist.  I’ve had much worse, but I’ve also had much better.  The beans should have been called sautéed green-beany garlic, because that was the overwhelming taste. The mac-n- cheese was good, but nothing exceptional.  For the first time in my life, I think I wished that I had ordered the fish instead.

Three of us passed on dessert, but there was a slice of pecan pie delivered to the table which was raved about.  Overall, a very nice dinner at a place that seems to be off the radar because of its tenure in the Atlanta market.  But any restaurant that can stay open for twenty years in this market must be doing something right.

In talking with the valet as we left we learned that:

• This has always been a restaurant (never a house as we suspected at dinner);
• Had opened as a sandwich stop for Chastain Park golf course (across the street) during World War II;
• Had been open in this iteration since 1994 and was named after the horseradish growing in the garden out back; and
• Is the longest continually operating restaurant in Atlanta.

Who knew?