I met Richard Blais!

While on our short trip to Atlanta I knew we had to go to one of Richard Blais's restaurants. Good news for me - he has 3 restaurants here and 1 of them opened about a month ago. It is called The Spence. It is contemporary american food and the atmosphere was really cool. Right when we walked in I saw Richard Blais! I was so happy with where we got seated because we had a great view of the kitchen which was where Richard was.

Look how close we were to the kitchen - the guy in grey to the left of the table is Richard - the far right is the oven and it is the end of the kitchen - it was so small

He dressed just like he was on Top Chef still. I wonder if he only owns 1 pair of shorts....I think it is awesome!  The whole time I just watched him. One time he walked by and made eye contact with me and smiled. I'm sure he was probably really thinking, "What a weirdo - she keeps staring at me!" The kitchen was just like one stove top, this cool fire oven thing, 2 large work tables and that was pretty much it. I could see them working the liquid nitrogen and Richard sniffing the plated food. It was awesome!

General Tso's Sweet breads

Foie Gras slab with toast - I love his choice of plates - I would totally see myself with something like this at my own house.

We had for appetizers a block of foie graus with Japanese grapes. We learned that we didn't really like foie graus that much. We didn't even realize what it was - lamb liver. We also had General Tso Sweet Breads which was really yummy.

Fried Ribeye

Monkfish

Our main entrees was Fried Ribeye which had this really interesting gravy/sauce and then I got the Monkfish. It was really good.

Dessert Omar got the pineapple upside down cake with foie caramel  and I got the Yuzu Semifreddo, peach sorbet (made with liquid nitrogen) with chile ailoi. The menu changes daily depending on what they have on hand.

When our desert was brought it must have been the manager or something. We talked to her for a little while and she told us about how she knew richard and his wife while everything was happening with the first top chef and she was shocked when he lost. I asked if we could get a picture with him.

Us with Richard Blais!!!

She brought him over in the middle of one my bites. He was really nice and I told him that I felt like I knew him. He responded, "Thats because you do!" He asked what brought us to Atlanta from Jacksonville (the lady told him about us) and Omar told him that we came to see him. I was like, yeah - "I can check this off my bucket list now."  I couldn't believe how smitten I am with him. I had joked with Omar when we walked in how I would tell him, "I was a chef once, a chef on a train in Alaska." But I didn't, thank goodness. We took the picture and I felt so foolish. I asked him when he was going to come to Jacksonville and start a restaurant. He said, "whenever I get a check written for another restaurant."

I think we are going to check out his other 2 restaurants, they are lot less expensive. They are a burger joint that is really unique called FLIP and also has awesome liquid nitrogen milk shakes. the other place is a hot dog joint.