Forth Hotel has been delivering new food and beverage options to visitors along the Eastside Beltline since opening in July, with more to come.
Located at 800 Rankin St. NE, the $150 million building is already home to Mediterranean-inspired poolside restaurant Elektra and rooftop bar Moonlight, as well as lobby bar and cafe Bar Premio, which is open for coffee and pastries and will add drink and snack service soon. Set to open Sept. 16 is Italian steakhouse Il Premio. Forth Club, a members-only concept with its own menu, slated to debut this fall.
Jonathan McDowell serves as executive chef of Elektra, Moonlight, and Forth Club with Briana Riddock as chef de cuisine. John Adamson will be executive chef of Il Primio and Bar Premio with Ben Toller as chef de cuisine. Gordon Kelley serves as Forth Hotel’s beverage director, and all spaces were designed by Method Studios in collaboration with Stokes Architecture + Design.
Read on to find out what to expect at each establishment:
Elektra
Situated next to Forth Hotel’s pool, Elektra offers a Mediterranean-influenced menu in a space featuring coastal design elements.
The breakfast menu features dishes such as shakshuka with crispy eggplant; olive oil pancakes with orange labneh and saffron butter; and a shrimp frittata. For dinner, Elektra offers cold mezze including fattoush salad, labneh with za’atar and baba ghanoush; and hot mezze such as mussels and merguez, harissa fries and octopus. Mains include lamb kofta, honey harissa chicken, citrus salmon and whole branzino.
Courtesy of Emily Dorio
Courtesy of Emily Dorio
Elektra’s beverage program features a selection of beers and wines, as well as cocktails that complement the Mediterranean menu and poolside setting, including the Elektra Martini made with gin aloe liqueur, Cocchi Americano, cucumber and black lemon bitters, and the Brighten Garden with vodka, Cocchi Rosa Americano, basil, lemon, grapefruit and cinnamon.
McDowell, a Los Angeles native who attended culinary school and worked at several restaurants in California before moving to Atlanta in 2010, said he’s long been interested in Middle Eastern cooking, and further honed his skills at local Mediterranean restaurants including Delbar, Roya and Barcelona Wine Bar.
Emily Dorio
Emily Dorio
For him, menu highlights include the octopus, which is prepared using sous vide “to take the inconsistency out of it,” he said, and the mussels, made with a sausage sofrito. He also recommends the mezze platter, a sharable selection of dips and spreads “that are an opportunity to share all these things at one time.”
Emily Dorio
Emily Dorio
McDowell said while the menu will have core dishes, he anticipates many dishes changing seasonally depending on the availability of produce. He sources many ingredients locally from farmers like Bobby Britt, Georgia Proud and Pearson Peaches.
“You have to stay in season as a chef,” he said. “You’re really going to maximize flavor, and it’s more sustainable.”
He recently added kumquats, cooked in a simple syrup and mixed with Marcona almonds, to the mezze platter, and plans to swap out peaches for apples in a couple of dishes soon.
The Elektra space features lots of greenery, rattan light fixtures, bright wood and natural light, as well as a poolside outdoor patio.
Hours are 7-10:30 a.m. and 5-11 p.m. daily.
Elektra
Elektra
Elektra
Elektra
Elektra
Elektra
Moonlight
Forth Hotel’s 16th floor rooftop bar gives a nod to the 1970s with Italian mid-century modern design. The wraparound patio provides views of Historic Fourth Ward Park and the Atlanta skyline.
The menu focuses on light bites rather than large main dishes, including a tuna cannoli and a truffle grilled cheese sandwich. Moonlight also focuses on caviar, offering guests caviar bumps and full caviar service.
Courtesy of Matt Williams
Courtesy of Matt Williams
“It’s not someplace where you’re going to sit down and have dinner,” McDowell said. “It’s light bites, but it’s also super tasty and decadent.”
The cocktail list includes High Fidelity, a combination of black tequila, green chile vodka, coconut, pineapple and lime juice, and the Lucky Star, made with pistachio-infused gin, butterfly pea flower, rose and lemon juice. The bar also offers beer, wine and nonalcoholic beverages.
Courtesy of Emily Dorio
Courtesy of Emily Dorio
Moonlight’s design elements include a travertine fireplace, mirrored tile back bar, and stained pattern concrete.
Hours are 5 p.m.-midnight Wednesdays-Saturdays.
Forth Hotel
Forth Hotel
Forth Hotel
Forth Hotel
Il Premio
Located on the ground floor is dubbed by Forth Hotel as “a refined modern Italian steakhouse.” Adamson calls the concept “steakhouse-ish,” with a traditional steakhouse model but offerings that go well beyond classic steaks.
Adamson, who also runs Forth Hotel’s banquet program, leaned heavily on his prior experience while developing the menu for Il Premio. A New Jersey native and a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Adamson moved to Atlanta in 2014 and worked at True Food Kitchen in Lenox Square and as the executive chef and managing partner at the now-shuttered American Cut in Buckhead before becoming the executive chef at Ford Fry steakhouse Marcel.
While the menu features several cuts of prime beef, as well as meat dishes like bistecca alla Fiorentina and a full selection of Japanese wagyu, there’s also a selection of housemade pastas such as bucatini carbonara, casarecce pesto, beef short rib agnolotti and rigatoni all’astice with lobster roe butter.
“There was the thought of, ‘How do we fit this in to the model that we want,’” Adamson said. “We landed on some really nice pastas. It’s very decadent.”
As for the chilled seafood section, he said he wanted to steer clear of traditional plateaus and towers in favor of composed dishes.
Other highlights include grilled seafood like lobster and King crab with a seaweed umami butter, caviar service and a raw bar, as well as desserts from pastry chef Carelys Vazquez.
With the exception of a few dishes, the menu’s ingredients and preparations generally veer toward Tuscany and northern Italy, with ingredients sourced both domestically and from abroad.
Adamson foresees a minimum of four menu changes a year “as fresh produce dictates.”
Beverage offerings include a curated list of largely Italian wines, as well as classic cocktails, amari and martini service.
Influenced by mid-century Italian modernism, the Il Premio space, which seats up to 200 guests, features a glazed brick fireplace, leather-upholstered banquettes, reclaimed European oak floors, high ceilings, Gothic-inspired stained-glass windows and custom arched windows between the bar and dining room.
The cocktail lounge boasts vintage mid-century chandeliers and a player baby grand piano, and a Renaissance-inspired mural depicts the ‘Palio,’ the famous horse race held every year in Siena’s central Piazza del Campo.
Hours are 5-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays and 5-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays.
Bar Premio
Located next to Il Premio, Bar Premio offers pastries and La Colombe coffee at breakfast and and salads and sandwiches at lunch, with the full menu to be introduced in the coming weeks.
Adamson describes the sandwiches as “very rich,” with Italian meats like prosciutto, mortadella and finocchiona. “Inevitably, whatever tastes the best is what we’re going to go with,” he said. “One thing we’re never going to lack is really good ingredients.”
Guests can expect three or four Roman-influenced pastas, with a wide selection of wines and wine pairings, apertivo, sharable plates, cheese courses and salumi boards and Italian desserts in the evening.
Between Il Premio and Bar Premio, more than 250 wine labels with be offered, with 30 offerings by the glass.
Forth Hotel
Forth Hotel
Forth Hotel
Forth Hotel
Forth Club
For members-only concept Forth Club, McDowell said he drew from his time growing going to his grandfather’s country club.
“It was a personable experience,” he said. “The food has to be great, but the service and that attention to detail is really where you shine.”
Members will have access to a private bar and lounge, in addition to the pool, fitness center and special events.
The menu will have a “Southern feel,” McDowell said. “We’re bringing it back to the roots of Old Fourth Ward. This area has really grown so much, but the history of the area is so important, too.”
Though he’s still finalizing the menu along with Riddock, who has a background in Afro-Caribbean cooking, guests can expect dishes like barbecue chicken with grits, Caribbean-style fish curry, kampachi crudo and several salads including an arugula salad with saffron white wine-poached apples from Pearson Farms, Marcona almonds and an apple cider vinaigrette.
McDowell, a first-time hotel chef, said managing three different concepts under the same roof is a new challenge, but he plans to lean on the organizational systems that he’s relied on throughout his career.
“It’s all about doing line checks and making sure you’re keeping your product fresh. Once you have your consistency down, the team has all the tools they need to succeed and be creative.”
800 Rankin St. NE, Atlanta. 470-470-8010, forthatlanta.com/restaurants
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