Monday, February 8, 2010
Restaurants Review: Bistro Niko
Posted by Besha Rodell @BeshaRodell on Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 2:30 PM
Buckhead Life restaurant group is known for a certain kind of glamour – big, brash, flashy – and Bistro Niko certainly delivers on that front. Beyond the wide entrance hallway with a glassed-in kitchen to the left, the main dining room sprawls in grand brasserie style: red booths, mirrored walls, columns, and a ceiling adorned with swirly molding and twinkling lights. If Buckhead Life owner Pano Karatassos and his son Niko know how to do anything, it's make a first impression. The bistro named for Niko is no exception. But it's a brasserie the restaurant channels – it's scale, feel and huge menu have none of the cute intimacy of a bistro. It's semantics, perhaps – Brasserie Niko doesn't roll off the tongue with quite the same cadence.
Bistro Niko is the first Buckhead Life establishment to open in Atlanta since Kyma's 2001 debut. Despite the lack of openings, the group's restaurants continue to be some of the highest grossing in the country. Bistro Niko appears primed to bring in the big bucks as well – you have to book more than a week in advance to get a table between 5 and 9 p.m. on a weekend. This debutante is as popular as she is beautiful, and for the time being, her dance card is close to full.
The combination of the restaurant's scale and popularity presents an issue Buckhead Life has always excelled at addressing: how to tackle both volume and quality. But at Niko, the best food is the stuff that's simple to execute or can be done ahead of time.
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(Photo by James Camp)
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