Ham Bar Southern Art and Bourbon Bar

Last weekend we visited Atlanta.  We rolled the dice on a place to stay and booked a Hotwire room in Buckhead.  The gamble paid off.  We stayed in a very nice four star room at the Intercontinental for $78/night.  The room had a beautiful marble bathroom with a garden tub and separate shower.  The view from one of the chairs in the room was straight down Peachtree Street toward Piedmont Road.  The hotel also had a new restaurant Southern Art and Bourbon Bar replacing Au Pied du Cochon.  I think that is the spelling.  French is not my forte.  I visited Bourbon Bar with a friend and we picked up a couple of ham selections.  We tried to order Col. Newsome's Ham from Princeton, KY but was informed that it was no longer on the menu and the above menu was the correct one.  Well, now there were only two Kentucky hams instead of three on the menu.  Who knew that their bar menu would be filled with not one but two of Kentucky's well-known exports bourbon and ham?  Well, it was named bourbon bar not ham bar.  We picked two hams.  One we liked and one we didn't.  I decided at the outset of this blog that I would only blog the positive.  So the ham we liked was the La Quencia.  It was a wonderfully soft prosciutto that was not too salty.  One of these days I am going to learn to take photos with my iPhone without taking the shadow of my own hand...I also have a photo of the ham bar but it was difficult getting the lighting right because it was lit up in a dark room.  Maybe I will charge my "real" camera before my next trip.  If there is any place that you can get away with looking like a tourist with your camera, it is a hotel bar or restaurant.

While in Atlanta, we also had croissants and donut holes from Henri's bakery; tuna sandwiches from Five Napkin Burger in Midtown (okay, we didn't exactly get burgers), sushi at Gekko, and fresh, calorie-controlled food at Seasons 52.  All of these restaurants were family-friendly enough to tolerate our little ones.  Booths are highly-recommended for two year olds who don't want to be treated like a baby and put in a high chair.  Being able to block the escape route of an adventurous, curious two year old is also key.  I realized that I had tuna at all three of these restaurants.  Paducah is too far in from the coast and a little too isolated for me to reliably get tuna.