Dining Amongst The Gods

Recently, just last week in fact (time seems to stretch forever for some odd reason these days), I took a business trip to Atlanta.

As usual, I was awestruck by the beauty of the sky in Georgia, and was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to take photos of the heavens that grace downtown Atlanta from a very unique perspective, from atop the Hilton Atlanta where I ate at Nikolai’s Roof. The restaurant is highly rated and is touted as one of the best in the country. It offers a six-course chef’s sampler menu consisting of “French dishes with Russian accents.”

I was fortunate enough to be dining with one of our executives, Sasha, who not only picked up the tab with his company card ($425, yikes), but also happened to be the one who I respected and enjoyed the company of most. Much like my father, the man is exuberant, bold, and not afraid to have a good time, quite often at the expense of convention and to the chagrin of others.

Both of us immediately struck up conversations and flirted with the staff. Our young and beautiful hostess, Anastasia, happened to be Russian and Sasha happened to be Ukrainian, and thus spoke her native language fluently. Our sommeliere was a French girl with whom I practiced my bad high-school French. Fortunately for me, Leticia, also knew some Spanish, and thus I was able to fill in the gaps.

Later on that evening, Henrietta, the chef in charge that night, came out to say hello and subsequently invited us to come back into the kitchen. There, I had the opportunity to practice other languages I have studied in college, a little Portuguese with the sous chef and Japanese with dessert chef. Luckily, Tomo, sufficiently understood my “Watashi no namae Lorenzo desu” and “domo arigato gozaimashita yo!” because apparently he was impressed enough to send us an extra plate of sweets which were not on the menu. Needless to say, I tried them all.

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