It had been a while since I’d been to Gu’s Bistro, the popular Sichuan restaurant on Buford Highway, with a soon-to-open dumpling stall in Krog Street Market. Gu’s has always been a little more approachable than the temple of assburn which initiated so many of us in Atlanta – Tasty China. It’s friendlier. Cleaner. Yvonne Khan, the daughter of Chef Gu, is young and knew how to market her restaurant, adding a dim sum brunch and putting a few craft beers on the list.
It’s not just the ambience which has been a little softer – the food has been called more balanced than the sweat inducing hot pots and numbing (ma la), chile raging dry fried beef, pork belly, and eggplant of Tasty China, where somehow Peter Chang always left us wanting more, disregarding the obvious pain to come, like a booze hound forgetting the agony of the previous hangover.
Gu’s is indeed more manageable, and I’m sure many people appreciate it. I really do enjoy eating there, but I miss the debaucherous meals I’d have at Tasty China, generally with my “wine boyfriends” (as my wife calls them), where a sweet Auslese Riesling was the only temporary relief one would find for the brutal and interesting procession of heat and numbness balanced in disbelief.
Likely my favorite dish from Gu’s on this recent evening came close to hitting that mark of perfection, the Shan City crawfish, where the usual small nibs of chicken were replaced with more plump and tender crawfish, crisp and molten, with a fine dusting of Sichuan peppercorn. It’s an easy re-order.
Regardless of my nit picking and nostalgia for a time when I was on the fast track to an ulcer, Gu’s is one of the best spots in town to casually (and relatively inexpensively) share some wine and food and enjoy the evening. If you need a cool white wine to go with the food, consider stopping at nearby Le Caveau and let them know you’re hitting Gu’s.
Photos below
the aforementioned Shan city crawfish