World of Flavor

An international flair in the kitchen lifts Detroit’s Atlas Global Bistro far above the ordinary

Sensory memory is a powerful thing. Smell and taste are ingrained in our brains, and can be recalled suddenly years later. Animals use smell to identify both danger and safety. For humans, it’s more social: the hint of shaving cream on the cheek of a long-dead grandfather years ago, when he bent down to hug you. Or the aroma of a home-cooked dinner coming from the oven when you walked into your family kitchen.

As a child living in a large city, I would sometimes ride the subway to meet my father after work. He worked for a big New York City newspaper, and the end of his day more often meant the beginning of his nightlife, so we’d cross the street to the bar of a hotel where journalists and their sources met for gin-and tonics, martinis, scotch-and-sodas, and Manhattans before really calling it a day.

The hotel made its own potato chips, a bowl of which would appear at the table with each round of drinks. They came straight from the kitchen, crisp, warm, and salty. Delicious. It was impossible to eat just one.

I now realize that my trips into town were triggered more by my sensory memory and lust for the best potato chip in the world, than by affection for my father. The chips were so sinfully good, my Catholic friend Ed swore that after eating them, he had to submit himself to the ritual cleansing of extreme unction.

Since then, I have lived throughout Europe and on both coasts of the U.S. and in the Midwest, and no potato chip has been able to measure up to those at the hotel bar. Until, that is, I set foot in the Atlas Global Bistro on Woodward Avenue in Detroit.

The Atlas makes the second-best potato chip in the world, offered only at the bar and with a creamy dipping sauce. If for nothing else, the chips are worthy of a visit. Fortunately, there is also a lot more worth going there for.

The menu, which the manager and chef explain as “global,” is eclectic and overall just darned good food.

Set in the Addison Building, for years a derelict and elegant 1905 midsize hotel that has now been refurbished into apartments, the Atlas occupies the ground floor facing both Woodward and Charlotte, the side street, and is across from the Fine Arts Theatre, which was closed for a while, but has recently seen new life. It sits on a stretch of Woodward that conventional wisdom long insisted was too far south of Orchestra Hall and too far north of the Fox Theatre and Comerica Park to be viable. But three years on, wisdom was wrong.

When the Atlas opened in 2003, it became one of those dots along Woodward between downtown and the New Center area that are links in the chain of slow rebirth along that stretch of Detroit.

“Actually, it’s turned out to be a good spot because we draw from both ends, plus we get the Detroit Medical Center and Wayne State University nearby,” says manager Mary Brinker-Lewiston, who is now running the Atlas for founder-owners Mark Holmes Woodford and Nicole Barbour. They have stepped out of the daily management to concentrate on other opportunities. He is a chef at the MotorCity Casino, and she teaches metal sculpture at the College for Creative Studies.

At lunch, the soaring room, marked by four large square pillars, is flooded with daylight streaming through a bank of massive windows that create two walls of the 86-seat restaurant. In the evening, soft recessed ceiling lights bathe the interior and its diners in an amber glow, making the Atlas inviting from the street.

A row of deep-green, velour high-backed banquettes are topped with pearled glass panes and chrome dividers to separate the dining room from a spacious Art Deco bar, which is flanked by dramatic accent lighting that shoots up the yellow back wall, further emphasizing the height of the room.

In the dining room, tables are set with crisp white linens and simple settings, each topped with a single white spider mum in a thin vase. The simplicity and clean-lined, uncomplicated feel of the Atlas adds a distinct urban character to the room.

Chef Christian Borden runs the kitchen, which before his arrival first turned out a much simpler menu. But for the last 20 months, Borden, who has made stops at The Rattlesnake Club, The Vintage Bistro, and Boocoo, where he was pastry chef, has taken the menu in a more adventurous and “global” direction. I prefer to call it international-nuanced bistro food, meaning that its base is uncomplicated European preparation with accents from everywhere else.

“I’m not really transplanting anything native,” says Borden, who for several years lived in Toronto, where he was surrounded with a cacophony of ethnic foods. “I can’t cook something I don’t understand. But I can pick out individual ingredients, components, and flavors. I know what to do with them, and I’m using what I’m comfortable with.”

Consider his risotto croquettes with herbed mushrooms, a simple appetizer with deep flavor. The risotto contains bits of tart chopped apple and then rolled into little balls, coated with Japanese panko bread crumbs, sautéed, and served with a reduced sauce of chopped wild mushrooms deglazed with white balsamic vinegar. It takes risotto to an entirely different dimension, and uses a very traditional sauce that is commonly served with pasta.

Or try Borden’s Mexican-influenced dish of a pheasant breast on a poblano pepper stuffed with chopped fruit and with a frothed walnut sauce. Delightful.

Duck confit is a very popular item on menus these days, including Atlas’. The problem is that, because confit is essentially duck meat cooked in the duck’s own rendered fat and then refrigerated and marinated for a week inside that same fat, it’s often served greasy.

At Atlas, it’s moist and utterly greaseless. Borden explains that his method for reheating it allows for the fat to be expunged before the meat hits the plate.

Other first-course choices include: a sashimi tuna, a Dungeness crab cake with a pineapple salsa, a seared giant sea scallop with a tomato butter and onion compote, and a herbed-baked feta with toast, the only negative of our visit. The feta was dreadfully oversalted.

Another main dish worth trying is a cassoulet with crisp duck legs and Michigan white beans braised in lamb stock, smoked andouille sausage, and sweated vegetables. Deep, dense, and flavorful. Or, try Borden’s deconstructed version of boeuf bourguignon with a horseradish sauce.

Matching a wine to food was a bit of a chore, but we did settle for a Spanish pinot noir as a red, and a very solid 2003 Sancerre from Michel Redde for a white.

The wine list is small, and pricing is fairly reasonable, but (annoyingly) vintages are not listed. Considering the level of food coming out of Borden’s kitchen, the wine list could use more coordination with food and a wider range of choices.

Taken altogether, Atlas Global Bistro is highly recommended. It’s a place that has decided what it wants to be and succeeds. And the essential ingredient that makes that success is what comes out of the kitchen.

Borden explains that he’s lucky enough to be near Eastern Market and shops there for much of what he cooks. “I have one guy who drives a truck and brings produce around to me. But I’m also three and a half minutes from Eastern Market. I know all the purveyors there, and I can pick and choose and find everything I need right there.” Including the potatoes for the chips, hopefully.

3111 Woodward, Detroit; 313-831-2241. L & D daily.

This article appears in the January 2007 of Hour Detroit.
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