{Empire State South}

Life's too short not to have 4 hour brunch dates with your best friends.  And life is definitely too short for you to waste any time in stopping by Empire State South {ESS}.  I had dinner there last year and loved this place so I was really excited to drop back in to try brunch.  

I love that you can grab brunch here Saturday OR Sunday and the fact that they also take reservations for brunch gives them like 3 million extra points (side note: almost no restaurants in Atlanta take brunch reservations -- which is incredibly aggravating to me).  ESS is nestled in the downstairs of the huge 999 building at the intersection of 10th and Peachtree.  If you can't find neighborhood parking they will comp your ticket from the deck.  They have a wonderful, quaint courtyard with bocce ball and tables outside for dining.  Did I mention how gorgeous the inside of this place is? I fall over every time I go in there -- whoever {whomever?} decorated that place can come re-do my house anytime.  

{as usual, people don't pay us or give us any kickbacks to endorse anything on this blog unless otherwise noted.} 

**note all images above found online and do not belong to me**

For all you UGA/Athens people these digs are Hugh Acheson's -- we can all thank him now for 5&10 (also amazing) in Athens.  From what I can tell (since we aren't friends and all) he is a really passionate foodie and can put together one hell of a restaurant.  ESS serves breakfast daily, brunch all weekend, and of course -- lunch and dinner.  They also offer little lunch baskets/buckets for carry out which I would be very interested in trying -- they look adorable and are probably incredibly delicious. 

Unlike at The Optimist, I was able to take many instagrams of our trip! Yay! 

peach & beet salad

selection of three pastries:
 cherry cake, blueberry pie thing (can't remember what it actually was called),
& coconut chocolate chip cake

peach bellini - perfect summer brunch drink. it was almost like a
champagne slushy.  i also enjoyed a flight of 3 different Rieslings as seen in the background. 

adorable koozie for your iced coffee in jar. not gonna lie, i wanted to steal it. 

The food was exceptional.  It wasn't crazy crowded.  They didn't try to kick us out even though we stayed past 3.  The pastries were to die for.  I think Elise and I thought we were just going to sample them but we ate every single bite.  We split a breakfast sandwich entree with eggs, bacon,  & ham {had to have room for those pastries}.

But...

{Are you preparing yourself for my one complaint? I know you knew it was coming.}

I did have a few small issues with our server.  It was not crowded and at one point I had to search for him because I was trying to order one more glass of wine before 3 (don't judge).  Also, when we asked for recommendations of which 3 pastries to choose all he initially said was "They are all good" and then we had some empty air between us.  Almost like he was offended that we would are try to discriminate between any of the said pastries.  So, I asked him again, nicely to try to pick 3 out for us anyway as we obviously couldn't try all of them.   

For some odd reason I just got the feeling that he really didn't care for us -- and I am not sure why.  I'm willing to give bro the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe Sundays aren't packed and he was tired. Maybe he had a raging hangover and wanted to be anywhere else but there and it wasn't personal.  I do want it known that in giving the benefit of the doubt and in light of the delicious food, I went ahead and tipped him just over 20% even though the level of service wasn't there because I have waited tables before and I get that it's not always rainbows and butterflies.  But that being said -- I am not hard to please. I don't send dishes back or anything like that.  Keep the wine coming and be decently cordial and we won't have any problems.
  

Love you. Mean it. 

~the single gal~