Restaurant Review - The Czar of bizarre

Richard Blais reappears at Bazzaar, a cool hang that happens to serve eccentric eats

“Am I cool enough to be here?”

My friend, a new mom, looks down at her modest, post-pregnancy blue skirt and then up again at the crowd assembled in Bazzaar. Lanky men in stripy Ben Sherman shirts and Diesel jeans laze on the edge of a low-slung couch, beaming their lambent smiles at coy women with good hair. A tight beat thwacks from overhead. Servers strain to balance their drink trays, cutting ripples through the tapered room packed with nubile bodies. The swank factor is indeed intimidating. But exhilarating, too.

I point out a few businessmen gathered around a squat table to assure my friend that it isn’t all stand-and-model types in here. But I have my own pressing question — two, actually — as I stand at the entrance, scanning for a place to sit:

How did they finally draw people into this cursed location next to the Fox? And how many people are here to eat Richard Blais’ food?

The locale puzzle is easier to decipher. A procession of restaurants — including Bacar, Terra di Siena (anyone remember the tobacco sauce they served with a chocolate tart?) and the sleepy Encore at the Fox — have flopped in this seemingly prime real estate. Then Bill Kaelin, who managed snazzy Buckhead club Eleven50 for four years, joined owners Costanzo Astarita and Mario Maccarrone in the venture in May. Kaelin’s background has helped Bazzaar fulfill its true destiny: This place is meant to be a loungy hangout for the striking set.

Marketed as such, the willowy space, gorgeous since its Siena makeover three years ago, finally attracts the sexy flock it has long deserved. The outside sign that advertises two free hours of validated parking across the street at the Georgian Terrace only helps the cause.

The Blais question is a trickier matter altogether.

Richard Blais is quickly becoming Atlanta’s next-generation Paul Luna (minus the tabletop striptease numbers): a talented, high profile chef with an independent streak that refuses to be tamed. His eponymous Buckhead restaurant featured outre, tongue-in-cheek “gifts from the kitchen,” like an asparagus stalk in parmesan froth and caramel, or crispy fish skin with tartar sauce and a shot of Guinness. It flamed out in May after less than six months. Apparently, our dining public just couldn’t wrap its mind around a foie gras milkshake.

Blais signed on as a partner in Bazzaar a month later. The move seemed logical, a step back from fine dining into a newly minted hot spot where his edgy food could meld with the scene. Problem is, in my three visits, I’ve seen a whole lot more drinking than eating.

Part of it is the space: The cool kids congregate downstairs, noshing on calamari or tuna carpaccio. Upstairs is much more conducive for focused chowing, but it feels like social Siberia up there. But I’m here to eat, so this is where I end up.

Maybe the lonely mood in the nosebleeds affects my palette. I loved having my buttons pushed at Blais. Much of the food at Bazzaar, though, seems dissonant or intentionally ill-conceived, like he’s rebelling against his customers’ perceived plebian tastes rather than playfully challenging them to stretch their minds and palates.

“Why is watermelon with salmon?” asks an earnest tablemate uninitiated in the ways of Blais. Well, that’s just the kind of guy he is, that’s why. The salmon has been marinated with lime and arranged with chunks of avocado and horseradish foam as well as the watermelon. Salmon and watermelon isn’t my favorite pairing, but I can grasp the hypothesis: the textural contrasts, the juicy surprise on a plate of otherwise familiar combinations.

But he utterly stumps me in other offerings. Lobster takes to many left-of-center flavors — vanilla, saffron, quinoa, grapefruit and nutmeg, to name a few. But amaretto, blueberry and coffee? Hello. I don’t even want that grouping in a dessert, much less colluding in a bowl with lobster and grits. I paid a cool $25 for that jarring gaffe. Do not follow in my footsteps.

Technique is typically not the problem here. Moist, milky slices of chicken splay across a comforting slick of mild potato puree. Any chef can take these founda-tional ingredients in a gazillion directions. What does Blais choose? A scoop of peach sorbet, a stiff wedge of crisped chicken skin and maple-flavored sauce drizzled around the edge. Sweet, salt, sweet. Strange, oily, cloying. My brain hurts. My palate rejects.

If I could banish one fillip from his kitchen forever, it would be the “inflated edamame” sauce. The name alone, which the wonderfully upbeat staff has learned to say with a straight face, is irksome. It tastes like thin, sour mayonnaise. I do not want it as a sauce for tasteless lumps of breaded tofu, I do not wish to spread it on the papadam-like cracker offered with the quirky bread service. I much prefer the spicy harissa sauce with the calamari. The squid itself has never been crispy, like the menu purports, but it nonetheless packs a zing with its hints of spearmint and papaya.

I tell myself when I eat here not to think too much, to let the chef take me on a ride. But often the food doesn’t aim for the heart. It provokes without satisfying, like a freshman philosophy class where the professor lords his esoteric, frustrating rhetoric over his students without aiding them on their academic journey. I want to get it but I don’t.

And then, just when I’m about to scratch this place off my list for good: revelation.

I eat downstairs on my third visit. I’m in the thick of the pulsing, corporeal vibe. I relax. I make a conscious decision to order the most “normal” items on the menu. We start with proscuitto wrapped around whipped parmesan and drizzled with figgy reduction sauce. Nice. The cheese plate is a still life of ripe specimens with fun accompaniments — Gorgonzola with a smoky balsamic drizzle, goat cheese next to swipe of pumpkin butter and a rye crisp.

I inquire after Blais’ signature “Cristal” cheeseburger and his liver-infused frappe. It’s not on the menu, but it’s available if you ask for it. Perhaps Blais tires of being known as “foie gras milkshake guy”? Whatever, it’s still a whimsical wink to Americana: The cheeseburger proudly oozes pickles and ketchup and mustard. The shake, though disturbingly chunky (it’s probably the ice cream, I tell myself), hums with almond.

We order two macro plates. Halibut with squid “linguine,” prawns and herbed butter sauce comes straight from the menu at Blais. It was great then and it’s great now, a graceful nod to Italian American cooking at its best. A gorgeously tender beef rib is glazed with beet juice, giving the obviously long-cooked beef a bloody appearance. Tee hee. Foodie humor. A dollop of smoked potato puree and a wisp of dill-spiked horseradish sauce support the beef gloriously.

For dessert, a deconstructed Key lime pie: Key lime parfait, coconut flan and a fluorescent green cube of Key lime jelly. It ain’t a Blais meal without a little gelatin. Yay.

So there you have it. I was undone by my own curiosity. I feel a bit guilty playing it safe where Richard Blais is concerned, but I’ll take a good meal where I can get it. And, since the kitchen of this hipster hotbed serves until 1 a.m. on weekends, make that when I can get it as well.

bill.addison@creativeloafing.com