A Top Chef

As you know, we took H-$ down to Atlanta to start her freshman year at Emory. After 2 days of driving, we arrived in Atlanta around 6:30. There was a book of restaurants on a desk in the lobby. I knew right away which restaurant I wanted to go to. Home. Richard Blaises' restaurant. We called and were told that they had an opening at 8:45.

We drove to the restaurant and went inside to a warm and inviting place. We had to wait a few minutes for our table to be ready so we were seated in the bar. They had couches facing the bar with a view of a tv showing the olympics. We weren't seated very long when we were told our table was ready.

Stuie walked first and I was behind him and H-$ was behind me. As we were walking, H-$ grabs my jacket and says look. I blurt out "Richard!" He turns around and I start telling him how I thought he was so nice on the show, how his food looked so good and that he's adorable. He tells me that he misses the accent (not like I have one, since he was raised on Long Island and how his mother is coming down for the weekend) . I then proceed to tell him that Haley is starting at Emory and he tells us that his wife went there. I end the conversation asking about his new baby. (I only knew this since it mentioned on the show that he and his wife just had a baby.) At this point, Haley is rolling her eyes and we sit down.

We are eating our appetizers as Haley tells me that it was creepy that I mentioned the baby and I sounded like I was stalking him. The waitress, Julie, takes away our appetizers and the General Manager Chet comes over to our table and introduces himself and says that he heard I mauled Richard. He says how would we like to take a tour of the kitchen. Stuie says he never saw me jump up so quickly. Haley and I went into the kitchen with Chet. We got to see an operational restaurant kitchen. We saw all the stations and spoke to the chefs. It was amazing. As we were leaving our kitchen tour, we stopped at the dessert station where a sous chef was prepping a moon pie and coke float. We came out of the kitchen with giant smiles on our face. But that wasn't the end of our evening.

When we finished with our main course, Chet came back and I told him that Haley was going to have the moon pie for dessert. He said you have to have the cornbread cake with 2 scoops of ice cream. He then said that it was his treat for dessert. He brought out a large dessert that the three of us couldn't even finish.

Chet later came back and sat with us. He was so very nice. He not only showed us pictures of his dogs, Gracie and Cooper but he told Haley that if she needed anything to call and gave her his card.

So my night was great, the food was delicious and we were made to feel as if we were celebs. As Haley said, "the people at the other table were looking over and wondering who we were and how we got to go into the kitchen." Good karma I guess.