Anyone who’s been to Miami can take one look at the Stella at Star Metals building in west Midtown and see that the luxury condo tower would perfectly blend in on South Beach.
The Georgia-Florida connection was further enhanced with the opening of Füm in February, a new live-fire Italian restaurant from the Miami-based Grassfed Culture Hospitality group.
Credit: Courtesy of the Allen Morris Company
Credit: Courtesy of the Allen Morris Company
Yet the owners of Füm insist the Miami vibes are purely coincidental; the restaurant was conceived and built from the ground up with the Atlanta locale in mind.
“We wanted everything to be really rooted in what is awesome about Atlanta,” Josh Hackler, one of the owners of Grassfed Culture, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Their team is excited about “the seasonality and the farms and where the dining culture of the city is,” Hackler continued.
Füm is not just a change in location for the hospitality group; it’s also the company’s largest and most ambitious restaurant to date.
Credit: Courtesy of Julian Cousins
Credit: Courtesy of Julian Cousins
Füm is sprawling, both in size and concept. There’s a large bar, an open kitchen with live-fire grilling, a glass-paneled dry-aging room, a DJ booth and a fresh pasta program. It’s a lot to balance and, crucially, a lot for servers to explain to diners.
After the gorgeous, soaring interior, Füm’s service grabs your attention next. On each of my visits, our primary servers were a touch overzealous, providing lengthy explanations of the menu and enthusiastic, in-depth recommendations.
My second time in, I may have been identified as a restaurant critic. Our server introduced himself, then asked each person at our table for their name as he shook hands with them. It was a bit of an awkward interaction, though not completely out of character for Füm’s service style. I mentioned it to Hackler, but he did not reveal whether the staff had picked me out that night.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Hackler acknowledged the service could be a little much at times, and he hopes to rein it in with continued training. The group’s restaurants in Miami are small and intimate, and their “high-touch” service style, as Hackler described it, is still being fine-tuned with a much larger staff.
Having a theme helps focus Füm’s wide-ranging offerings. The cuisine is Italian thanks in part to executive chef and co-owner Sebastián Vargas’ background (he’s half Italian, Hackler said), and also because the owners found similarities in the agricultural abundance of both Italy and the Southeast.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
The excellent cocktail program doesn’t hurt, either. Many of the cocktails, developed by Spanish bartender Esther Merino, use tea to great effect — like the serenata Negroni, a beautifully balanced take on the classic Italian aperitif that cuts the drink’s bitterness without sacrificing complexity thanks to the addition of rooibos tea. The lush, vibrant Muratore uses lapsang souchong tea, while the honeydew melon-flavored, palate-drenching Di Melone cocktail features sencha tea.
The first section of the menu features pane (bread, in Italian), which can be ordered on its own or with various spreads. The sourdough focaccia is made with local grains and carried a nice tang, though it didn’t have the airiness traditionally associated with focaccia. Spreads include bone marrow butter, chicken liver mousse and stracciatella (a creamy, mozzarella-based cheese) with smoked apple and pear. We tried the pesto trapanese, a thick pesto spread made with sun-dried tomatoes that held a dense punch of earthy flavor.
Raw oysters came from Murder Point, Alabama, and were topped with a pear, apple, bay leaf and lemon granita. I welcomed our server’s explanation of the dish, which highlighted the way the large oyster’s buttery flavor made it an excellent vehicle for the icy, sweet and complex granita.
Füm’s tuna carpaccio showed off Vargas’ talent for creating visually beautiful plates and incredibly flavorful sauces. Little piles of thinly sliced tuna hidden under nasturtium leaves were surrounded by vivid swirls of sauce and red, yellow and green oils, abstract yet composed.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
My first taste of Füm’s live-fire cooking came from the grilled wild head-on prawns. Cooked just barely enough, the fresh prawns gained color, flavor and texture where they were kissed by the wood flames. They were also simple to eat, easily pulling loose from the charred heads. But the real showstopper was the thick, intense n’duja vinaigrette pooled in the center of the plate. The deeply savory, rich, spicy and slightly bitter sauce is instantly addictive; it’s worth ordering the bread just to make sure you don’t leave any vinaigrette on the plate.
A dish called AFM, an acronym for “Atlanta fried mushrooms,” similarly arrested conversation around my table. Wonderfully crisp fried oyster mushrooms were piled on a generous plateful of creamy fondue-like pecorino cheese sauce. The interplay of crispy and creamy textures is enough to seduce even the staunchest mushroom haters.
Füm’s pasta selection is where I first detected some dissonance between the restaurant’s schtick and its execution. The agnolotti, little packets of smoked corn and taleggio served floating in a bowl of broth, looked oddly unadorned compared to the many colorful dishes served throughout my meal. Its flavor was surprisingly dull, mirroring the bland appearance, though the fresh pasta was pleasantly tender.
The cavatelli was visually promising, a beautifully composed dish featuring plump pasta pieces in a springy green sauce that contrasted with vibrant pink hunks of lobster and dollops of white ricotta, set off with edible purple flowers. But it failed on the palate, where it was immediately apparent that the cavatelli was too dense and heavy, the lobster too tough and the sugar snap pea hulls too fibrous to easily chew.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
An uncommon pasta called trofie showed that Füm’s kitchen could produce a solid pasta dish; the short, twirly little noodles — also turned a vivid green by wild herb and pistachio pesto — had excellent flavor and texture to go along with its attractive appearance.
Füm’s in-house dry-aging program came to bear in the secondi course, the final part of the savory menu. The restaurant’s $98 bistecca, a locally sourced rib-eye steak dry-aged for 60 days, was transformed into something special by the combination of aging and open-flame grilling. It was further enhanced by a ridiculously decadent smoked black truffle jus.
Though the beef goes through by far the longest aging process, all the meats on Füm’s menu benefit from a little age. The intensification of flavor that comes with dry-aging was clear in the lamb I tried, as well.
Like many large restaurants, Füm has both hits and misses on its menu. It’s nearly impossible to perfectly deliver on such a wide range of dishes.
But the rub comes from the prices; my dinner for four at Füm, during which only three of us were drinking, cost more than $600. When a restaurant bill can easily climb beyond $100 per person, the menu should not have any duds and the service should feel natural and comfortable.
Füm is a good restaurant at its core, with a smart, thoughtful restaurant group behind it. But a restaurant this large and expensive is a beast, with more customers, more money, more opportunities to fail — more everything. Fortunately for Atlanta, the team at Füm appears to have the talent to tame it.
Füm
3 out of 5 stars (good)
Food: contemporary Italian
Service: knowledgeable and attentive, if occasionally overbearing
Noise level: loud
Recommended dishes: pane, pesto trapanese, oysters, tuna carpaccio, Cesare, grilled wild head-on prawns, AFM, trofie, trout, lamb, bistecca, pistachio gelato, blackberry sorbet
Vegetarian dishes: pane, stracciatella, pesto trapanese, crostata di tartufo, AFM, ravioli, trofie (without bone marrow), oyster mushroom
Alcohol: full bar with excellent cocktails, natural Italian wines and grower Champagnes
Price range: $75-$150 per person, excluding drinks
Hours: 5:30-10 p.m. Sunday-Monday and Wednesday-Thursday, 5:30-11 p.m. Friday-Saturday
Accessibility: fully ADA accessible
Parking: valet and paid street parking available
Nearest MARTA station: none
Reservations: recommended, available on OpenTable
Outdoor dining: yes
Takeout: no
Address, phone: 660 11th St. NW, Atlanta. 404-975-0969
Website: fumatl.com
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s dining critics conduct reviews anonymously. Reservations are not made in their name, nor do they provide restaurants with advance notice about their visits. Our critics always make multiple visits, sample the full range of the menu and pay for all of their meals. AJC dining critics wait at least one month after a new restaurant has opened before visiting.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
