I love getting deals on good food, so I go to Scoutmob restaurants all the time. That's exactly what I thought I was doing last night when Cashew and I went to Pura Vida. It is a tapas restaurant in the Highlands, and it's owned by Chef Hector Santiago who appeared on Top Chef. I think this is the first Top Chef restaurant I have been to... I was prepared for really good food, but what we got completely blew away my mind!
But there will be more about that later. First, the only spoiler of the night was the check. As I said, Cashew and I thought we would get 50% off our dinner. However, as it turned out, a restaurant called Pure Taqueria had the deal, not Pura Vida... At the end we had to pay about $40 EACH!!! Good thing we both agreed this was the best food we had ever had, so we weren't very upset. And I mean it, the food at Pura Vida is probably the most creative and best tasting of anything I have ever tasted.
Enough of this, though, I need to get to what we ordered. I ordered a white wine sangria as my drink. It was pretty good. When I got to the bottom of it, I noticed that it had grapefruit. I hate grapefruit, but somehow I didn't notice its taste in the sangria :)
We shared 5 different tapas: (1) tuna poke, porque no?, (2) cangrejo "tater tots," (3) aguacate criollo, (4) tamales nejos, and (5) steamed coconut buns. First came the aguacate criollo, or avocado with chorizo chips. I couldn't stop my praises for the dish after the very first bite! It's so creative and innovative and delicious :) I need to learn how to make this myself!
Next we got the tuna poke. Not much to say about it except that the fish was soooo tender, it melted in your mouth. The tuna was covered with what looked like regular corn flakes, but oh well... One sub par ingredient wasn't enough to take away anything from this amazing dish.
The next dish we tried was the coconut buns. The buns themselves were very very soft and light and airy. I personally didn't taste any coconut flavor, but I still loved them. They were wrapped around a piece of pork belly. I am known to pick every piece of fat from my food because I don't like the texture of fat. Again, I was amazed at how well-prepared the pork belly at Pura Vida was. I could actually eat it by itself, without having any of the bun in the bite. So when a chef can transform fat into something delectable, you know you're at an amazing place.
The next dish was one of the tapas we were most excited - crab tater tots. The tater tots themselves were made of plantains, and they had pieces of real crab meat in them. The crab flavor was just strond enough to make it noticeable but not take away from the fried flavor and texture of the tater tots. By the way, I wouldn't have guessed they were made of plantains and not real potatoes. As everything else so far, they were delicious.
The final tapas dish was the tamales. They were also very tasty, and could be the best tasting thing at many restaurants. However, compared to the perfection of flavor in everything else we had had up to that point, they didn't quite measure up. The tamales themselves weren't very flavorful, but they went well dipped into the sauce that came with the plate.
Because everything was so impressive, we couldn't leave the restaurant without trying a dessert, too. Our first choice was the Latino chocolate tart. Unfortunately, they were out of it. So, we had to "settle" for the chocolate creme brulee. I don't know how good the tart could have been, but the creme brulee was our of this world. It was so dense and rich, it felt like chocolate pudding. However, it had the nice brulee crust on the top that's so much fun to dig into :) One slight negative with this dessert was the amount of powdered sugar on top. Both Cashew and I started coughing at our first bites. However, once we got to the Kahlua on the bottom, we had forgotten we had any complaints about the dessert.
In summary, I don't remember the last time I loved anything I ate so much. I did enjoy the food in places like Two Urban Licks and Rathbun's, but i don't think it can measure up to the culinary excellence we experienced in Pura Vida. Pura Vida is hands down my favorite place in Atlanta so far, and I am definitely going back there despite the hefty price :)
The very next day we were ready for more food at Crawfish Shack, and Snooki tagged along as well. Of course, we got crawfish (3 lb of it!). Snooki wasn't too eager to eat the whole crawfish, so she opted for a shrimp po-boy. The coupon I had required us to spend at least $45, and we made up the balance by loading up on sides: Cajun fries, sweet potato tots, herb-roasted red potatoes and corn nuggets. The crawfish was fresh and spicy - just the way it was supposed to be. The "Cajun" fries, though, had NO seasoning on them, not even salt, let alone Cajun spice. Well, maybe a tiny bit of salt, but you get my point. They were so plain, they were impossible to eat. But we were too lazy to return them and had plenty of other things to make up for the fries. The roasted red potatoes were also rather plain. The only seasoning they had was a little butter on the bottom of the dish and hard to get to. The sweet potato tots, though, were just what I expected from them and still retained their flavor after frying. What I was really impressed by were the corn nuggets. I LOVED them. We couldn't imaging what they would be before ordering, but I'm SO glad we got them. They remind me a little of arancini balls, but with corn instead of rice and flattened. The corn kernels are still whole inside and so sweet when you eat them. And overall, all the fried sides did help to counteract the spicy crawfish :)
