{"id":475,"date":"2025-10-14T01:55:52","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T01:55:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/?p=475"},"modified":"2025-10-14T01:55:52","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T01:55:52","slug":"chops-atlanta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/2025\/10\/14\/chops-atlanta\/","title":{"rendered":"Chops Atlanta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Our second stop on the 2025 Buckhead Life Restaurant Dine Around program was at Chops<\/a> – Atlanta. Chops is a high end steakhouse. There are two locations – the second is in Boca Raton, FL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

I’ll be honest, that in the eight years I have been with my husband, there have been years where I asked him to go with someone else to Chops. I’ve been about five or six times and only had three good meals there. For me the real fun is trying to spot celebrities, as it is known as one place that actors frequent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The main reason we – and the couple who joined us – opted to go here was that it was around my birthday and they had key lime pie (a favorite of mine) on the dessert menu. (Read about the program and our first meal of the year at Bistro Niko here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Service<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Being high end, one hallmark is amazing service. On a prior visit, the server whose job to keep the water filled joked that the only thing I should be lifting is my silverware and glass – that I shouldn’t need to refill my own water from the carafe on the table. That should tell you that is a large team of folk who are looking out for us to have a fabulous experience. I believe we only directly interacted with four folk, but I could see the team interacting with each other just on the edges of my vision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

The evening started with some confusion. There seemed to be a young professional event happening at the time we arrived. They were in and out of the restaurant and had activities in the lawn out front. While we had arrived timely, we were asked to wait; the host stand staff seemed confused and unsure how to handle our party of four. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

All of the team serving us was excellent, although there were points were it felt like they were hovering. There was also a snafu regarding dessert, where it would have been nice if – knowing we were there for a celebration that a choice be given to the birthday person. To be fair, they made it right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atmosphere<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Once seated, our age was showing, in that even with reading glasses the lighting was too dim to read the menu. I realize that dinner service often is not super bright, it needs to be light enough that we don’t need to use our phone flashlights to read. With a restaurant so focused on experience, I was really surprised that they didn’t bring lamps to the table to assist us. My husband is at the point where he is too embarrassed to whip out his phone, so that compounded the negative experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

To add to the atmosphere, it was just loud. As OpenTable.com describes it, it was energetic. We basically had to shout to hear each other, which took too much energy. In recent years this has been a common issue, but it is almost impossible to guess which nights might have a smaller crowd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Main Dishes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Even with the inconsistent quality of food over the years, I felt this year that there were enough experiences to feel that the food quality has been slipping through the years. I ordered the filet mignon medium rare. The texture a what I could see of the color was closer to medium. The outside was highly seared to the point I would call it burnt. It even had the char flavor of burn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

I should have said something, but I kept thinking the burn flavor was me. The fact the texture was (almost) right had me questioning myself. It wasn’t until chatting about it driving home that Daniel mentioned the same with his filet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Three of us had the filet. One member of our party had the sesame seared tuna, and said it was good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We also had onion rings that really needed salt and the sauce served with it, however the thickness of the batter was perfect. They were perfectly cooked to just having a tiny bit of crunch. We also had broccolini that did have a hint of lemon to it (per the menu description) but needed seasoning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dessert<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Our server brought bread pudding with a candle for me without asking about dessert choices from anyone. When we mentioned that I had been looking for the key lime pie, she got that for me and the table shared the bread pudding. The bread pudding had an odd citrus note (pineapple?) but was tasty and had a great custardy texture. The key lime pie was bland and I had to search for any lime flavor. Daniel had the James Beard award winning banana cream pie, which he said has always been top notch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our second stop on the 2025 Buckhead Life Restaurant Dine Around program was at Chops – Atlanta. Chops is a high end steakhouse. There are two locations – the second is in Boca Raton, FL. I’ll be honest, that in the eight years I have been with my husband, there have been years where I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":492,"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rubynymphaea.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}