Hot Dish Review

I don’t know how this place is still in business. Not because the food is bad but because it is located in Atlantic Station which seems to be suffering a slow, agonizing death. It’s a shame, really. The place is dark (as in almost no lights), decorated in rich reds with a cool Japanese mural on the far wall. Owned by the Dolce Group based in Los Angeles, Geisha House is part of their lounge and restaurant empire, known for high profile investors like Ashton Kutcher.

My colleagues and I visited Geisha House for an early dinner last Thursday night and found ourselves practically alone in the vast space. The six of us shared several dishes, starting with the ubiquitous edamame. CM and TB ordered a bottle of white wine and I had a small bottle of cold unfiltered sake. SC got a Sapporo.

For starters we decided to get two orders of the sauteed calamari and shrimp and one order of the fried calamari. Guess which one everyone preferred.

The sauteed seafood dish came with rice. Our server, although polite, didn’t bring any utensils other than the chopsticks. Since we were all sharing it became clear that serving spoons would be appropriate, otherwise we’d be sticking our chopsticks in the rice and calamari after they had been in our mouths. Now, granted, I don’t mind that if I’m with my man, but this was a group of co-workers. We don’t kiss each other and I don’t think we want to double dip with each other either. So I asked for serving spoons which seemed to baffle our server. She said they only had small ones. OK then, bring the small ones! I didn’t ask for a freakin’ ladle. Whatever, we need serving utensils so we don’t contaminate the rice with dirty chopsticks, get it chick?

Neither calamari dish was terribly exciting. Standard fare. We decided on some sushi rolls for four of us while KMA and GGP both ordered the salmon entree. TB ordered the chicken skewers under the “Robata Yaki” section. Don’t even get me started on Robata grilling. All I can say is MF Sushi in Buckhead has the only one in Atlanta. I can guarantee that Geisha House cooks and staff don’t even know what robata means.

Two Ocean Dragon rolls were made with shrimp tempura, crab salad, avocado and eel, topped with eel sauce and tobigo. Not bad. CM and I wanted to try the lobster roll listed under “Light Rolls” (as in low calorie or low carb). Lobster, lettuce and spicy sauce were wrapped with rice paper. So it was sorta like a basil roll, without basil. And the spicy sauce wasn’t very. But it was creative, in that California-reinvents-sushi sort of way. I believe the other roll was Over the Rainbow. Again, a standard compilation of yellowtail, tuna, shrimp, avocado, blah, blah, blah. The food was thankfully secondary to the socializing….we were having a good time!

TB’s chicken skewers were pretty tasty. They came with three sauces, one of which was simply sriracha.

JW, a rather sexy bigwig investor, showed up and shared a drink with us. The spiciest part of our evening, he let us in on some juicy details of Atlantic Station’s financial woes which will, eventually, put many of the businesses there out on their asses. Only the strong will survive and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Geisha House will not be one of them.

Want sushi? Go to MF.