Esquire ranks Ford Fry’s Optimist best new restaurant

type='html'>Ford Fry, the Atlanta chef who is on a hot streak and plans to open another new restaurant in Buckhead in January, had his most recent restaurant opening The Optimist picked by Esquire magazine as it “Best New Restaurant of the Year.”  

Atlanta chef Ford Fry

Fry, who also runs JCT Kitchen & Bar and White Provision, has begun renovation work on the former Nava restaurant site, in the One Buckhead Plaza building at the corner of Peachtree and West Paces Ferry Roads, which he plans to open the first month in 2013 with an early American motif. The restaurant is still unnamed at this point.

Esquire said The Optimist is “far more than a resounding local success. It is an overnight totem of all that is wonderful about American food today.”

Esquire also said, “A soaring, convivial spot, The Optimist has a hopping oyster bar shaped like a surfboard, a first-rate cocktail program, and seafood cooked with old-school expertise over a wood fire.”

Fry has not said what the cuisine will be for the new restaurant in Buckihead, but he has said the restaurant will feature open hearth cooking.