Watershed

There are many restaurants in the Atlanta area that are spoken of often. There are so many different types of places I would like to try, and only so much time. My husband and I try to limit dinners out to one night a week, both for caloric and budgetary reasons. He is the type of person that once he likes something, he isn't interested in trying new versions. So when he gets the larger vote of where we eat, he will choose from the same 4-5 places every time. I, on the other hand, love trying something new and different. So when its my turn for a larger vote, I try to find somewhere we haven't been before. The downside of this is that there are so many places I want to try that it will take forever to get to them all.

So I decided to treat myself to lunch last week at Watershed in Decatur (http://www.watershedrestaurant.com). It isn't far from my work and it is a restaurant that I have heard of many times. I heard that their vegetable plate is wonderful. The veggies on the day I visited were green beans, creamed corn, fried okra, peas and sliced tomatoes. Those are all veggies I love and if this was somewhere I would come back to often, I would have tried that.

But since I do not eat out all that often, I chose the garlic thyme roasted pork sandwich with fig conserve, fresh cheese and dijon mustard. I wasn't sure if I would like the figs or not, but I was determined to try something I wouldn't make for myself at home. I added a side of fried okra (and somewhere, my mom is having a heart attack. She tried many times to get us to eat okra as children, even fried okra, but to no avail, and now I not only ordered them for myself, I enjoyed it, too!!!).

The pork sandwich was really wonderful and I found out I like the flavor of figs. I will need to make something with figs here soon to further test my theory. I found a fig and goat cheese filled muffin recipe that looks scrumptious; but I digress... The pork was so very tender, it almost fell apart. I wanted to eat the whole thing, but knew my stomach wasn't quite big enough for that. I ended up warming the sandwich on my mini Foreman grill and it was just as good the second time around!

As I said earlier, I enjoyed the fried okra. I haven't bought okra at the store before, but that will happen eventually, I am sure.

I usually eat a very small lunch, but as I said earlier, I wanted the whole experience since I am not sure when I will make it back here. There were two desserts that stuck out to me..a chocolate cake and a caramel apple cake. I was torn between the two, but they were in the process of making more apple cake so I went with the chocolate. The cake wasn't as cloyingly sweet as I expected it to be, it was fairly tame. Not death by chocolate, but still had a very good flavor. It all depends on what you like. I am a die-hard super sweet fan, so I could have handled a stronger flavor, but for most people, the balance would have been perfect. It was served with some lightly sweetened whipped cream.

All in all, it was a great experience and I am glad that I went. The staff was very nice and professional and the food was great. I sat in the back room closer to the bar, but there is a room with a large window facing the street. Hopefully I can convince myself to eat out for lunch more often and make a return trip here. Though it may be after I try out Farm Burger, which is in the same building.