"Few things feel less new than “new American.” Almost everyone uses local, fresh, and seasonal ingredients nowadays (or aspires to, anyway). Making your own pasta? Yawn. And thanks, but I already had my French comfort food-inspired classic made with wagyu and, of course, ramps. The more truly modern take on American food goes beyond locavorism to ignore the limits of locale — and culture and cuisine and background. Chef Johnny Courtney, who co-owns Seattle’s Atoma with his wife, Sarah, had cooked in Denver, Mexico, and Australia before spending several years at Canlis, the preeminent fine dining restaurant in Seattle. Those divergent influences are splattered all over the Atoma menu, but aren’t the only touchstones for what emerges: a more open, less rigid, and less nationalist template for American cooking. A beef tartare is lacquered with Hong Kong-style XO sauce made with local dried geoduck, the famous Pacific Northwest bivalve. Baked Alaska, that old-school American dessert, is livened up by an ice cream made of parsnips and meringue made from charred corn silk. Local lion’s mane mushrooms are breaded and fried katsu-style. Instead of bread service, Atoma offers sourdough crumpets — a riff on a breakfast favorite in the U.K. and Australia — with kefir butter and garlic honey. But perhaps the least conventionally American aspect of Atoma is its modesty. Tucked away inside an old Craftsman house in the quiet Wallingford neighborhood, it’s deliberately unshowy — as if all the remarkable things it does on and off the plate are a given. Of course the ingredients should be local. Of course modern cooking should gleefully ignore culinary borders. Of course a neighborhood restaurant can forge a new cuisine — a new, new American for all. — Harry Cheadle, Eater Seattle editor" - Eater Staff
