LeBain L.
Yelp
Tl;dr: Great finer dining & craft cocktails place that you should try!
The former Lawrence at the same location by the same owners as RWBY was one of my favorite two restaurants in Midtown, Atlanta. So I had extremely high expectations when I tried RWBY for the first time. This is a 4-1/2 star review rounded down due to those expectations. Feel free to round up to 5 if you like!
The space: The owners seem to have tried for a lighter experience this time, with lighter cocktail menu selections & a lighter interior design. Perhaps the Lawrence seemed a bit too masculine, austere, or dark. But in trying to go the opposite direction, they've ended up with Ruby Tuesday instead of refined. The raw wood slatted, high backed, unpadded booths seem to me to be an odd decision for an upscale place.
The fare: RWBY features essentially the same brief entree menu as the Lawrence: a burger, a bone-in half chicken, steak & frites, a fish, a soup & a vegetarian option. The hangar steak was amazing at one end, but stringy & tough at the other. The burgers are tasty with fresh ingredients. The bar excelled at my fancy test cocktails. We tried the melon & prosciutto appetizer which the chef seems to not understand at all. They had inexplicably fried the prosciutto into bacon bits that shattered on the plate & were incapable of being enjoyed in the same bite as the sparse slices of melon.
The service: The Lawrence always suffered from uneven (what I called schizophrenic) service: you never knew what you were going to get -- attentive one visit, absent another, helpful one visit, clueless the next. Their hiring/training practices seem to not have changed. Our server was competent & knowledgeable, but detached & distracted. However, that's not all bad if you're more interested in your dinner conversations than a server constantly interrupting you.
Overall I'm sure I'm going to love it again & will be back soon to try more with adjusted expectations.