Best New Restaurant: Little Bear

Chef Jarrett Stieber spent six years planning his first restaurant while simultaneously running his acclaimed pop-up, Eat Me Speak Me. Finally, he opened Little Bear (named for his astonishingly photogenic Great Pyrenees) on a promising late-winter evening in Summerhill’s ambitious and burgeoning restaurant district. “We struggled through everything, and we finally had two weeks where we were open in our own space the way we always wanted it to be,” he told us earlier this year. “We were hitting our stride and doing well. And then, this hits.” The pandemic has been cruel to Stieber, who closed his dining room in mid-March after only a few weeks and has yet to reopen it, save for a few recent private-dining reservations. But Atlantans hungering for his expansive, creative food have been generous. Little Bear has done a brisk and beautiful to-go business, with dishes spanning the cuisines of Hungary, Sichuan, Italy, and beyond (no two of Stieber’s ever-changing menus are alike) and boasting the likes of a deceptively simple red pea and noodle stew (blankets of perfect pappardelle mingling with bitter greens and dotted with perky Sea Island red peas, in a garlicky broth barely thickened with fermented squash paste) and fried chicken in young ginger broth (pristinely fried slices of thigh meat and tender stalks of bok choy, bathing in a sauce heady with ginger, sweet peppers, chili oil, and herbs).

71 Georgia Avenue, Summerhill
404-500-5396
littlebearatl.com

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By: Atlanta Magazine
Photo by: Martha Williams

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