OK guys, you’ve waited until the absolute last minute. Today is Valentine’s Day and you still haven’t decided on a place to take your sweetie for dinner tonight. Here’s one final suggestion that is actually a great choice: the surprisingly interesting Purple Rain Restaurant and Lounge in Duluth, Georgia.
The pollo asado tacos were jammed with slow-cooked chicken and topped with a corn salsa and sweet-hot chipotle slaw.
The first thing you’ll notice when you drive up to Purple Rain is that the building is huge. Located just a stone’s throw from Gwinnett Place Mall and just up the road from Wild Bill’s, the restaurant takes up just about half of the building’s available square footage but is planning to grow into its space.
The next thing you’ll notice is that Purple Rain looks like it should be located in Midtown Atlanta. The place has a definite ITP feel (ITP, for you non-Atlantans, means “Inside The Perimeter” of I-280, the freeway that rings the city) with purple neon and the glass-topped bar. For Duluth, which is definitely OTP (Outside the Perimeter), Purple Rain is a slice of downtown cool in suburbia.
The roasted-lamb gyro was served on small slices of pita bread with creamy feta cheese and tzatziki sauce. The flavor of the lamb shines through the strong tang of the feta.
Purple Rain can best be described as a café, a lunch spot, a lounge and a nightclub, offering everything from breakfast to late-night noshing. The menu, which our server described as “worldly,” is really all over the place. But that’s a good thing, as Chef Robert’s menu is a mixture of small tapas servings that run the gamut from New England lobster rolls ($9) to Escargot baked in puff pastry ($8) to steamed Thai Mussels ($8). Dinner options include some of the small lunch plates, as well as larger plates of NOLA shrimp and grits ($12) to macadamia-crusted sea bass ($18) and a paella for two ($28).
We dropped by for lunch the other day and were impressed with everything we tried, from the risotto fritti ($8) and stuffed artichoke ($8) to the lamb gyros ($8) and pollo asado tacos ($6). The risotto fritti—three croquets of risotto rice, stuffed with buffalo mozzarella, deep fried and served with a romesco sauce—were fantastic: warm, crunchy and totally tasty, like a risotto tater tot. The stuffed artichoke, roasted with a wild mushrooms, red pepper and gruyere cheese and lemon beurre blanc filling, were light, with the mushroom flavor shining through.
We capped off lunch with a little dessert; a dish of beignet, café au lait sorbet, a Kahlua pot de crème and a streak of raspberry sauce.
The gyro—small slices of pita bread with roasted lamb, creamy feta cheese and tzatziki sauce was delicious, as the flavor of the lamb shone through the strong tang of the feta. But it was the tacos that were the hit of the meal. The slow-cooked chicken was tightly packed into three small crispy tortillas and topped with a corn salsa and sweet-hot chipotle slaw. It was the honey-based slaw that did the trick. If Chef Robert wanted to, he could bottle that stuff and make a little lettuce on the side.
We capped off lunch with a little dessert; a dish of beignet, café au lait sorbet, a Kahlua pot de crème and a streak of raspberry sauce. Beignet always remind me of New Orleans and the Café Du Monde in the French Quarter. These were cut long, dusted with powdered sugar and luscious, especially when dipped in the raspberry sauce and sorbet. The pot de crème was also yummy, but a bit of a torture, as the spoons were too big to get nearly a third of the dessert in the bottom of the aperitifs glass.
The lounge and bar at Purple Rain.
So, yeah, Valentine’s Day… Purple Rain would be a good call, as in addition to the regular menu, it is offering a three-course prix fixe dinner for two for $60 featuring an appetizer (ginger carrot soup, green salad with bacon and pear or crab cake), and entrée (vegetable ravioli in white wine butter sauce, seared sea scallops, pan-roasted lamb chop or smoked quail) and a dessert (raspberry mousse bomb, chocolate hazelnut peak or cheesecake). Reservations are still available. Take her there for dinner, hang out a little in the lounge and, if you don’t have kids to get home to and a baby sitter to relieve, stay until the place transforms into the nightclub and dance your sweetie into a Valentine’s Day rapture.
And if you are desperate to make Valentine’s Day a winner, you can spring for the house specialty: a golden chocolate truffle nugget soufflé that comes topped with an amethyst necklace ($1,000). They have served up three of these since January.
Purple Rain
3550 Mall Blvd NW
Duluth, Ga. 30097
770.418.9086
Check Out These Other Ideas For Valentine’s Day:
- Romantic Hotel and Spa Deals for Valentine’s Day
- Last Minute California Hotel Deals for Valentine’s Day
- Disney Romance for Valentine’s Day
Post by and photos credited to Gregory Watkins.