Atlanta Good Food category interest

In this Fork in the Road episode, host David Zelski takes you to the heart of Atlanta’s culinary scene with a visit to the iconic Hyatt Regency Hotel. Executive Chef Thomas McKeown guides David through the hotel’s four unique dining experiences, including the famous rotating Polaris restaurant. Chef McKeown discusses how his team incorporates local Georgia-grown ingredients into their dishes, offering a taste of the state with every bite. This episode highlights how Atlanta’s local food scene has become a vital part of the city’s culture and economy.

You will also meet James Gallo, the hotel’s pastry chef and resident beekeeper. With six beehives on the rooftop of the hotel, James provides insight into how the hotel harvests honey from their bees to create fresh, decadent desserts like the Polaris Blue Dome, a signature dish featuring ethically sourced chocolate and house-made honey caramel. Gallo’s dual role as pastry chef and beekeeper offers a rare look into the intersection of culinary arts and sustainability.

Throughout the episode, David explores the Hyatt Regency’s commitment to using locally sourced ingredients, from cheeses to charcuterie, all provided by Georgia farmers and artisans. Chef McKeown showcases the creativity and care that goes into every dish, emphasizing the importance of supporting local producers. The hotel’s rooftop bees even gather nectar from some of Atlanta’s most famous landmarks, adding an extra touch of hometown flavor to their honey.

TRANSCRIPT:

David Zelski: Oh my goodness. That is unreal.

Thomas McKeown: And you have that floor on this from the honey and then the crisp bacon. Yeah.

David Zelski: Yeah. It's not overwhelming honey, you're still getting the bacon in there. That is amazing.

Thomas McKeown: So you can see what a beautiful plate. And just to be able to showcase every item from our beautiful state and the great products that we can get.

David Zelski: Atlanta has become a huge culinary hotspot. Foodies now have endless options to choose from in the state capital. And when you take a trip down Peachtree Street, you'll find one buzzworthy location where fans of excellent food made with the best local ingredients can really get around.

Theme Song: I came from the mud. There's dirt on my hands. Strong like a tree, there's roots where I stand.

David Zelski: And I'm David Zelski, and this is the Fork in the Road podcast presented by Georgia Grown and the fine folks at Georgia Public Broadcasting. Each episode, we feature stories from Georgia farmers, fishermen, merchants, artisans, chefs and others who help provide Georgia-grown products to folks in the Peach State and beyond. Today, we're headed to the capital of the American South: A-town, the ATL, the Big Peach. Today, we're in Atlanta to visit the Hyatt Regency Hotel, minutes from the Aquarium, State Farm Arena, Mercedes Benz Stadium, the world of Coke and more, this hotel is an extremely popular landing spot for Atlanta tourists from all over the world. Atlanta's bustling downtown area welcomes visitors with open arms and delicious food. And hungry travelers need to look no further than the Hyatt Regency Hotel. The building offers four unique dining options, including Polaris, a rotating restaurant on top of the building where you can take in a breathtaking view of the city. Thomas McKeown is the Hyatt Regency Hotel's executive chef.

David Zelski: This is an iconic building, one of the coolest spots in the whole city. Rotating restaurant here. And this is one of a few in the building. Talk about the different restaurants you have here.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. So we're very lucky. We have Polaris here, of course, at the top of the hotel looking over the whole city. You can see as far as Stone Mountain, Kennesaw Mountain and out into Gwinnett. So it's a pretty unique and experience to be able to look over the city. Then we have our market downstairs that offers 24-hour dining, and that's where you can find a lot of our local products that we showcase as well as our honey.

David Zelski: And we'll have more on the honey a little later.

Thomas McKeown: And then we have our 22 Stories bar and Sway restaurant. So we have four different options for our guests to enjoy.

David Zelski: Does it allow you to be creative, put different things in different restaurants? Tell me about that.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. So what's cool is, you know, in Sway, you're really looking at Southern cuisine, showcasing the best of Georgia and all of that we have to offer here. Then 22 Stories really focuses on an alcohol-based menu. So really showcasing the beers that you have and incorporating them into the menu. And then you come up to Polaris, and this is our upscale dining option that has unique flavors and great products as well as great cocktails.

David Zelski: It's got to be neat being up here. You know, the outside is rotating. You stay in place here.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. So luckily in the kitchen, you don't want the chefs to get dizzy halfway during the service. So your kitchen is stationary and they get to see the guests rotate around. It takes about one hour to get all the way around the building.

David Zelski: That's really neat. So the challenge is for the waiters. Like, "I know my table was right here."

Thomas McKeown: It is. You come out on one side and you're like, "Where has that table gone?"

David Zelski: Using Georgia-grown products in his cuisine means Chef Thomas has a wide variety of fresh local ingredients to make amazing food any time of the year.

Thomas McKeown: I think, you know, in Georgia, we're very lucky to have the best ingredients available to us all year round. You can go all the way to South Georgia and pick up amazing products or you go up to the north. So you have everything from great cheese makers to dairies, you have bread makers, you have charcuterie. And there's so many options for us available here. And being in Atlanta, you can gather them from all different parts of the state and really showcase them here at the hotel. So we're lucky, we support about 76 vendors in the state that we utilize for products on a daily basis. You know, it's really amazing. As you look out at the city, they'll go as far as the botanical gardens there right over here. And you can see how much greenery is here.

David Zelski: It's a forest in a city. It is so green here.

Thomas McKeown: It's pretty amazing. And we're very lucky to have that available. And — and for us to be able to get our hands on local products and how much more local than a few hundred feet from the restaurants and to be able to utilize that in our menus, it makes a big difference.

David Zelski: Staying on the topic of freshness, there's one element of the Hyatt Regency Hotel's food which may surprise you — and it creates quite a buzz.

James Gallo: My name is James Gallo, and I'm the pastry chef here at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta and beekeeper as well.

David Zelski: You heard that right. The Hyatt Regency Hotel maintains beehives on the roof of the building and harvests their own honey for use in their decadent dishes. Seriously, that's as fresh as it gets. Now, it might seem unusual for a pastry chef, but Chef James has been beekeeping since he was young.

David Zelski: And you've been doing this your whole life, for the most part?

James Gallo: Well, in spaces on and off. When I was younger. My parents' neighbor had beehives. They were a couple from Latvia and they had beehives. And the gentleman had given my brother three beehives. And I always — I used to help him and work with them.

David Zelski: And my question is the same as yours: "How in the world did a fancy hotel in the middle of downtown Atlanta start keeping beehives?"

James Gallo: So in mid-summer, 2013, we adopted two beehives. There was a traffic accident with one of the trucks that moves beehives from orchard to orchard to do pollination. And our bee consultant said, "Hey, if you want bees, now's the time to get them." And that's where we started. We've now grown to six beehives with at the peak of the season will house over a million bees 250 feet above Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta. We went through trials and tribulations of, you know, losing hives and gaining hives and back down — back in 2017, we were down to one hive with about 2,000 bees.

David Zelski: So you started this when?

James Gallo: 2013 was the first ones.

David Zelski: 2013. So 2017 you were down to one.

James Gallo: One, with just a few bees. And I kind of made a decision at that point. I'm like, "You know what? We need to do whatever we can to keep them warm." So I got some of the pink housing insulation, the Styrofoam, and I put it on the outside of it. I guess it made them think that it was still warm out. And when we opened up the hive in the spring, it was 30,000 bees.

David Zelski: That's beautiful!

James Gallo: So yeah.

David Zelski: Because of the amount of forage areas in Atlanta, the honey made by Hyatt Regency Hotel bees gives guests a taste of the whole city.

James Gallo: We were able to surmise from from some of our honeys and their flavor profiles. The Carter Center, the King Center were probably very big forage areas for them, as well as, of course, the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. So Georgia Tech — there's a lot around. I mean, when when you're up on the roof and you're looking around, looking at Atlanta, you do see a lot of green, unlike a lot of cities. Where there's a lot of green and that means a lot of pollen and a lot of nectar for the bees to collect.

David Zelski: So Georgia Tech not only has yellow jackets, they have honeybees.

James Gallo: They have a lot of honeybees, actually. Yes.

David Zelski: Honey made at the Hyatt Regency Hotel is a staple of both the rotating Polaris and the Market located downstairs.

James Gallo: Polaris Blue Dome Honey, we use it in Polaris restaurant. I actually use it for one signature dessert, which is the Polaris Blue Dome. And then they use it on a charcuterie tray, but we actually sell it in the Market, jar it in the Market in a couple of sizes in the future. And we actually do have some really big bottles also, but in different areas of the hotel we have it available.

David Zelski: But how many bees swarm around and how much money do you produce on an average and what do you expect this year?

James Gallo: On an average, I'd say we do about 500 to 600 pounds. This year I'm hoping for about 1,000 pounds, which would be pretty amazing to know that from 2017 to now, in 2017, we got about 60 pounds and you know, five years later or four years later, we're getting, you know, 1,000 pounds. That's just an astronomical growth. So a lot of honey and a lot of desserts.

David Zelski: Pastry chef and beekeeper are two professions which rarely have an overlap. But for James, the challenges go hand in hand.

David Zelski: How much of a — of a challenge is it to keep them going, to make sure they're — they're healthy, they're okay?

James Gallo: That's probably been our biggest challenge so far and it's always a learning experience. You — I've learned to adjust to what happens with them and how I have to adjust my work schedule just based on what they're doing. There's times that I have to come in at 5:00 in the morning so that I know that all the bees are in the hives to do a treatment on them for different kinds of mites. Varroa mites are one of the No. 1 killers of bees, and they — I need them in the hive to be able to do that treatment.

David Zelski: In the Fork In the Road episode where I visited Blue Ridge Honey Company in North Georgia, I spoke with Jennifer Berry, a research professor at the University of Georgia's Honeybee Lab. That's when I learned about the Varroa mite referred, to as the Varroa destructor. Here's a short clip from that episode.

Jennifer Berry: So the No. 1 reason our bees are dying is because of the exotic ectoparasitic mite called Varroa destructor. And once that came into the United States, it changed bees' and beekeepers' lives forever. It's not going to go away. It's something we're going to have to deal with. Our research at the University of Georgia for the last 20-plus years has been looking at ways that we can control this mite without killing the colony, because basically we're wanting to put an insecticide in a box of insects. And so we're trying to control, even though it's a mite, we're trying to control a mite in a box of insects. So it's very difficult. There's a fine line there.

David Zelski: To hear more on the work the UGA Honey Bee Lab is doing to fight this devastating parasite, listen to our podcast episode titled "Buzzing in Blue Ridge." But for now, let's go back to pastry chef-slash-beekeeper James at the Hyatt Regency. He's in the middle of telling me about something truly incredible.

David Zelski: Let's talk about that signature desert, the Dome.

James Gallo: The Polaris Blue Dome. It came — came about in about 2015 when we reopened Polaris. It evolved over the years. But the one signature was that it had the Blue Dome honey in it. Always. We — It's a chocolate mousse, which is actually made with Hyatt's own custom-blended chocolate. So it's a chocolate mousse with a blue — blue dome honey center and then a flat rose chocolate cake on the bottom and then a chocolate sorbet.

David Zelski: Unbelievable.

David Zelski: The Polaris Blue Dome isn't just beautiful and delicious, the chocolate is ethically sourced.

James Gallo: We sourced it from a company in Switzerland who can trace the cocoa beans all the way back to their farm in Sao Tomé, which is a small island off the coast of Africa. The biggest part of it is the sustainability of it, the treatment of the farmers from the chocolate company and the lack of use of child labor on the plantations or on the farms.

David Zelski: Now that's a dessert you can really feel good about. Let's now watch Chef Thomas show us how this decadent work of art is made.

Thomas McKeown: For this dish has been a signature in Paris for quite some time. And people come and they love to be able to spin around and enjoy their evening and finish off with this amazing dessert. And what a great way to showcase our honey. So what we have is actually this blue dome which represents the building, the Polaris Dome. So as you're driving down through Atlanta's 75/85 connector, you see this beautiful blue light and going across the city, which has been here since 1967. So it's a really iconic part of the city and what we're about. So having this dessert to showcase the building makes a lot of sense. But on the inside, inside this blue capsule, which is really just cocoa butter that James dyes, is our honey caramel on the inside. So as you crack in through the chocolate mousse, you have this beautiful honey caramel on the inside. So to finish this, James talked about the chocolate we work with. It's a hired chocolate. We just place this down, we grab our blue dome, and without breaking the chocolate, we place it right here. We have this beautiful look.

David Zelski: And you even have a blue speckle on top.

David Zelski: With a speck of indigo.

David Zelski: Yeah.

Thomas McKeown: We're going to take our gluten-free crumble. This is just so that sorbet doesn't run all over the plate as you go around the restaurant trying to find where the customers are sitting. And we finish it off with more chocolate.

David Zelski: Oh my gosh.

Thomas McKeown: Chocolate sorbet. So there you have our signature Blue Dome.

David Zelski: Unbelievable. Unbelievable.

David Zelski: The Polaris Blue Dome is a mind-blowing example of what a truly creative pastry chef like James Gallo can do. Chef James says working at the Hyatt Regency Hotel with Chef Thomas has been both creatively fulfilling and educational.

James Gallo: Chef Thomas is awesome. It's — he allows me my creativity. He really, truly pushes local products for all of us to use, not just myself in the pastry kitchen, but all the chefs and all the outlets. I've been here for over 10 years now. It's my longest tenure in a hotel and it's just been amazing. It's been a lot of fun. It's again, with the creativity of my team, the freedom that chef allows us to grow as a team. And — but again, more so is learning about the local and sustainability of the food options that we have has made me grow as a person and as a chef. So — and of course, with the bees, every day is an adventure. So it's a lot of fun and it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun and again, super rewarding in the end. Everything, you know, it's — it's to watch where we've come from where we started. It's just been an enjoyable ride.

David Zelski: Speaking of enjoyable out on the roof, Chef Thomas is about to walk me through the Hyatt Regency Hotel's incredible charcuterie board. And not a moment too soon: I'm starving.

David Zelski: Well, this is absolute torture: Sitting right here, sitting on this food and not eating yet. There's — there's bacon hovering over here and there's honey over here. Where do we get started, Chef?

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. So we're going to showcase a local charcuterie board where all the items are from Georgia. So let's start off with some Pine Street Market spec. This comes from Avondale, and being so high up in the city, it's cool that we're able to put these on the plate and nearly point out the parts of the city where the food's coming from. Yeah, you're like, right over here. Go east to here and you can see where this is coming from. So it's a great way for our servers to be able to talk to our guests and say, "This is where our food's coming from" and it makes it really unique.

Thomas McKeown: This charcuterie board is a culinary trip around the Peach State, featuring a lovingly curated lineup of Georgia's farmers. And let's start off with the proteins.

David Zelski: Tell us everything spec in prosciutto.

Thomas McKeown: It's just an aged ham. This comes from a good friend of mine named Rusty Byers. He owns Pine Street Market. I've been working with Rusty close to 10 years. As you can see, my Georgia accent's gotten very strong over the years.

David Zelski: Yeah, you pulled it off.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. Doing pretty good. So it's really great to be able to utilize these products. Some different types of salami you have here. So just adding them to the board and we allow the food to speak for itself.

David Zelski: Okay.

You know, this great local product you wanted to showcase, you don't need to hide it with different ingredients. Showcase the trout and let the people taste it.

David Zelski: And what's a charcuterie board without cheese?

Thomas McKeown: This is Greenhill. And this comes from Sweet Grass Dairy down in Thomasville, Ga. So it's a really wonderful cheese. We're going to cut a little section off here. And if you'd like a little taste, you may.

David Zelski: I would love a taste. This is just getting better and better.

Thomas McKeown: So you can see how it's a really beautiful brie. Great texture.

David Zelski: Oh, it's just creamy.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah, and they make great cheeses. This is just one of their amazing cheeses.

David Zelski: My gosh. Keep that far away from me.

Thomas McKeown: And then a good friend of mine, Mary Rigdon, who owns Decimal Place Farms. You can nearly see her farm from up here. It's a unique part of being up 24 floors above the city. You can point out where she is raising these goats. So this is her feta cheese. And if you have

David Zelski: goat feta.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. And if you haven't had it, it's absolute, it's pretty amazing.

David Zelski: Decimal Place Farms.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. And that's Mary Rigdon is the name of the farmer.

David Zelski: That is phenomenal. It's different from feta I'm used to.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah, it has a great flavor and it really is super fresh. So you can pick these up at local markets throughout the city. She does an amazing job.

David Zelski: And if you think we're stopping there, you just don't know how much I love cheese.

Thomas McKeown: Of course we're going to take some more. You need to always have a hard cheese when you're doing a meat and cheese display.

David Zelski: Okay.

Thomas McKeown: Thomas Will Tom named after Thomas Will, of course. Sweet Grass Dairy again. Just a really nice little sliver of this cheese.

David Zelski: It almost looks like a parmesan.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah, it does. It's called a tom. There's another taste for you.

David Zelski: I like these tastes. These are good sample sizes.

Thomas McKeown: A nice little nuttiness to this cheese, and then great flavor. It has a nice hardness on the outside, but then goes soft on the inside.

David Zelski: Yeah, that's got a little more bite right at the top, but not too much. Yeah. And now that I'm full of dairy, I may need a touch of sweet heat to clean the palate.

Thomas McKeown: And then when you're doing the charcuterie. I love to have some pickles in here. Good friend of ours again, Doux South pickles. We've been working with them for many years and they're doing amazing work. You'll see them actually across this stage in different stores. This is their Angry Cukes.

David Zelski: "Angry?" Does that mean spicy?

Thomas McKeown: Yeah they have a little bit of kick to it. The owner actually came from New Orleans originally, so he likes to put a little kick into it.

David Zelski: So the kick comes a little later. I love that. It's a sweet.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. And it's really, really great. And you can see this adds a really nice color to it.

David Zelski: Okay, time to sample some of that signature Hyatt Regency Hotel honey.

Thomas McKeown: And, of course, this wouldn't be done without some of our own honeycomb. You can see here on the comb itself. We're going to cut out a section. So right here, straight from the rooftop.

David Zelski: What is this contraption? My goodness.

Thomas McKeown: Beautiful honeycomb. Right from the hive. We'll put it right here.

David Zelski: And that's going to go with —

Thomas McKeown: It goes really well with great — It's great with the cheeses. It's great with the meats. Wouldn't be done without some bread on here.

David Zelski: Oh and you even got a twisty tie on there.

Thomas McKeown: Yeah.

David Zelski: Yes, that's beautiful.

Thomas McKeown: And then of course, that you've mentioned before, you love the sourdough crackers.

David Zelski: Once you had them — once you've had them, you, you got to keep buying them

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. Yeah. And they come in so many great flavors, but they're really delicious.

David Zelski: So the cheese. Cheese cracker goes with the cheese.

Thomas McKeown: So they come in sourdough, everything but flavor. They're really fantastic.

David Zelski: Well. Now I'm stuffed. I mean it this time, y'all — I couldn't possibly eat one more bite.

Thomas McKeown: And I think it's missing one item. What do you think?

David Zelski: What is it missing? We got our honeycomb. Does it not have bacon?

Thomas McKeown: Yeah. Let's do it.

David Zelski: Okay. Here, I can help you with that.

David Zelski: Okay, so I lied.

Thomas McKeown: So I've taken, again, Pine Street Markets and — based in Avondale. They also have a store called Chop Shop right in downtown Atlanta, right on Memorial Drive. I've taken our honey and I've glazed it and finished it in the oven. So it gets just really nice shiny-ness this to it

David Zelski: It's like candy.

Thomas McKeown: It's just like candied bacon. I think we'll just add just one.

David Zelski: Piece broke off. What do you do?

Thomas McKeown: We'll just have to snack on that. Going to be for you to taste.

David Zelski: And thank you. Oh my goodness. That is unreal.

Thomas McKeown: And you have that floral from the honey and then the crisp bacon. Yeah.

David Zelski: Yeah. It's not overwhelming honey; you're still getting the bacon in there. That is amazing.

Thomas McKeown: So you can see what a beautiful plate. And just to be able to showcase every item from our beautiful state and the great products that we can get.

David Zelski: The Hyatt Regency Hotel is a wonderful destination for Atlantans, who want to get a little taste of everything Georgia farms have to offer. And chefs James and Thomas have made it a welcome beacon for tourists, too. With sweet and savory treats, locally sourced ingredients and an incredible view of the city, it's the perfect spot for visitors looking for the full Atlanta experience. For more stories like this one, you can watch A Fork in the Road on GPB-TV or any time on the GPB.org website. That's where you'll also be able to listen to and subscribe to this podcast or download it on your favorite podcast platform.

I'm David Zelski. Thanks for listening to A Fork in the Road.

A Fork in the Road airs Saturdays at noon and Sundays at 6:30 a.m. on GPB-TV. Check your local listings for other replays throughout the week and watch all episodes anytime at GPB.org/ForkintheRoad. Please download and subscribe to the Fork in the Road podcast at GPB.org/ForkintheRoadpodcast or on your favorite podcast platform.