Lazy Betty: Elegant, fine dining with a laid-back atmosphere
Lazy Betty is a tasting-menu driven restaurant that opened in February of this year at the former Radial Café, located at 1530 Dekalb Ave. NE., in Atlanta, Ga. Owned by Ronald Hsu, his brother and sister, Howard and Anita Hsu and executive chef Aaron Phillips, the restaurant is the brainchild of Ron Hsu, A.K.A Chef Ron.
The restaurant’s name is a cheeky nod to his mother Betty Hsu, longtime Atlanta restaurateur with a big personality who was known for her incredible work ethic. Betty Hsu, 70, passed away May 29, 2019, two weeks after being diagnosed with cancer. But not before seeing her children’s restaurant dreams realized with Lazy Betty and meeting her three grandchildren.
Betty has passed this strong work ethic and restaurateur spirit onto her children. As a child, Chef Ron would get dropped off by the school bus in front of his mother’s restaurant, where he would complete his homework and help his parents with BOH tasks like chopping vegetables, operating the dishwasher and taking food orders.
Before settling in Decatur, Ga to open Lazy Betty, Chef Ron studied French cuisine overseas and later gained exposure as a competitor on Netflix’s international cooking series, The Final Table.
Chefs Ron and Aaron met almost a decade ago while working at New York’s high-end fine dining establishment Le Bernardin. When Ron decided to open Lazy Betty, he called Aaron, who jumped at the opportunity and moved down to Atlanta to be the executive chef, and, he fell in love with the city.
The Concept
With Lazy Betty, the chefs wanted to create an experience that breaks the mold of traditional fine dining restaurant with all white tablecloths and finely dressed wait staff. They chose to create an atmosphere that is modern and relaxed but still provides the exceptional service of any super high-end restaurant.
“Our goal is to make sure we hit all the service goals of a Michelin star restaurant, but at the same time break the formality and allow people to relax and enjoy themselves,” states Aaron.
“Our food is focused on giving the customers the best quality product and coming up with the best recipe, getting the best flavor on the plate and giving the customer the best experience”, Chef Ron adds
Lazy Betty embraces people’s right to eat, whether they are vegetarian, pescatarian or humanitarian – whatever they identify with. The idea is that the chefs don’t want to just feed people’s bellies, they want to feed their minds. The food is prepared in an intelligent manner to meet that goal.
Chef de cuisine Aaron believes that people build relationships over giving gifts and feeding one another, as such has been a part of the history of the world. The dining experience at Lazy Betty is an extension of this idea, with hospitality at its center. The owners agree that hospitality must be shown through the cuisine and must be prepared with love.
The experience
The dining experience consists of a tasting menu, which gives customers the best story to the Lazy Betty approach to cooking. It offers a wider range of ingredients, flavor profiles and culinary techniques that make each dish unique and takes the diner on a journey through tastes, textures, and the world.
The food not only looks and tastes good, but each dish is a story. For example, there’s a dish called Truffle Hunting, in which a Georgian Terroir is recreated with red clay made of Pomme Purée (mashed potatoes) infused with Beurre Rouge sauce (red wine butter), with shaved truffles placed underneath a Peruvian “soil” made of purple potato crumbs on top. Growing out of the soil are different types of mushrooms, baby carrots and herbs to make it look like a garden.
“When we serve this dish, we take the diners through a walk in the forest,” states Chef Aaron.
The tasting menu includes, but is not limited to, a number of culinary creations such as a cucumber cannelloni filled with horseradish panna cotta, snapper tartare with puffed sushi rice, and take on steak and eggs (Betty Hsu’s favorite at Waffle House) with wagyu steak alongside a sous vide egg yolk wrapped in a wasabi leaf.
One of the most loved dessert items on the menu is the Creamsicle. A play on the childhood favorite orange cream pop, a vanilla semifreddo (a type of frozen mousse) is encased in a white chocolate shell and placed over a sweet biscuit, accompanied by a blood orange sorbet decorated with kumquat gelée.
Partnerships in focus
Chefs Ron and Aaron believe that a successful restaurant business is built on the relationships of their partners. These include the people that they buy their equipment from like ACityDiscount, who provided some small wares and specialty equipment, including a Pacojet, to Lazy Betty before its grand opening.
“I’ve had the pleasure of making my way around Georgia over the last two years while ( Lazy Betty) was being built, and, I can say, without a doubt that ACityDiscount has been quite the pleasure to work with and has supported us 100%,” explains Chef Aaron.
Michelin Star Award
We're thrilled to extend our warmest congratulations to our friends at Lazy Betty for their outstanding achievement in the culinary world! They were awarded the coveted Michelin star award in the Atlanta Michelin Guide on October 24th. This is a testament to their dedication, creativity, and exceptional dining experience. Kudos to the entire team at Lazy Betty for this well-deserved recognition!