Lawrenceville hotel introduces Bell Fire dining

Welcome back to Good Day Atlanta, everyone. We're coming up on 10:30. And checking out downtown Lawrenceville just got easier thanks to the addition of the area's first upscale boutique hotel. The Lawrence Hotel features 120 guest rooms and suites and a pair of new dining concepts. And best of all, it's just steps away from the town's historic square. Good Day Atlanta's Paul Millican is live in Lawrenceville this morning. Of course, you've got a terrific spread in front of you. Are you going to share? You know I do. What you couldn't hear, am I going to share? I will always share with Dominic Simpson. I'll share with Chef Dominic Simpson right here. That's the only one. All right. My stomach growled as you were introducing me. The food is gorgeous here. So, again, we're at the Lawrence Hotel here in Lawrenceville, brand-new boutique upscale hotel. It is gorgeous. So we showed you around downstairs in the 8 o'clock hour. We showed you a guest room in the 9 o'clock hour, a nice king suite up there. And now we are down at Bellfire. So, Chef, first of all, it's great to see you. How are you? I'm wonderful. Thank you for coming. Well, thank you for being here and bringing the food, my friend. So for folks who have never been and don't know about Bellfire yet, tell me about the cuisine. What kind of a restaurant is this? It's a southern restaurant, but I use Mediterranean to interpret the food quality to make it lighter, cleaner. I love that. So it's Southern classics that we love, but using those Mediterranean techniques, which makes it just a little bit healthier, right? Very healthy. Yeah, that makes me very happy to hear. How excited are you to be in this brand new hotel? I'm so excited. I moved in the neighborhood. I live six minutes away from here. Oh, well, so that's good to know because I can come here, I can eat, have a drink, and then I'll just walk over and sleep at your house, okay? We got rooms upstairs. All right. Well, that's a good point. You do have about 100 of them here at the hotel. Well, let's talk about the food that you guys have been cooking up. And let me say, before we go to this, all morning we've been here watching breakfast food coming out of that kitchen. It looks amazing. So you serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner here? Just breakfast and dinner right now. Okay, breakfast and dinner right now. So let's talk about the dinner items here. What's this? This is a Joyce Farm roasted chicken breast with cold roasted vegetable with garlic mashed potato. Black garlic mashed potato. What is on top there? Collard green chimichurri. Oh, my gosh. That's that southern coming in. I love that. Okay, what's next? So this is a blackened cod. We use burpee spices with crab rice, and it's the collard green chimichurri again, just for that vinegar, that acid. I can't wait to try that. All right, what's next? This is grilled Gulf Coast prawns with sweet potato salad. Yeah, those prawns are huge. Yeah. Yeah. And it's a harissa barbecue sauce on it. Oh, I can't wait to try those, too. That looks good. Okay, now I asked you a little secret. I said, Chef, if you're going to eat only one thing on this table, what's it going to be? You immediately, you screamed out the words pork chop, right? Yes, peach glaze, pork chops, sweet potatoes with mustard greens. It's sweet, bitter, and all that in one. Oh, I love that. Okay, what's next? This is lamb meatballs with harissa. Oh, lamb meatballs? Yes. Oh, that is cool. I didn't know that. Okay, last but not least, here's what I'm going to try this morning, because I've eaten a lot of things on TV, but this is a first for me. Chef, what is on this plate? This is a grilled ostrich with dirty farro and garlic spinach. Say that one more time. Grilled ostrich. Okay, it is ostrich, like the thing that I've seen in the zoo before. Yes, sir. That's it. I'm so excited to try this. Before I do, what am I in for? What is sort of the flavor of ostrich? It's clean and lean meat. The flavor, it reminds me of beef tenderloin. Oh, okay. Well, you sold it. I can't wait to try it. Really quickly here, I mean, the food looks so beautiful. The presentation is incredible. Where do you source this stuff? Are you looking to source the best, local, all that kind of thing? I responsibly source. So if I can get it locally, I get it. But if I have to go regional, I get it. If I have to go domestic, worldwide. Wherever you got to go to get the best quality. The best quality. That's amazing. And I also love that you've got a big open kitchen here, too. Do you enjoy that aspect of guests being able to kind of see what's going on back there? Yes, I like to watch the instant feedback. Oh, yeah. I can see almost every table. Well, you saw us this morning, like, what's coming out next? What's coming out next? All right, time to try the ostrich. So I'm going to dig right in again. I've eaten a lot of things on TV, but I do not think I have ever tried ostrich. So I'm going to get a little bit of this kind of sauce. What am I getting in here? Yes, thanks. See, chef knows how it works. All right. We are trading jobs. Now, what is like the flavor of the sauce? The red wine sauce. All right. Perfect. Here we go. Oh, man. Okay. Look, I want to apologize to every ostrich I've ever seen in a zoo. I love you. I do ostriches, but you taste so good. I just want to keep eating you from now. That is good. But it is way more like a beef tenderloin than I would have ever thought. I would have thought it would be more like on the chicken side. That is so good. I mean, it's wonderful. It's low cholesterol and everything. Really? All right. So keep them coming, all right? Go make a few more plates of it, and I'll eat it, all right? I will keep cooking. Chef, great to see you, my friend. Thank you. And congrats on this new place, Bellfire, one of two new dining concepts. I'm just going to plop down right now. You know what? This is Friday. My workday is done. Get that napkin in the lap. I am ready to go ostrich, people. Who knew? Who knew? Ostrich. Yeah, I was going to say the apologies to the ostriches. That was top notch. So well done, Paul. You're very cute. Ostriches, you're adorable, but you taste too good. A great source of protein. That's true. Enjoy, Paul. The Lawrence Hotel is located at 120 East Croghan Street in Lawrenceville. For more information on the hotel, follow the links on fox5atlanta.com and look for the story under the Good Day section.