THERE'S NOTHING INTIMIDATING ABOUT WAHOO'S LAID-BACK CUISINE. BUT AT THE RIGHT TIME IT KNOWS HOW TO FLEX ITS MUSSELS.

by MERIDITH FORD / AJC
Published on: 12/23/2004

LET'S TALK ABOUT restaurants. Better yet, let's talk about neighborhood restaurants.

In France, they are called bistros. In Italy, trattorias. They are casual cafes that serve down-to-earth food. They carry wine lists that serve recognizable offerings anyone can read in a glance without needing a translation.

The servers are local and know you by name. The owner is probably also the chef. He gets his produce and fish fresh daily by walking to the market, and he designs the night's offerings around what he found there. (He may even grow some of his own herbs and vegetables.) He bakes his own bread and desserts. When he can't, he gets them from a reputable boulangerie and patisserie nearby.

This version of a bistro does not exist in the United States. We are simply too big. Our distribution system is wide and varied and relies on trains, planes and automobiles, not a walk to the open market.

And yet we have great bistros. We have casual cafes that cater to the hometown in all of us. We have neighborhood spots where the servers all know our names, where our children are treated as if they were the owner's own; where we can get a great meal — not a fancy one, mind you — that is extraordinarily made but doesn't cost us our life's savings.

Wahoo! A Decatur Grill is one of these great bistros. It is the quintessential American neighborhood restaurant: It's casual, everyone feels welcome and the food satisfies on a number of different levels, all of which are extremely relevant to the American diner.

First, the food is not intimidating. Everything on the menu — from a spicy, red pepper-laden cream sauce over Charleston-style shrimp and grits to the super-frosted chocolate cake — is something any gifted cook could make at home. Only at Wahoo you won't have to do the dishes.

Second, the food at least makes an attempt at being seasonal and fresh. OK, so my server on a recent visit admitted the bread comes straight from a national distributor. It was an olive-studded flatbread that tasted darned good to me, especially when smeared with a house-made compound butter laced with garlic and herbs. And the best part? Nobody was pretending otherwise.

And third, the food feels as if someone cooked it, rather than manipulated it. I'm all for the Towering Inferno as my baked Alaska presentation, but not at a neighborhood restaurant like Wahoo. Save that for Seeger's or the Ritz.

This is a smart little restaurant that knows its clientele. It fills a need in its neighborhood, just like that French bistro. Folks across town might venture in from time to time, too, just to find out what all the fuss is about.

Try this on for decidedly unfussy: Wahoo serves a hunk — not a slice, a hunk — of coconut cake that will make your hair change color, it's so good. Guess what? Ask and the server will tell you unabashedly that it comes from another local favorite of mine, Southern Sweets, also in Decatur. Only two of the desserts, pecan pie and bread pudding, are made in Wahoo's tiny open kitchen. There's just not enough room for too much dessert making.

Still, the bread pudding is the best I have ever eaten. Honest. It's gooey but not runny. It tastes like eggs and cream, custard and vanilla. It's served warm. And it's drizzled with a bourbon glaze that is a cross between butter, sugar and melted, yummy-goodie-sweet stuff that you want to smear all over your face. I hope they keep it well stocked. Running out of it might get very, very ugly.

Admittedly, some things on Wahoo's menu don't work. Quesadillas filled with Roma tomatoes and mozzarella, basil and pesto are too pedestrian, like something pre-made at the grocery store. The shrimp cocktail is downright insulting, since the shrimp are not at all the right size for something that's going to be the main focus of a dish. Coconut shrimp are sad and limp, lacking all crispness, with nowhere near enough coconut. And if I never see horseradish and blueberries encrusting anything again it will be a day too soon.

But small shrimp are the perfect size, as are tiny bay scallops, for a scrumptious fisherman's stew, very much like a cioppino, full of tomatoes and chunks of fish, shrimp and scallops. For all intents and purposes it was a cioppino, but how refreshing to have no one at Wahoo even allude to it as such.

The best dish by far is a bowl of mussels in a sherry cream broth. The mussels are perfect: plump, clean and no more than a mouthful. But the way Wahoo combines the sherry, the cream, the broth — together they will be in heaven right next to Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Nehi orange soda and Scott Peacock's fried chicken. The flavor is tawny from the sherry, a little sweet but not too, and there is just enough cream and butter to make your mouth feel indulged. You'll be dipping bread in it long after the mussels are gone . . .

Wahoo, by the way, is a fish similar in flavor to albacore tuna or swordfish and is often used in stews and soups because it's usually easier to get in chunks rather than fillets. It is on the menu, cut into medallions, draped with a bright salsa verde. It's humbly served with mashed potatoes and a vegetable du jour, which, if you're lucky, will be the sauteed spinach, drenched in olive oil and garlic, Italian-style.

Owner Pam Ledbetter started from scratch in this spot on West College Avenue that was so forsaken it didn't even have electrical outlets.

Now it has slate floors in the bathroom, a fashionable brick wall flanked with a hip-looking banquette, a pretty patio out back — and, oh, just one more little thing: a full dining room every night.