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Starting Thursday, each of the restaurants featured in our cover story cover story will offer celebratory "AJC" spring dinners to honor sustainability. Chefs will offer the season's first farm-fresh vegetables as well as locally produced meats. Go to my blog at www.ajc.com/tabletalk to get a peek at the fabulous menus these chefs are preparing, all between $20 and $25. For more information about slow food and sustainability, go to www.slowfoodusa.org; for more info about organics, log onto www.georgiaorganics.com.

Joey Ivansco/Staff (ENLARGE)
Restaurant Eugene offers a tasting of local spring vegetables that works as an appetizer.
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5 Seasons Brewing

5600 Roswell Road, Sandy Springs. 404-255-5911. www.5seasonsbrewing.com

The high, open-beamed ceiling looks like an Aspen retreat; the bar is dark and a little dingy; beer vats are shiny and looming. Everything about 5 Seasons screams brew pub, until you get a look at the specials' board (which is usually about 20 items long) and a peek at the regular menu. Chef David Larkworthy (who spends time both in Roswell, and at the restaurant's Alpharetta location) offers selections that belong more in a Midtown bistro than a Sandy Springs brew pub. He buys Berkshire pork from Riverview Farms and turns out scrumptiously tender, off-the-bone chops with braised greens from local farmers. Shrimp comes up directly from the Gulf, plump and bursting hot with flavor, encrusted in panko. There might be goodies such as Malpeque oysters on the half-shell served over wakame and doused with a bit of pickled new garlic, Asian pear and house-made soy, or local steelhead trout with pink-eye peas and fried okra in summer. No matter the season, Larkworthy's dedication to local, seasonal ingredients is the proof of 5 Seasons' pudding. And don't forget: brew master Glen Sprouse knows his hefeweizen from his stout. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; noon- 10 p.m. Sundays. Bar open later. $$-$$$

Floataway Cafe

1123 Zonolite Road N.E., Suite 15, Atlanta. 404-892-1414. www.starprovisions.com

Floataway Cafe offers a streamlined menu of farm-fresh ingredients brought together in a just-this-side of southern France and Italy persuasion. Anne Quatrano and Clifford Harrison, Atlanta's most famous chefs, decided to completely renovate this little restaurant that could. In doing so last fall, they've created a new restaurant. Designer Dominick Coyne's rooms give the new design the feel of a breezy beach house mingled with the mountains; the shiny chrome bar is crowned with vases of fresh, long-stemmed flowers, and wicker chairs (though still difficult to maneuver) add to the relaxed mood. And the food, from chef de cuisine Drew Belline, couldn't be fresher. The pizzas, wood-fired and crisp-crusted, are the best in the city, with house-made fennel sausage or house-cured sopressata. Local, seasonal ingredients such as lady apples and north Georgia mountain trout are a given. Spring brings morel mushrooms that Belline harvests himself, as well as seasonal asparagus. Local frisee lardons is fresh and bright with a gorgonzola-and-bacon vinaigrette and a perfectly coddled egg from the owners' Summerland Farm. The cheese selection, harvested from Star Provisions' ample larder, is among the finest in Atlanta. And desserts and cocktails bear the mark of a staff devoted to the kitchen's slow food style. 6-10 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays. $$$

Food 101 Morningside

1397 North Highland Ave., Atlanta. 404-347-9747. www.101concepts.com

The Morningside location's menu of this Sandy Springs original is a straight shooter, touting everything that was great about that location's charm, dished out lovingly by executive chef Ron Eyester. The space, the mood and most of the dishes are all exactly what works in a successful neighborhood restaurant, and Morningside and Virginia-Highland residents must find their feet (and taste buds) in this refurbished spot frequently. Eyester's love of home-style cooking and fresh ingredients shows up in a tangy tweak on the Hawaiian ham-and-pineapple combo, using Benton's country ham, thinly sliced like prosciutto, covered with sweet pineapple and Parmesan. Shreds of fresh slaw twanged up with a bit of grain mustard, cider vinegar, truffle oil and Eyester's secret ingredient — maple syrup — highlight a dish of solidly fried, crispy breast of Springer Mountain chicken with whipped potatoes and creamy milk gravy. Eyester's specials are usually worth veering from the main menu, especially if they involve anything that's emulsified — a fresh green salad with sweet goat cheese shines with his buttermilk-citrus vinaigrette, which could easily substitute as a recreational drug. He even uses Georgia's own Split Cedar Farms' certified naturally grown tomato juice for the bar's refreshing Bloody Marys. Lunch: 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Mondays-Fridays. Dinner: 5:30-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays; 5:30-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Brunch: 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays. $$-$$$

Restaurant Eugene

2277 Peachtree Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-355-0321. www.restauranteugene.com

Chef-owner Linton Hopkins' dedication to local and seasonal has turned this lovely Buckhead gem into a four-star destination. From the lively, old-fashioned cocktail list to the well-sourced meats and vegetables, Hopkins cooks by the creed all chefs should: Fresh, local, seasonal. His Sunday supper menu is a testament to the notion that Southern cooking neither be heavy nor pedestrian. Instead dishes such as cracklin' pork osso buco, a gorgeous shank crisped at the edges and fall-from-the-bone tender over Anson Mills grits transcend their meager origins. Often he uses ingredients — corn, okra, skillet greens — to remind us of the South, but with a whole new attitude: snapper with sweet potato mash served with wilted baby arugula and spiced pecan brown butter. He uses Allan Benton's bacon from Madisonville, Tenn., and shrimp from the Georgia coast, letting ingredients pop from the plate with calculated flavor; nothing appears happenstance. But wait a minute: Hopkins' menu changes so frequently that you might end up trying his spring vegetable plate of buttered English peas with pea shoots, baby carrots, roasted sunchokes, log-grown shiitake mushrooms, charred spring garlic, grilled baby onions, Anson Mills grits, fava beans, asparagus and a mint-and-green-tomato pickle. This tasting of local vegetables, no matter the season, is perfect shared as an appetizer by the entire table. No matter what time of year, the food cultivates a genteel Southern accent, even if it's Nantucket Bay scallops with creamed corn. On a menu full of top-notch ingredients, the seasonal produce and gentle flavors always inspire. Dinner: 5:30-10 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays; 5:30-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. $$$$

Woodfire Grill

1782 Cheshire Bridge Road N.E., Atlanta. 404-347-9055. www.woodfiregrill.com

While some merely pay lip service to the slow-food concept, chef Michael Tuohy is busily wrapping his chef's mitts around a menu designed for in-season corn or heirloom tomatoes. His creed has always been to use fresh, seasonal and indigenous if possible. With one of a handful of wood grills in Atlanta, his meats (and fish) have that wood-roasted or wood-grilled flavor only this kind of treatment can produce. He breaks down his own hogs and whole fish, and the restaurant bakes all its own country-style breads. The fine cheeses and wine list are destinations on a menu that serves up soft-shell crab in season, carnaroli risotto with Sungold tomatoes, sweet corn and Parm, and some of the best fritto misto the city has to offer. All this in an atmosphere warmed with glowing lights and the intoxicating smell of wood smoke. Though the breakup of the front of the restaurant into a more casual cafe gives the restaurant a small identity crisis, it also adds an unexpected spot for dining without a reservation. Dinner: 5:30-10 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays; 5:30-11 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays; 5:30-9:30 p.m. Sundays. $$$