WHAT IS SOUTHERN CUISINE? What parameters define an entire region's attachment to the land and how it has, for centuries, been connected to what ends up on our tables at supper time?

Soul food. Creole. White trash cooking. Barbecue. Biscuits. Low Country cooking. Cajun. The list is barely a beginning.

Bita Honarvar/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
Chicken and dumplings at JCT Kitchen and Bar is really coq au vin with a heavenly gnocchi.
Joey Ivansco/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
Veal sweet breads with roasted turnips are a great choice at Quinones at Bacchanalia.
Joey Ivansco/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
The strawberry shortcake isn't on Restaurant Eugene's "Sunday supper" menu, but it's still worth trying any other day of the week.
Elissa Eubanks/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
Okra, sauteed and served with almonds, sets Five & Ten chef-owner Hugh Acheson apart. His approach to Southern cuisine is always offbeat, and delectable.
Joey Ivansco/AJC Staff (ENLARGE)
Wisteria's ode to the South manifests in skillet half chicken, served over bacon-braised collards with mushroom-herb broth and corn bread.
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Southern food could be defined, arguably, as the last regional cuisine in the United States. We are perhaps the only region still defined by our agriculture, tied inextricably to our past. And since our past is splintered by race and ethnic diversion, our cuisine is like a quilt of colors and patterns sewn together by many hands, connected by each frayed patch.

Finally, we appear to be celebrating the glory of them all — barbecue in the Southeast is more diverse than ever, a hodgepodge of traditional pulled pork mixed with beef brisket and ribs, both beef and pork, drawn in from other parts of the country. Soul food and country cooking are crossing racial lines and becoming one in the same, in cafeteria lines, anyway. Fried chicken, corn bread, collards, fried catfish, macaroni-and-cheese, sweet potato pie — these are the dishes from which we all sup.

And now, the cuisine of the South is taking a decidedly upscale turn, returning to the savvy sophistication for which it was once lauded. We are abandoning the roadside tourist trap and washing our hands of fried chicken chains.

Things actually took an upscale turn back in 1967 when A. J. Anthony opened Pittypat's Porch on what was then Cain Street (now Andrew Young International Boulevard), where visitors could sip mint juleps and eat fried chicken and gumbo from the seat of rocking chairs, à la "Gone With the Wind." Twenty years prior, in 1945, Mary Mac's Tea Room was born, later becoming a temple for traditional Southern cooking in its '60s and '70s hey day. Both restaurants are still open, though they have arguably passed from fashionable favor.

Now, we have the newbies, a phenomenon most likely started by Scott Peacock while the chef at Horseradish Grill (still an old favorite for upscale Southern vittles), back in the '90s. Peacock, inspired by culinary partner and Southern food maven Edna Lewis, eventually opened Watershed in Decatur with the help of owner Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls, opening the door for a new age of dining in Atlanta highlighted by the use of fresh, indigenous ingredients and an updated look at regional cooking techniques.

Now the most celebrated chef-owner in the city, Anne Quatrano of Bacchanalia, has changed the menu at her and husband Clifford Harrison's most elite restaurant, Quinones at Bacchanalia, to reflect the region's tie to the land, serving braised greens from a tiny iron rotissoire and New Orleans' beignets with warm almond milk.

New restaurants such as JCT Kitchen in Buckhead (behind Bacchanalia) and Saga in Midtown have opened, touting "farmstead cooking" with menus that feature not just fried chicken and shrimp and grits, but twists on classics like chicken and dumplings: At JCT, the dish is a veiled version of coq au vin with scrumptious gnocchi; at Saga, duck confit is paired with savory bread dumplings. Most keep fusion to a minimum, though, and thankfully so.

At Restaurant Eugene in Buckhead, the "Sunday supper" dinners are packed, highlighted by plates of refined fried chicken, pork osso bucco and pound cake served warm with toffee bananas.

And at Athens' Five & Ten, the hits just keep on coming, with chef-owner Hugh Acheson's fresh take on Southern cooking only getting better with age. Take a look at these restaurants, and more, on the following pages.

Thomas Wolfe may have been wrong. Perhaps we can go home again. Thank goodness it's a place where dinner is served.

HUNGRY FOR MORE?

Welcome to our Spring Dining Guide

See & hear it: What's so Southern about that?

Southern food's high-fallutin again

The seven: Savvy Southern fare

Check out these homey sideshows

Spring '07: Our Top 10

New places with familiar flavors

Ethnic flavors in our backyard

Great eats in the neighborhood