Out of My Lane (and Every Bite Was Worth It)

A business columnist stumbles into one of Georgia’s most extraordinary dining experiences

I write about business. Startups, strategy, local entrepreneurs trying to build something that matters. So when my editor sees this column filed under Food, she might do a double-take.

Bear with me. This one is about food and business — and honestly, I’m not sure you can separate the two at Uberto.

Several weeks ago, my wife Katie and I sat down for dinner at Uberto, the restaurant tucked inside Quercus — that stunning dark-green barn framed by Japanese maples, stone gardens, and landscaping that makes you slow your car down just driving past.

Here’s how we got there: Katie first heard about it through a local connection. She had been the preschool teacher for the gardener’s daughter. The gardener and his family had moved from Massachusetts for the job, and they now live on the property. But, knowing about a place and actually getting there are two different things.

Enter the collective.

Fellow Citizen columnist and chef Andrew Chambers and I had been talking about Uberto for a while. Not like when you say we should try that place sometime and never do. 

More like a standing agreement between two people who take food very seriously: we’d get there eventually, but only when the occasion was right. You don’t spend a milestone at just anywhere. You save the special ones for places that earn them. For my birthday, our friends made it happen — they gave us the evening as a gift. I’m grateful for every one of them.

Welcome Home

The doormat says it. Literally. Welcome Home. And the staff means it.

Every person we met had something kind to say about the gardener’s daughter, the little girl who used to be in Katie’s class. It didn’t feel rehearsed or forced. It felt like they genuinely knew her, cared about her, and saw her family as part of the fabric of the place. 

If you want to understand the soul of a restaurant, watch how the team talks about the people they love. Uberto passed that test before we ever lifted a fork.

Which brings me to the business angle I can’t shake.

Culture isn’t a ping-pong table or a mission statement on the wall. Culture is what people say when no one’s asking them to say anything. It’s the unsolicited kindness. The shared story. The way a team moves together in a room. 

By that measure, Uberto has one of the strongest cultures I’ve encountered — in any industry. Whatever Chef and his team have built inside those walls, it shows up in every interaction. That’s not accidental. That’s leadership.

Andrew would agree. He’d probably say it better than I just did.

The Menu

Uberto runs a tasting menu. You don’t pick and choose — you surrender, and you trust. That’s a different kind of dining, and one that requires a kitchen operating with serious confidence.

The evening opened with two snacks: hamachi with dahlia and okra — delicate, the kind of combination that makes you realize the kitchen isn’t playing by familiar rules — and beef tartare, precise and clean. Presented on cross-sections of wood and hand-formed vessels. You’re barely seated and already the kitchen is making a case.

Next came venison bresaola — thin slices of cured venison nestled in cedar sprigs and what appeared to be juniper berries in a hand-turned wooden bowl. It looked like something foraged at golden hour and tasted just as wild and intentional.

Then the oyster, myoga, yuzu — and here’s the detail that still has me talking: the shell was edible. Not the oyster shell. The vessel itself. A thin, crisp cup holding the whole composition. You eat the container. Even the packaging is part of the dish.

Scallop, egg yolk, fennel arrived next — translucent, architectural, ringed with herbs and tiny flowers in a handmade ceramic bowl. Paired with a Valenciso White Rioja from Ollauri, Spain, 2023. It looked like a painting.

Chawanmushi, crab, caviar — silky Japanese egg custard crowned with caviar, paired with Manotsuru ‘Crane’ Junmai Sake from Niigata, Japan. Precise, oceanic, deeply satisfying.

Then the dish that stopped me completely: green curry shrimp. It looked like pasta — silky, delicate strands coiled in a ceramic bowl — but there were no noodles. The strands were shrimp, somehow formed into that shape. The green curry wasn’t a sauce; it was a clear broth, light and impossibly fragrant. Paired with a Von Winning Trocken Riesling from Pfalz, Germany, it was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever eaten.

Then a second round of snacks arrived: smoked beef tempura, onion soup, and chicken liver tart. I need to stop on the onion soup. It arrived as a single perfect sphere. The server leaned in and gave instructions — put the whole thing in your mouth, keep your lips closed, then bite down. We did. Katie and I looked at each other and said nothing for a moment. Some things are so good, they only need a reaction. The chicken liver tart was the one moment of the evening that wasn’t for me — which, across a meal this long and this ambitious, is a remarkable batting average.

Beet, serviceberry, ice plant with brioche, paired with a Babylonstoren Mourvèdre Rosé from the Drakenstein Valley, South Africa. The beets were dehydrated and smoked — intensely concentrated and almost floral — formed into something resembling a dark rose on the plate. Paired with warm brioche. And the ice plant: if you haven’t encountered it, look it up. Its surface is covered in tiny fluid-filled sacs that glisten like crystals. The kitchen used it like a punctuation mark — cool, slightly salty, visually arresting.

Next – duck breast, carrot, nasturtium, paired with Johan Vineyards Estate Pinot Noir from Willamette Valley, Oregon, 2023. The nasturtium wasn’t garnish, instead it was puréed into the vivid green sauce pooled beneath the duck. Rosy, restrained, and refined.

Strip loin, squash, asparagus, paired with Béatrice et Pascal Lambert ‘Les Perruches’ Chinon from the Loire Valley, France, 2020. The squash and asparagus were julienned into fine ribbons, almost lacey, draped across the protein. A Cabernet Franc that had no business being that elegant with that dish, and yet.

Then the desserts — and they didn’t wind down. They escalated.

Amazake citrus sorbet with strawberry, buckwheat, honey arrived together — the sorbet bright pink over puffed grains, the strawberry dessert a cloud of vanilla-flecked ice cream over berries, rose petals, and crumble in a frosted bowl. Paired with Angelo Negro Birbet from Roero, Italy. It was the best thing I’ve eaten in recent memory.

The finale: blackberry thyme ice cream, hoshigaki (Japanese dried persimmon — chewy, complex, haunting), a perfectly caramelized canelé, and chanterelle miso. Yes — chanterelle miso as a closer. It sounds unusual. It was extraordinary.

And then — when we thought the evening was complete — it wasn’t.

The server arrived with a folded menu, wax-sealed with the Quercus crest. Our record of the evening. Every course, every wine pairing, every small decision the kitchen had made on our behalf, printed and sealed like a letter. AB DOMO IN DOMUM at the bottom. From home to home.

With it came a small bottle of olive oil and a handwritten note:

“This olive oil is pressed from olives grown on our sister farm, Marnichstone, infused with peppers from our garden. A piece of our home for yours.”

And a birthday card — signed by the entire Uberto family. Every name a member of the team that had just spent hours making us feel like the only people in the room.

Happy Birthday, Jason. Thanks for celebrating with us.

Some restaurants feed you. This one sends you home with a piece of itself.

What This Actually Is

Uberto isn’t just cooking. It’s world-building.

From the property to the plating to the wax-sealed menu you carry home, every detail is in conversation with every other detail. The art on the reclaimed wood walls echoes the shapes on the plates. The kitchen — visible through glass doors, brass pendant lights overhead, a chef moving quietly at center — belongs to the same story as the dining room. Nothing is accidental. Everything is on purpose.

That’s a business lesson as much as a dining one.

There are restaurants where you go to eat. There are places where you go to be somewhere. And then — rarely — there are places where someone has built something so layered, so human, that you leave carrying it with you.

Sometimes literally. There’s a bottle of olive oil on my counter that I haven’t opened yet. I’m not ready.

Uberto is the third kind — and the fact that it exists here — not in Buckhead, not in Charleston, not in a city with a James Beard economy — feels significant. It’s the kind of place that changes the story a region tells about itself.

As someone who spends most of his time thinking about how businesses build culture, earn trust, and create something worth talking about — I couldn’t stop noticing that Uberto had solved all three. Without trying to explain it. Without a slide deck. Just by living it, course after course, name by name on a birthday card.

Next Time

Quercus is also an overnight destination. A place you arrive to and don’t leave until you’re ready.

Next time, that’s the plan. Dinner at Uberto, then wake up surrounded by that garden. Some experiences deserve more than a drive home — and this one has already earned a return.

Chiara and Angelos, Kara, Ryan, Allison, Wes, and the rest of the Uberto family — ab domo in domum. What you’ve built matters more than you probably know. Thank you for making a birthday feel like a homecoming.

A Few Details Worth Knowing

The tasting menu is fixed at $225 per person, with an optional wine pairing at $125. This evening was a gift from our friends — so price wasn’t something I weighed that night. But knowing what I know now, I’d call it worth every dollar. Reservations can be made at uberto.restaurant.

Make the reservation. Surrender to the menu. Stay until they hand you a piece of their home to take with yours.

You’ll know exactly what I mean when they do.