Kaiser's Chophouse

Peter Kaiser teamed up with Kevin Rathbun — one of Atlanta's most decorated chefs and a fixture of the city's fine dining scene — to build a steakhouse on Roswell Road that takes its wine program as seriously as its dry-aging. The temperature-controlled cellar was not an afterthought. Neither was hiring a sommelier to curate the list. The AJC awarded four stars, Atlanta magazine dropped it into the city's 50 Best, and the wine list is a big reason why. Sandy Springs finally has a chophouse where the cellar matches the kitchen's ambition.

The sommelier-curated list is built to serve a steakhouse audience that ranges from the Caymus crowd to the guest who wants a by-the-glass education. Big California reds anchor the program — this is a chophouse, after all — but the list shows genuine range with Old World selections and enough whites to handle the raw bar and Dover sole. The temperature-controlled storage signals that bottles arriving at your table have been handled properly from the moment they entered the building. That operational detail separates Kaiser's from steakhouses that treat wine as margin padding rather than a pillar of the experience.

The by-the-glass program serves the core steakhouse occasion — the pre-dinner pour, the glass-of-Cab-with-my-ribeye order, and a handful of selections that reward curiosity. The sommelier rotates picks to keep the program fresh and the staff can talk through the list without reaching for a cheat sheet. When your server understands the difference between the Napa options and can explain why you might want the Malbec instead, the training is real.