Quick–what’s been the top reviewed and blogged about restaurant on Urbanspoon for the last few weeks? Why it’s The General Muir near Emory, which is the current “darling” of our local newspaper as well. Date Night, always keeping up with the latest trends, visits The General to find out if the hype is deserved, or just hype.

The General is located in the Emory Point shopping area, right across from the CDC. It’s hard to find because you can’t see it from the street, so you must go into the mixed-use building entrance to find it. You have to park in a parking deck, but the first two hours are free, so stay as long as you want.

When you walk in, there’s a big bar to the right and a deli counter where you can get stuff to go.

You want to check out that deli counter because that’s where they keep most of the cookies and desserts. The General Muir is named after the ship that the owner’s grandparents came to America on back in 1949. And speaking of “the good old days”, the menu might bring you back to some of the Jewish delicacies that you used to eat as a child.

We start off with a bowl of matzo ball soup, which features a huge ball in a not-too-salty chicken broth. You will want to split this dish, and four people could share that matzo ball. It is as good as the soup your grandmother used to make, or in my case, my grandmother’s housekeeper.

There are so many appetizers to try that we order another one, the chopped liver. I’ve never been a fan of chopped liver, but my date loves the stuff, and the fact that it comes with pletzel bread makes me want to try it. The liver is so good (better than mom’s, who reads this blog?) that suddenly I love chopped liver too. We both scrape every bit of it out of the bowl.

We had a beer (Red Hare Watership Brown) at a previous nearby event, but we notice a new beer from a new brewery in Decatur on the draft beer menu. Three Taverns is making Belgian-style beer right down the street from where we are and we decide to share one. This one is a single, so it’s not really high in alcohol (5%), but it’s a good beer that we will drink more of in the future.

They make their own corned beef and pastrami right here on the premises of The General Muir.

Because we had two appetizers, we decide to split a corned beef sandwich. This one comes on rye bread with Russian dressing and a sour pickle on the side. Only one word can describe the corned beef–wow. It’s thick-cut and very lean. The dressing and that bread make the perfect sandwich. This is a must-eat when you visit The General.

The chef here used to cook at Bocado, which has one of the best burgers you can get in Atlanta. There’s a burger on this menu as well, and we see a lot of them make their way to tables in the black and white tiled dining room. We’ll have to save that for another visit, as well as a pastrami sandwich. If we could just get a few more bites of that corned beef…

Since we shared the sandwich, that leaves room for dessert.

There are a lot of desserts in that deli case that look amazing, but our server, Arabia, talks us into the ice cream sandwich. They cut it in half for us in the kitchen. The ice cream and the cookie crust are both made right here. The ice cream flavor changes daily. Today, we get toffee crunch, which is full of crunchy candy pieces. The crust is full of chocolate, which meshes well with the sweet ice cream. Arabia, who has done a good job on our table tonight, was right about this dessert.

The bottom line on the General Muir: If you are anywhere near Emory, run, don’t walk to this restaurant. And save room for dessert. Date Night finds that not too many places live up to the hype, but this one does. We wish we didn’t live so far away!