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By Meridith Ford | Thursday, May 8, 2008, 08:59 AM

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

In New York for the rest of this week to check out some of the Big Boy restaurants that are opening in Atlanta, I tried a kobe steak at BLT Steak last night.

I'll give a full report when I return, but let's start with the marked difference between what this restaurant looks like in New York - a small bistro, very loud, and believe me the distance between tables doesn't pass the fire code (read: I'm not sure why they bothered with more than one table at all; they should have just given us all a spot at the same large trough) - and what I suspect it will look like in Atlanta. In Atlanta, inside the W Hotel Downtown, my guess is that it will lack most of the annoying little qualities - like a din so loud we couldn't even hear the people sitting next to, um I mean on top of, us - that actually make it interesting. The look is New York, not Paris, but there are small touches like the signature blackboard menu, that includes daily specials like English peas with strong hints of mint and bacon and salsify with trumpet royale mushrooms.

That said, the food, designed by tres cosmopolitan French chef Laurent Tourondel, centers around beef (Lourondel has a slew of restaurants here and elsewhere that focus on a particular fill-in-the-blank for consumption: BLT Steak, BLT Fish, BLT Market. Here, beef gets all the perspective, sometimes naked and exposed (BLT-cut bone-in double sirloin), sometimes airbrushed until the last blemish has been removed (Japanese kobe strip steak, though on this evening the cut was filet).

The kobe costs $26 an ounce, and there is a five-ounce minimum. The waiter brought it to the table before it was grilled for me to see its perfectly marbled flesh. And once cooked to a perfect medium rare, it was velvety, juicy and exceptional. But it wasn't $130 exceptional. Russell Crowe could have cooked it naked tableside and it wouldn't have been $130 exceptional.

Kobe is incredible beef, and I'm a big believer in "you-get-what-you-pay-for." And I don't think BLT Steak is necessarily overcharging. I just don't think it's worth it. There's just not as much there there as everyone yammers on about.

How much would you pay for a steak? How far would you go to get a really great steak?

From Russell: " We have seen every dawn this week as CSC is waking very early. Given that each has been more gloriously golden than the previous , it has been wonderful. This morning the city buildings are shining ,the harbour water still and compelling and the cockatoos loud and boisterous. Every night here in Woolloomooloo we watch the fruit bats from the botanical gardens take to the dusk sky in search of food , and every morning in the last breath of darkness we see them scurrying home, as fast as laden stomachs will allow them to beat the sun."