Restaurant Dream: From vision to opening day
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, September 12, 2008
Nick Rutherford and Molly Gunn met while working at Seeger’s. He was a cook who left New York for a $19,000-a-year, 6-days-a-week, 14 hours-a-day job because the Buckhead restaurant, now defunct, was one of the only places in the country a young chef could get the most rigorous European culinary training. She was an aspiring restaurant owner with a freshly inked Ivy League diploma who took a waitressing job when she moved home to her family in Atlanta.
The famous five-star restaurant was in financial turmoil — understaffed, undercapitalized, six weeks late with paychecks. Yet both Rutherford and Gunn were in love with the notion of very fine dining, and they rose through its thinning ranks. And soon enough they were in love with each other.
John Kessler/jkessler@ajc.com
Nick Rutherford and his fiancee, Molly Gunn, sit in the dining area of their restaurant in Little Five Points.
Rutherford, who is tall, bearded, and has one of those earlobe-expanding studs you could fit a cigar through, left to become chef de cuisine at Quinones at Bacchanalia. Gunn, a petite strawberry blonde who radiates fierce intelligence, took a job as general manager at Saga, a short-lived Midtown restaurant.
He moved on to the Chocolate Bar in Decatur. She joined the Flying Biscuit team to help open new franchises. But she kept her eyes on the prize.
“Molly has always been interested in having her own business,” Rutherford says, pausing to reflect on the whirlwind of the past six months. “I have not.”
Whether or not he wanted it, he got it. This week Rutherford, 28, and Gunn, 26, opened the Porter Beer Bar in the heart of Little Five Points. This spot — loud, clattery and filled with thrift-store knickknacks that cumulatively cost less than the linens and dishes for one table setting at Seeger’s — is a far cry from where they started. The menu features burgers, fish and chips and other absorption-food favorites to go with the hundreds of beers in the cooler. Yet there’s a level of gourmet integrity to the food and beer selections that is missing from most pubs in Atlanta. They’re hoping that customers will notice.
Delia Champion, the Flying Biscuit founder who became Gunn’s mentor and helped her with an opening game plan, thinks the couple started at exactly the right level. “It’s great to see this next generation of restaurateurs in Atlanta,” she says. “They’ve come up with a very exciting place for us all to eat and have fun.”
In a time when even neighborhood restaurants can cost upward of $1 million to open, it is astonishing to see how quickly and for how little money this ambitious young couple turned their dream into a reality.
Last July, Rutherford and Gunn stood in the hot, empty, L-shaped hell of the space that was most recently Grandma Luke’s Bakery (and Mangrove Alley, before that).
“These poles look too stripper-esque,” Gunn said of the floor-to-ceiling metal pipes along one side of the room. “And what is it with this black paint? And that DJ booth?”
Rutherford, who had learned woodworking and basic construction from his dad, contracted himself to turn the lurid surroundings into a room resembling an English pub. The only problem was his full-time job at the Chocolate Bar. Still, every morning he came in early to a place that increasingly looked like high-school shop class, with a table saw, drifts of sawdust and buckets of varnish. The stripper poles became faux pillars; wooden banquettes soon lined the walls.
Rutherford also spent his $1,000 decorating budget wisely, scarfing up used luggage to complete the “porter” theme. A buddy helped him wheel in an old fire hydrant from their house a mile away (“It was too heavy to lift onto a truck.”). His only splurge was a vintage beer firkin.
Gunn, meanwhile, went after the permitting and paperwork like a pit bull to a Lancôme charger. She assuaged the concerned neighbors at the Neighborhood Planning Unit meeting who didn’t think Little Five Points needed another bar. She eschewed everyone’s advice to retain a lawyer and instead filled out all the permitting paperwork herself. With an old space, such as this, there is a tricky dance to getting features grandfathered in, and she figured out all the pirouettes.
Rutherford made a key staffing choice early: sous-chef Austin Dreier, who had worked at Seeger’s, the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton and Bacchanalia, but who nonetheless was ready to pour his talent and training into perfecting a hush-puppy recipe.
As the physical space took shape, so did the concept. “We didn’t want to rely on just the rich neighbors [in Inman Park],” Gunn says. “We wanted the locals — the people who hang around — to be comfortable here, too. We wanted it to be nice, but this is Little Five Points, and sometimes in Little Five Points you feel out of place if you’re not hip and cool.”
As much as they both hated the trendy word “gastropub,” they were clearly exploring this timely restaurant genre.
By mid-August, construction was largely finished and it was time to hire a staff. With her twin experiences of finding herself the only server on the floor at a woefully understaffed Seeger’s and opening Flying Biscuit franchises, she knew to overhire.
After assembling the crew in late August for an introductory meeting, Gunn thanked them for “helping a dream come through,” loosened things up by getting everyone to discuss their favorite sandwiches, and then laid down the rules: no weapons, no dating managers or clocking in late.
As is typical, the liquor license was the last piece of paperwork to come through, but it did, just in time for “friends and family night” (a trial run with free food) on Sept. 6.
Six days later, Rutherford and Gunn look a little glassy-eyed but thrilled with the large numbers of people turning out and positive comments.
Things seem to be going well enough for the couple to consider the other order that has been simmering on the back burner: their wedding.
“We’re getting married at my mom’s house on Oct. 18,” says Gunn, beaming.
Then, a honeymoon?
Gunn and Rutherford shake their heads and laugh. The day after the wedding, they’re cooking brunch.
