One year ago, Molly Gunn and Nick Rutherford were getting ready to open the Porter Beer Bar in the heart of Little Five Points.
The young couple, in their 20s, had met while working at Seeger’s, a small Buckhead restaurant that defined haute cuisine in Atlanta for a decade. Though they knew their way around fine dining, they decided their own first restaurant would be much more casual — a place for their friends and cohorts to grab a beer and a simple but quality meal.
Gunn and Rutherford had little money to spend on transforming the former Mangrove Alley space, which was painted a grungy black, into a more appealing dining room. They constructed the lengthy front bar of concrete, not granite. Rutherford, a skilled carpenter, built all the booths and tables. And the décor? With only $1,000 in their budget, they loaded up on thrift shop bric-a-brac, most notably stacks of old luggage to reinforce the porter theme.
They sure picked the right time for cheap. Even as more established restaurants have faltered and gone out of business over the past year, the Porter has flourished.
Yet there have been a few bumps along the way. Early reviews of the food were mixed, particularly from diners who had heard of Rutherford’s pedigree as a chef at Seeger’s and Quinones at Bacchanalia.
“We wanted to open this unassuming place where people came in with no expectations, but people did know we worked at these great places,” Gunn says, adding that the opening menu was too ambitious.
“We did start out fancy for a hot second but cut it way back,” Gunn adds. “We had dishes like grilled quail, but with the volume we did it just wasn’t executable in the small kitchen.”
Rutherford began preparing and portioning more and more dishes sous vide (in vacuum-sealed plastic bags) — from house-smoked pork barbecue to strip steaks cooked medium rare and ready to finish on the grill.
In the front of the house, Gunn had to deal with critics who accused the Porter of ripping off the Brick Store Pub in its look and vibe.
“I try and point out the differences,” Gunn says. “We’re a pub, and pubs have old things and dark wood. You go over to England, and it wouldn’t be that unusual to see such similar places.”
Yet, critics did zero in on one detail — the tree-branch front door handle that was nearly identical to the one at the Brick Store Pub. So Gunn swapped it out for an “industrial chic” handle.
“There were several negative reviews on Yelp,” Gunn says of the Web site that collates reviews of local businesses. “People thought it was insulting.”
And what of the famous “Yelp effect” that bedevils so many restaurants today? In every city with active Yelp communities, restaurants must learn to cater to them with events and promotions and also deal with a fair amount of flaming (i.e., negative comments and published grudges). One Yelper admitted to Gunn that they sometimes “try to out-nasty each other” with their comments.
While Gunn has issues with that, she likes being able to address customers directly on Yelp’s message board.
“I love being able to respond to unsatisfied customers and say the experience you had was not typical,” she says. “I can invite them back.”
They may have a little trouble finding a table — particularly on Saturday night, when the Porter serves upward of 500 customers.
Recession or no recession, the Porter has been a huge success for its young owners.
“It’s everything that I had hoped for,” says Gunn, adding, “It’s good to own a bar in a recession. Almost anybody can afford a $3.75 pint of beer.”
The Porter Beer Bar. 1156 Euclid Ave., 404-223-0393. www.theporterbeerbar.com
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