Staplehouse
541 Edgewood Ave. S.E., Atlanta. staplehouse.com.
Jen Hidinger weaves and bobs between the pallets of construction materials, the ladders, the boxes, the various workmen wheeling and carrying long, swinging tubular items that apparently are angling to bonk someone in the head.
She is a whippet of determined energy, tattoos, hair, smiles, hugs, plans. So many plans to get her restaurant, Staplehouse, up and running. A folder appears grafted to her right hand.
“Here’s the grease trap,” she says proudly, ducking outside, thrilled to have this important restaurant construction item crossed off her list.
“Let’s go up these stairs,” she says, changing her mind when she sees them blocked by a ladder. “Let’s try these stairs, but watch your step.”
Staplehouse occupies a narrow, handsome, 100-plus-years-old building in the Old Fourth Ward. Inside its tight quarters will be enough room for 40 seats in the dining room, eight at the bar and about 30 around long communal tables on the walled-in back patio. Upstairs will be offices and a small private dining space that will look down into the beehive of activity below.
“It’s such a dream spot,” she says. “It is really lovely and intimate, and it pays homage to what Ryan and I started in our home six and a half years ago.”
2009. The supper club called Prelude to Staplehouse. Every Sunday night, Jen and Ryan Hidinger brought 10 paying guests into their Grant Park bungalow — four at the counter, six around the dining room table — to start feeding guests, forming relationships, getting to know the people who might support them in the dream of opening a restaurant.
Then Ryan got sick with cancer, and he died a year later. But what a year.
What a year that saw the Atlanta restaurant community’s effort to raise money for the care of their friend and brother become the genesis for the Giving Kitchen, the remarkable organization that has given over $360,000 in emergency assistance grants to hospitality workers in need.
What a year that saw Ryan and Jen decide to open Staplehouse as a nonprofit arm of the Giving Kitchen, a year that saw them secure this building and imagine the restaurant it could be. What a year, when so many gave so much to the Hidingers, starting with the architects of Square Feet Studio, who donated plans to turn this unlikely building into a restaurant.
What a year when the Hidingers gave so much back to Atlanta, the abstract capital of human connection and shared goals, a glow of good will everywhere they went.
And, now, Staplehouse is here, opening this month. Jen will run this restaurant with her sister-in-law, Kara Hidinger, and Kara’s husband, chef Ryan Smith.
Smith is a good one, the chef who helped lead Restaurant Eugene and Empire State South to greatness, and one who is ready for his star turn, serving an $85 prix fixe meal here. But he has changed from the days when he used to heap platters with his homemade charcuterie and invite guests at an Empire State South party into the kitchen to pick at a whole roast lamb. He saw Ryan Hidinger change his diet during his cancer battle, and he went along with the program.
“We were all eating too much meat,” Smith said. “The food here will be more vegetable forward and health forward.”
He will rely on the best possible local provender, but not with the pork-and-kale orthodoxy of before. “When I get my hands on some beautiful Copper River salmon in season, you can be sure it’ll go on the menu.”
Just 40 seats, and everyone familiar with the Atlanta restaurant world will want one. How will Staplehouse handle it? For that, Jen Hidinger will count on one more gift.
Staplehouse will open as the first restaurant in Atlanta to use a ticketing system, which will be donated by Chicago restaurateur Nick Kokonas as part of the nationwide rollout of his new system, called Tock. Instead of making a reservation, guests will go online and pre-purchase tickets for dinner, much as they would for a concert or sporting event.
Kokonas debuted a ticketing system at Next, the restaurant he owns with chef Grant Achatz. He has since added his other properties and implemented a couple of dozen pilot programs around the country to test and refine the system.
He has about 450 restaurants queued up nationally to implement the system when it formally launches later this year. While he won’t divulge which ones, Kokonas said Staplehouse will not be the only restaurant in Atlanta to use tickets.
Kokonas has waived Staplehouse’s $695 monthly service fee for Tock, saying Jen Hidinger’s story resonated personally with him, as Achatz also battled (and, luckily, vanquished) an aggressive cancer.
“I was moved and incredibly impressed with her emotional resilience. When you meet great people doing great work, they’re the ones you want to be involved with in business.”
Hidinger stressed that the ticketing system will only be for the 40 seats in the dining room. At the bar, diners can order à la carte and are first come, first served. Guests on the patio will eat from a different, more casual menu prepared by chefs working from a back kitchen/prep area housed in a small outbuilding in the corner of the yard.
“This is big for us,” she said. “We want to accommodate you however you want to come and eat.”
But the tickets for the dining room provide more than convenience; they get closer to the spirit of the whole venture, which started six and a half years ago at Prelude to Staplehouse.
“It pays homage to what Ryan and I first created. It’s an intimate experience. Before, it was 10 people, and now it’s 40 seats, so we just grew it times four,” she said.
Later this month, Tock will start ticking, the first guests will arrive, and the first plates will leave the kitchen. According to Jen Hidinger, husband Ryan will be there, too, on the patio, overseeing opening night in a restaurant where everyone is family.
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