Restaurants don’t magically appear. They often start out as just an inkling of an idea. Once the seed is planted, it grows into a pursuit that drives its creators — and even changes their lives.
That is one of the resounding themes that emerged during The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s yearlong Atlanta Culinary Journey series, spotlighting chef-restaurant owners in metro Atlanta. The series concludes with a profile of NFA Burger’s Billy Kramer, whom AJC contributor Christopher Hassiotis describes as the all-in-one “host, greeter, maitre d’, food expediter, quality control and line cook” at the area’s most popular burger counter in a gas station.
When Kramer lost a corporate job, his passion for burgers took over. “He began to consider whether burgers could define the next phase of his career,” Hassiotis writes. Kramer tested his idea for the restaurant via pop-ups, before finding a permanent home inside a Dunwoody Chevron station in late 2019.
Credit: CHRIS HUNT
Credit: CHRIS HUNT
The food-service industry also is a second career for Thip Athakhanh, who co-owns Laotian restaurant Snackboxe Bistro with her husband, Vanh Sengaphone. “I didn’t want to be a cook,” Athakhanh told AJC contributor Bob Townsend. “Four years ago, I didn’t even want to open a restaurant. It was my husband who wanted to own a restaurant, because he thought Lao food was underrepresented” in Atlanta.
Chefs and restaurant operators can pour their heart and soul into making delicious food, but when the food isn’t familiar, it takes effort to help customers understand it, and appreciate what sets it apart. For example, Belen de la Cruz has her talking points down pat when discussing the Argentine-style empanadas she sells at the three stores that bear her name.
Credit: CHRIS HUNT
Credit: CHRIS HUNT
Amy Wong of Sweet Hut Bakery and her daughters, Rachel Ewe and Jane Ewe, recall their family’s efforts to educate customers when the Asian bakery debuted in 2012. “We had to designate a person to show customers that, in a normal Asian bakery, you grab a tray and pick what you want,” Jane Ewe told me.
If Sweet Hut was the place that many Atlantans got their first taste of bubble tea, Wong’s other restaurants, Top Spice and Food Terminal, are where locals learned about Malaysian cuisine, which Rachel Ewe described as a “melting pot” of Malay, Indian and Chinese influences.
Credit: CHRIS HUNT
Credit: CHRIS HUNT
Food, like every form of cultural expression, is dynamic and ever-changing. Traditional dishes take on new looks and flavors over time, as evidenced by the cooking of Jiyeon Lee, who, along with partner Cody Taylor, marries the flavors of her Korean heritage with Southern barbecue at Heirloom Market BBQ. “People like Jiyeon offer a glimpse of the future of barbecue that’s just as nuanced as its past,” said Melissa Hall of the Southern Foodways Alliance, in an interview with AJC contributor John Kessler.
Similarly, Reid and Sophia Trapani make use of old methods in their plant-based, modern Latin restaurant, La Semilla, which opened in January in Reynoldstown. “If it’s a tamale, we are toasting the banana leaves,” Trapani told AJC contributor Wendell Brock. “We are grinding spices in a molcajete (a mortar and pestle made of volcanic rock). We make our tortillas from scratch. I try to represent as authentically as possible.”
All 12 entries in the Atlanta Culinary Journey series show that there is no straight path to restaurant ownership. But, a few of the folks we featured are restaurant industry veterans, who worked their way up through grit and determination.
Chef Julio Delgado and his family packed and unpacked suitcases numerous times as the Puerto Rico native bounced from one hotel restaurant to another, before finally venturing out on his own, opening Minnie Olivia pizzeria and modern Latin restaurant Fogón and Lions in downtown Alpharetta.
Credit: Ryan Fleisher
Credit: Ryan Fleisher
Omakase Table, a 12-seat sushi bar west of Midtown, is the culmination of years of work for chef-owner Leonard Yu, who cooked at luxury hotels in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore before coming to New York for a promised job that did not exist. An interim job at a sushi restaurant in New Jersey awakened his calling as a sushi chef — and taught him the rigor it would take to become a respected itamae.
“Being a non-Japanese chef, I had to work even harder to prove myself,” the Indonesia-born Yu told AJC contributor Angela Hansberger. “They told me everything I learned is wrong, even just holding the knife. I worked in one of the best hotels in Singapore, and here I am in New Jersey, and they tell me to scrub the floor, sharpen knives, cut scallions, clean the table,” Yu said.
Soraya Khoury’s job as a server at a mom-and-pop breakfast place in the Chicago area exposed her to the hospitality industry when she was barely a teenager. Through drive, determination and risk-taking, she pecked her way up to top kitchen posts, before opening her Hen Mother Cookhouse and turning it into a worthy brunch destination in Johns Creek.
When the AJC’s Yvonne Zusel spoke to Keith Kash last fall, the veteran of multiple Southern soul food restaurants recently had launched Just Brunch, an all-day brunch spot in Duluth. “Along my journey, all the stops I make along the way, I carry things with me,” Kash said. “Everything I learn from one experience is part of my next experience.”
If you missed Kash’s inspiring story — or others in this series — visit ajc.com/culinary-journeys, where you’ll also find videos that take you into the kitchen as some of these local culinarians prepare dishes that represent their approach to cooking.
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