After six and a half years at Murphy’s and its former sister spot Morningside Kitchen, chef Ian Winslade has moved on. He’s opening a West Coast-style restaurant called Mission + Market in the Three Alliance Center near Phipps Plaza in Buckhead. Named after the famous San Francisco streets, Mission + Market will serve lunch, dinner, and Sunday brunch, with the opening planned for sometime in March.
The restaurant is a result of Winslade’s partnership with Jonathan Akly of Three Sheets. Ricky Navas, formerly of Storico Fresco, will serve as chef de cuisine, while Stephen Schmidt, the general manager of Quince in San Francisco, will help establish the service and front of house processes.
The 5,000-square-foot space will seat 100 in the dining room, another 100 on the patio, and 60 diners in the private event space. It will feature a bar and lounge near the entrance and a 12-seat chef’s counter adjacent to the kitchen in the center of the restaurant. The decor is described as midcentury modern with light blues, black leather, and antique brass furnishings. The patio will have fire pits, loungers, and teak furniture. Valet parking will be available onsite.
We spoke with Winslade to learn more.
You’d been the chef at Murphy’s and Morningside Kitchen for years. How did you decide now was the right time to open your own place?
As a chef, you have to reinvent yourself every once in a while or you’ll get complacent. Being at Murphy’s was a fantastic experience. It’s an institution. I felt like a new canvas and a bigger business opportunity was the key to getting me moving. Now I can redefine myself within the [Atlanta] marketplace and wake everyone up to the fact that I’m still around.
What does Mission + Market mean to you as a chef?
I want to define myself as a contemporary chef. The food I’m producing is relevant, of the moment, and progressive. I want people to come to see my style of cooking is using bright flavors, textures, and great ingredients that give people an element of surprise. I don’t cook with a lot of butter or fat. That California style of using a lot of grains, legumes, and vegetables with crisp, clean, fresh flavors is really appealing to me.
Your food is being described as having “global influences.” Which ones, specifically, should we expect to see at Mission + Market?
You see [a lot of] Japanese influence in California and Thai influence. Those cuisines have a lot of flavors. Ingredients that makes sense there, like lemongrass, ginger, and lime leaf—make sense to me too. Mission + Market is that, tied into an American style of food. It’s the style of food I love. It’s what I learned living on the West Coast, [working] at Le Bernadin, and with Jean Georges. The food is simple, elegant, vibrant, and bright. Nothing is pretentious. We’re not looking for Michelin stars here.
What menu items are you most excited about?
Definitely the crudos [juniper-cured steelhead trout with micro radish, American red snapper with yuzu emulsion and fresno chilies, and pickled oysters with lemon, cucumber, and Szechuan pepper]. We’ll have a brick pizza oven for making 12-inch, thin-crust pies. For brunch, we may do chicken and waffles in a Vietnamese style of frying the chicken, and different things with frittatas. I want to have grab and go [options] for the building—a grain bowl or salad and fish.
What’s the price point?
It’s very reasonable for Buckhead: $9 to $15 appetizers and entrees in the $20s. The building has high rises on all sides, so we expect it to be residential for evenings, weekends, and brunch, and get the business crowd during the day.
What do you have planned for the bar program?
It’ll be a cocktail-driven bar and a wine-driven restaurant. I was inspired by Chiltern Firehouse in London, which has a fantastic cocktail program. They sous vide their vermouth. Jonathan Akly will do our cocktails, and Stephen Schmidt is going to spearhead the wine program. It’ll be interesting and varied with a blend of both recognizable and unusual options. We’re enlisting the help of Eddie [Meyers], who owns Brookhaven Wines. People here are serious about their beer, so we’ll have local, hand-crafted beers—a few taps and some bottles.
Check out a snapshot of menu items below:
Marinated Fish
Juniper Cured Steelhead Trout, Micro Radish
American Red Snapper, Yuzu Emulsion, Fresno Chilies
Mission + Market Pickled Oysters, Lemon, Cucumber, Szechuan pepper
Appetizers
Grilled Spanish octopus, hazelnut romesco, shaved vegetables
Butter-basted clams on toast, corn cob smoked bacon, celery salad
Wild mushroom polenta, bone marrow beef jus
Crispy Pizza Bread
Preserved shrimp, white sauce, robiola, frisée, truffle oil
Sopresata calabrese, mission fig, Humboldt Fog, pickled walnut tapenade
Entrees
Maine lobster, romaine lettuce, avocado herb dressing, crispy bacon, cheese crumbles
Roasted chicken breast, crispy thigh, market lettuces, shaved vegetables, white balsamic
Charred albacore tuna, glass noodles, ginger, green papaya, sesame vinaigrette
Seared black bass, golden beet raita, roasted spring carrots, shaved fennel
Pea scented rice grits, early spring asparagus, Jerusalem artichoke chips
Red wine-braised oxtail, whole wheat tagliatelle