Tag: The Giving Kitchen

After naming Staplehouse as a finalist for the country's best new restaurant in 2016, Bon Appétit magazine announced today that the Old Fourth Ward restaurant has been crowned number one on their annual top 10 list.

“This isn’t about abandoning anything but about embracing something new—something we haven’t been able to put as much time and effort into,” says founder Jen Hidinger. “It’s an opportunity for us to strengthen what we’ve created.”

Staplehouse's Jen Hidinger discusses Grant Park, working with family, and when she started cooking.

This is more good news for the local star, which struggled to pick up steam when the doors opened in October of last year.

Staplehouse is the rare—and I mean really rare—restaurant where the menu devised by the chef, Ryan Smith, served with the balance and in the order he wants, provides a dining experience subtler and more seductive than what you could create for yourself from the a la carte menu.

Staplehouse is the most anticipated restaurant to open in the last five years, maybe even in the last decade. But if you had walked in for dinner shortly after it opened in October, you wouldn’t have known it.

More than 1,200 people and 50 of Atlanta’s restaurants and bars crowded into the Georgia Railroad Freight Depot on Sunday for Team HIDI 4.0 The highlight of the night: a high-stakes auction.

If you want to support the hardworking people who power Atlanta’s culinary engine, buy a ticket for Team Hidi 4.0, the group’s banner fundraiser slated for the end of the month, January 31, at the Georgia Railroad Freight Depot.

A first look at four newcomers to Atlanta's restaurant scene: Staplehouse, La Mei Zi, Com Mai, and Venkman's

Ryan’s sister Kara Hidinger, her husband and chef Ryan Smith, and Jen have been working feverishly to fulfill Ryan’s dream of opening Staplehouse. Jen says the end—or maybe the new beginning—is finally in sight. “We’re deep into construction and on schedule for the middle of summer—the end of July if not sooner,” she says. “It’s been six years since we birthed this concept out of our home. It’s formed so many different branches for such good, and it’s the heart of what Ryan and I created.”