When I see a new restaurant billed as multiple genres, all with distinct characteristics, it tends to give me pause. Having been a food writer for much of my life, there’s no combination that makes me raise a brow quicker than sushi, steak, and Italian mashed together. A common ploy in my native Long Island, it feels indecisive, potentially gimmicky—an attempt to be everything for everyone as opposed to revering the craft in each of these specialties.
Jamey Shirah, CEO and managing partner of Atlanta-based but Birmingham-big Revival Restaurant Group, agrees. “We call it a meat market when it’s a hodgepodge, when they’re selling you okay food and get you in and out instead of creating an experience. And that is the antithesis of what we’re trying to do at Luella,” he says of his new Atlanta multigenre concept.
It’s a bold move to acknowledge where initial perception might land and where a restaurant might fail. But as the name of his company proclaims, his passion has been turning age-old expectations on their heads, reviving the hope and excitement we once had for dining concepts in their nascent years.
Out With The Old
Shirah started his career exactly where he stands now: 3717 Roswell Road in Buckhead. It was 2010, he was 22, fresh out of the University of Georgia, and opening his first concept, The Ivy. Only in his wildest dreams did he think it would go on to become a legendary nightlife venue in Atlanta…