Kevin Gillespie plans new Atlanta restaurant

Kevin Gillespie is drawing on Brazilian churrascarias and Chinese dim sum restaurants for his new Atlanta restaurant Gunshow, which is slated to open in early May.

“I knew I wanted to do something that was a little more close to home, literally and figuratively,” said the former executive chef of Atlanta’s fine-dining restaurant Woodfire Grill and Top Chef contestant. The restaurant is located in the Glenwood Park neighborhood of Atlanta, where he lives.

Gillespie said he chose the churrascaria style, where prepared food is brought around for diners to try, so guests would feel like they were taking part in the same experience, similar to a family gathering.

“So though you’re sitting at a separate table, everyone’s experiencing the same thing at the same time,” Gillespie said.

Rather than the all-you-can-eat pricing style of a churrascaria, however, Gillespie will charge á la carte prices, like a dim sum restaurant.

Gillespie said he wanted guests to pay based on how much food they selected. He also wanted guests to control the experience — to construct a multicourse tasting menu if they wanted to, or to stop in for a snack.

Menu prices will range from $6 to $18 per item, with three items making a meal. Gillespie said he estimated an average check of around $55.

The food will be a mash-up of Gillespie’s style and two sous chefs he has brought with him from Woodfire Grill: Joseph Ward, who Gillespie said has “a beautiful touch for sophisticated modern food,” and Andreas Muller, who is originally from Sweden and brings a modern Scandinavian sensibility to the mix.

The result is a combination of refined and rustic, with the caveat that they purchase “every single thing we use from a person,” meaning mostly local individuals with whom they have working relationships.

Given the caliber of his staff and his philosophy of buying whole animals and using every bit of them, as he did at Woodfire Grill, Gillespie anticipates a relatively low food cost that will become even lower in the winter, when the restaurant will use more ingredients preserved in-house.

Gunshow will open in a small space — a little less than 2,500 square feet — and has virtually no walls, with the kitchen part of the dining room.

“If a guest wanted to, they could walk up and start shaking pans around,” Gillespie said.

The restaurant will have 60 seats, including Kevin’s Table, a reservations-only, six-person chef’s table where guests can have a traditional degustation tailored just for them.

“Considering that I spent my entire career doing fine dining, I was going to have some people following me who were going to want to do that on their birthday or anniversary,” he said.

Kevin’s Table can be booked a month in advance at prices starting at $1,000. “We already have one booked that’s $5,000,” Gillespie said.

As for the name, Gillespie said it was a tribute to his family. His mother had told him, when he was considering leaving Woodfire Grill about two years ago, that his father had never felt comfortable at the fine-dining restaurant. “She said he always felt like that restaurant was built for someone else,” Gillespie said, explaining that his father was a typical hard-working Southern man.

“My dad worked seven days a week from my infancy until I was an adult in order to provide for us and make a better life than he had had,” he said. On the rare Sunday afternoon he had off, he would go with his son to a gun show.

“That’s where the name came from,” Gillespie said, adding that he hoped everyone would feel at home there.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected].
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