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The award-wining restaurant Staplehouse in the Old Fourth Ward is returning to its tasting menu roots and announced it will now be open Tuesday through Saturday. The changes all go down on April 1.
Staplehouse opened along Edgewood Avenue in September 2015 offering only the tasting menu experience. Within a year, owners Jen Hidinger-Kendrick, Kara Hidinger, and chef Ryan Smith felt the model wasn’t working as efficiently as they would have liked and moved to an à la carte menu.
In August 2016, Smith told Eater Atlanta the reason behind the decision was also due in part to the restaurant’s connection to its non-profit The Giving Kitchen:
“We have not been able to use our full space to its full capacity at all in this first year. Our responsibility to the bigger picture for The Giving Kitchen is us wanting to make sure that we are offering a completely sustainable resource, at the end of the day, to our non-profit parent. ... It does have a lot to do with the physical parameters around the design of our space and not being able to offer our food to as many people as we would like on a nightly basis.”
The à la carte menu soon proved to be a successful decision as securing reservations became even more difficult with the dining room at capacity nearly every night.
The team welcomed a new addition to the Staplehouse dining experience toward the end of 2017 when it introduced upstairs cocktail lounge, Paper Crane. The small lounge is open to the public and is first come, first serve.
Smith said of the forthcoming move back to the tasting menu, “Our recent decision to change our menu format to an all tasting menu is a step toward our goal to provide the best experience possible. We believe this format will allow us the opportunity to focus on our creativity as well as our standards in service and execution. In addition, these adjustments will help us provide our dedicated staff with a better work-life balance.”
Eater Atlanta has reached out to Staplehouse for further comment on these “adjustments” and will update the story when the information becomes available.
