Popping Up and Popping Off

ESSAY

Jun 23

Atlanta’s chefs are forging their own paths through pop-ups.

FORMER Pop-UP GIGI’s ITalian kitchen finds permanent home in atlanta

Atlanta restaurants have been filling their kitchens on off days with new food programs from pop-ups—think the Sundays and Mondays of the week. Some pop-up owners aim for a residency, while others are more spontaneous, requiring you to follow them on social media to see where they're popping up next.

Chef Justin Dixon, owner of sandwich pop-up Humble Mumble, found himself at a crossroads after being head chef at the now-shuttered Wonderkid. Thinking of leaving the industry, he wanted to give his sandwich pop-up a try. Through Instagram, he advertised his pop-up and reached out to other pop-up owners, leading to his current CODA building residency, among others. "The Atlanta pop-up scene is pretty symbiotic," says Dixon.

Early on, Dixon tried to pop up as much as possible on his own, but eventually, he had to bring on help. Often restaurants will charge a fee for popping up in their kitchens, and you can't buy product in bulk because of lack of storage, so food costs are high.

From there, prepping, loading the truck, taking the food to the space, getting set up, working the popup, and then breaking everything down started to weigh on him. But since September 2021, he has been consistently popping up all over the city and has no plans to return to a brick-and-mortar.

In 2019, out of the 15+ most active pop-ups in the city, half were non-white chefs, and half were women. This diversity in pop-ups, which is not often mirrored in the city's most prominent restaurants, only grew more post-pandemic as chefs became burned out and often disillusioned with the current restaurant model. In this sense, pop-ups give space to these chefs that may have already climbed the restaurant ladder to be creative and forge their own paths.

OG Meatloaf Melt: Meatloaf, Pimento Cheese, Bacon Jam, Mixed Greens

"There's not an owner sitting at home making money while I'm in the restaurant making the money for them. People know who I am as a person, not just a cog in the wheel at a restaurant. I think when people are appreciated at that level, they put out better products," says Dixon. "I want Humble Mumble to be a staple in the city. I wanted to do something for Atlanta.

Georgia is made up of 159 counties, and a food truck owner needs a permit for each county they operate in. And each city within those counties has its own requirements and regulations. Unfortunately, this steers chefs away from the food truck scene in search of other alternatives to traditional restaurants—in this case, pop-ups. Several pop-up owners said the city is more welcoming logistically to pop-ups than food trucks. And, unlike food trucks, pop-ups operate within the brick-and-mortar’s permits, so there's more flexibility regarding where and when they can pop up.

When the pop-up scene was in its infancy, Gato, the small breakfast spot in Candler Park, started opening its kitchen to emerging chefs and their pop-ups. Former Gato owner, Nicholas Stinson, hosted a weekly rotating schedule of one to three pop-ups. A few of its first ones, Chef Jarrett Stieber's Eat Me Speak Me, and Chef Parnass Savang's Talat, went on to become brick-and-mortars in Summerhill—Little Bear and Talat Market, respectively. Another Gato pop-up graduate from 2021, Chef Arnaldo Castillo's La Chingana, opened his Peruvian restaurant Tio Lucho’s a year later.

Over the years, Gato became an incubator for emerging chefs to collaborate and tell stories through food without the pressure of overhead rental costs. Fu-Mao Sun, owner of Taiwanese-American pop-up Mighty Hans, wasn't entirely familiar with pop-ups, only having experienced one at Sweet Auburn Market and Talat when he first moved to Atlanta. But savory Taiwanese-American breakfast was the key to getting Stinson's attention. "He was really curious about younger chefs who are ambitious about the food they cook," Sun says of Stinson.

Xia: Breaded Shrimp Patty, Scallion, Fried Egg, Smoked Tofu Aioli, Brioche

Once Gato stopped its breakfast service, Sun reached out to grab the weekend spots, and it was an immediate success. He split the week with pop-up Gigi's Italian Kitchen, which took over the space permanently after Stinson sold it.

"I wanted to see the breakfast I ate in Taiwan as a kid, or when we went to Chinatown or Flushing in New York," he says. He mentioned that he got a pop-up boot camp with a hectic rush of people as his audience grew fast within a couple of weekends.

"I got to cook things I wanted to cook, versus targeting a specific audience. A pop-up is a perfect way to find out what type of food you like to serve. It's a great learning experience on how to really hone in on your food," he says. Mighty Hans is currently on hiatus, while Sun takes a break after two back-to-back residencies at Gigi's and Full Commission.

On Sundays and Mondays at Japanese neighborhood spot OK YAKI, So So Fed, a Laotian pop-up, has taken over the kitchen. At the helm of this concept is Chef Molli Voraotsady, who started cooking Lao dishes like beef jerky and papaya salad during her shifts as a waiter at late-night dinner spot Octopus Bar in 2019. Inspired by her grandma, she wanted to share the recipes she grew up with, but once she got started, it was a rude awakening.

"It was sort of exciting, but it was very difficult,” she says of her first pop-up at now-closed 8ARM. “It was really busy. I was underprepared, running out of food in an hour. It was a huge learning curve. It was definitely like jumping off a cliff."

Other chefs, like Dixon, already had connections within the restaurant community, and while he had to figure out things on the fly, he says he was fortunate during the process. He already had industry friends, like Little Bear's Stieber, relationships with farmers, bakers, and purveyors, and an established chef reputation to rely on.

Smashed Cucumber Salad, Tomato, Paedek, Chiles

Throughout Voraotsady’s two-day residency at OK YAKI, her pop-up has grown exponentially over the last year, winning several local accolades. But now, she’s at an inflection point with her pop-up. She has enough business to hire a team and keep up with demand during her pop-up days, so she’s starting to feel the push for a brick-and-mortar operation. “Unfortunately we don’t have enough money to open a restaurant, but I feel like Atlanta is very supportive,” she says. “Most likely, we will share an opportunity for the community to invest.”

There's no playbook to follow on how to set up a pop-up or how to grow. For some, joining the Atlanta-based Discord channel for pop-up owners and chefs, created by Brave Wojtek pop-up owner Matt Reeves, was helpful. Reeves shares that he started it to give more accessibility and move his group chat to something easier to navigate. The group has since grown to 200+ members, where they can discuss resources, upcoming pop-up opportunities, pop-up calendars, job postings, and more.

Sun participates in the Discord channel and says, "everybody's willing to help out each other if somebody needs equipment or supplies. They're willing to share."

Before starting his own Polish-American pop-up right after the pandemic, Reeves also helped curate pop-ups and connect them with venue hosts. "What drew me to pop-ups was that you have a lot of genuine chefs out there, who are making real food, who don't really have the mission so much to profit, but to share their culture and their food," says Reeves.

Zupa Ogórkowa: Polish Pickles, Parsnip, Celery Root, Carrot, Cream, Dill

While the pop-up scene is thriving, Reeves believes that the model isn't sustainable as it stands. There aren't specific regulations surrounding pop-ups, from how to operate, set up, or get permits, so it could all change very quickly.

"The pop-up scene is very inclusive, but it's growing. It's in danger of hitting a ceiling. The talent pool right now is there, but it depends on how Atlanta wants to navigate its future, and how it's going to change what we bring into our city in terms of policies," says Reeves

In the end, the thread that ties many of these pop-up owners, chefs, and entrepreneurs together is their passion for the food they cook and the history behind it. Whether they have dreams of opening their own brick-and-mortar, or just cooking for the masses with a sustainable pop-up model, pop-ups in Atlanta are a reaction to the status quo to forge a different path to your own kitchen.

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