A new restaurant called Auburn Angel had its public opening scheduled for Friday, April 19, 2024, at 302 Auburn Avenue in the Sweet Auburn District. Fain and Pacheco frame it as the latest chapter for a corner building, at Fort Street, that has served food under different names since the 1940s.
Restaurateur Asa Fain, who also owns Apache Cafe, a restaurant that doubles as a live music room, bought the property in 2018. By then it had sat empty for four years. Fain's intent from the start, according to Rough Draft Atlanta, was to keep pieces of the earlier restaurants while modernizing the structure and meeting current code.
A long road to opening day
Getting there took time. The design and preservation plans required approval from the city and from various historic architecture organizations, a review that stretched close to two years. COVID-19 then forced Fain to stop work for months across 2020 and 2021. Once construction restarted, supply chain trouble and climbing building costs added more strain. Along the way, Fain chose to make the restaurant twice as large. The finished space holds 60 diners inside, plus another 60 on a covered patio.
Fain said the name speaks to the character of the place and its street. "There is optimism and hope in the building," he told the publication, adding that it is "still standing after all these years" despite the effort required to save elements such as the facade and the old smoker pit.
What the kitchen is cooking
Chef Robbie Pacheco, whose resume includes Cardamom Hill and Restaurant 356, leads the kitchen and calls his approach "global cuisine." He and Fain want the menu to mirror today's Atlanta, a city whose residents come from cultures all over the world. Among the early dishes: grilled octopus served with heirloom blue corn masa, plus a duo that pairs tempura-fried prawns and firefly squid.
Pacheco said the menu kept taking shape each time he walked into the building. He pulled ideas from his travels while trying to keep the cooking rooted in Atlanta. He described a contemporary menu built on old-school habits: daily market shopping for local ingredients, a short list of dishes and frequent changes. "I don't want food at Auburn Angel to be pigeonholed into one thing or be pretentious," he said.
He declined to name a favorite, but pointed to a seasonal porcelet collar as the dish that best captures his style. It comes with a puree of cilantro and watercress, and Pacheco relies on a few supporting players to build flavor: salsify for an earthy note, pickled mustard seeds for a bitter edge and dehydrated carrot for a touch of sweetness.
For desserts, Pacheco and Fain brought on pastry chef Pamela Moxley, who previously ran pastry at Miller Union and Floataway Cafe and was named a 2015 James Beard semifinalist for Outstanding Pastry Chef. Pacheco said Moxley has carte blanche and that the team, many of whom have worked with him for years, plans to let the menu evolve rather than chase trends.
Nods to the building's past
Auburn Avenue carries deep ties to Atlanta's Civil Rights history and to Black-owned business. Over the last hundred years the street has hosted many restaurants. Rough Draft Atlanta describes the Auburn Avenue Rib Shack as Auburn Angel's forefather, and notes that the old rib shack later turned into Thelma's Kitchen & Rib Shack during the 1990s. Fain said some design details will honor that history. The Rib Shack's grill pit, darkened by decades of fire and smoke, served ribs to Civil Rights figures including John Wesley Dobbs and Martin Luther King Jr., and it was slated for a prominent spot near Auburn Angel's entrance. The original concrete walls, some carrying many coats of paint, are still part of the space.
Auburn Angel's posted hours are Wednesday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 5 to 9 p.m. Dinner reservations are highly recommended.
Reported by Rough Draft Atlanta.