Streetalk: How is being an Atlanta chef unique?

Jay: We can cook better than other chefs in other cities. It’s a great town for chefs, especially for entrepreneurship. You name the top ten restaurants in Atlanta right now, and probably six or eight of them are owned by chefs. That’s not the way it is in other cities. Good restaurants can last around here. Some cities are very fickle. You have great restaurants, and five years later they’re gone. In Atlanta, if the place is good it tends to endure. And it’s a friendly fraternity. The chefs don’t look at each other as competitors.

Lis: I come from Spain and Venezuela. Atlanta is a little bit of everything. You get a little bit of the South and the Northeast. It’s still virginal for a lot of new things. So for any chef that wants to work and get a start, which is so hard, Atlanta is definitely a great place. It’s big enough but not quite there yet. It’s not New York or L.A. where, with all the competition, you have to be a great, great chef to be okay. Here you can start with a little thing, and if you’re unique and stay truthful to what you do, you’re going to be okay.

Scott: The influx of some of the celebrity chefs is attracting a lot of attention. A lot of diners are trying to expand their horizon, and sometimes the food is farther beyond what they’re ready for. That being said, there’s such a great mix of locally owned restaurants. It’s a shame we can’t bring more people from outside the Perimeter inside, where so many of the restaurants are. It’s like there’s a definitive line at the Perimeter if you’re outside you have to be a chain, inside it’s exactly the opposite. Not a whole lot of intermingling.