Quick Bites: Holy Taco gets a new chef, Ink & Elm to open, and more

• James Camp/CL File
• Pie Shop launches Kickstarter campaign to fund new location.

Ink & Elm will make its debut this Saturday at 1577 North Decatur Road in Emory Village. The multi-part dining concept, helmed by Blue Ridge Grill and FAB alum Steven Sharp, offers a handsome dining room, bar, tavern, and private event space.

Holy Taco in East Atlanta Village has a new chef in former One Eared Stag sous chef Doug Rouen. Rouen has brought with him One Eared Stag’s popular $1-oysters-and-beers happy hour, which Holy Taco is now offering daily from 5-7 p.m.

In case you missed it, Holeman & Finch partners Greg Best and Regan Smith - the mixologists largely responsible for Atlanta’s cocktail revival - are leaving the five-year-old gastropub to embark on their own new venture. Best and Smith, who had gradually transitioned into less-creative, more managerial roles, say they’re anxious to get back behind the bar with their new brick-and-mortar concept. The duo’s last day at H&F is this Saturday, September 7.

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Pie Shop, the boutique pie bakery at 3210 Roswell Road, may soon debut a second locale closer in town. On Wednesday, September 4, owner Mims Bledsoe launched a 30-day Kickstarter campaign to fund her new venture, which aims to establish a dine-in restaurant to address the dearth of laid-night desserts destinations in Virginia-Highland, Inman Park, or Decatur. As such, Bledsoe is scouting potential real estate sites in these neighborhoods.

Due to a recently passed Atlanta City Council ordinance, Kevin Gillespie’s Glenwood Park restaurant, Gunshow, is no longer allowing patrons to bring their own wine. While the new policy went into effect on September 1, the crew at Gunshow is already hard at work boosting the beverage options offered by the house; these include expanded selections of both wine and beer.

101 Concepts, the restaurant group behind Food 101, Cibo e Beve, and Meehan’s Public House, is opening a “Georgia-style barbecue” restaurant in Castleberry Hill. Helmed by husband-and-wife duo Jordan Wakefield (executive chef) and Erin Leigh Wakefield (bar manager), Smoke Ring is slated to open on September 17 at 309 Nelson Street.

Long rumored to be setting up shop on Ralph McGill Blvd. near Two Urban Licks, Nick Melvin’s forthcoming restaurant, previously dubbed Garden State, has been renamed Venkman’s. Melvin, whose resume includes stints at the Farmhouse at Serenbe, Parish, Empire State South, Rosebud, and, most recently, his homegrown picked vegetable company, Doux South, has been working on the concept for more than a year. No opening date is scheduled at this time. Details as they arise.

Common Quarter - a locally driven, Southern-focused restaurant from the team behind Local Three and Muss & Turner’s - is still aiming to open by the end of September at 1205 Johnson Ferry Road in Marietta. To test drive the menu, the crew held a special dinner at Muss & Turner’s last weekend, which included dishes like chilled peach soup with crisp country ham and braised rabbit stroganoff.

Varasano’s, the East Harlem-influenced pizza restaurant on the ground floor of the Mezzo building in Buckhead, opened a Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport outpost on August 28.

Roswell is getting another new restaurant this fall. Foundation Social Eatery, located in the former location of Connexion at 1570 Holcomb Bridge Road, comes to us from chef Mel Toledo and wife/business partner Sandy Toledo. Foundation will take an old-school approach, vetoing television sets and other technological distractions from the dining experience.