Grazing: 30 Tables
June 5th, 2009 by Web Editor in Restaurants, grazing, review
Remember the ‘70s? Probably not, but if you were dining out then, you remember the revolution in Atlanta’s restaurant scene, courtesy of the Pleasant Peasant. Owners Steve Nygren and Dick Dailey opened the restaurant on Peachtree in Midtown in 1973. It featured creative cooking, an informal atmosphere and theatrical waiters who flashed blackboard menus in your face and recited the menu.
The following year, Nygren and Dailey were joined by Bob Amick (whose father gave his name to Mick’s, the Peasant Group’s retro diners). Eventually, the Peasant Group spawned 40-odd restaurants that were sold in 1989. The chain was so pervasive that both John Kessler and Meridith Ford Goldman, food writers at the AJC, worked for it during their respective restaurant careers.
Continue reading the Grazing on 30 Tables.
(Photo by James Camp)
June 7th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Only slightly on-topic…our family’s catering business used to cater the Peasant group’s company parties. It was fun to give all the servers a chance to be served, and they were a great crowd for a party. My dad had an arrangement where they paid us partly in kind, so we ate at Peasant restaurants a LOT, and rarely anywhere else. In retrospect, I think this was a compliment to the Peasant group, because my dad “knew what happens in commercial kitchens” (think icky, unsafe) so the fact that he deemed the Peasants suitable for consumption was like praise. Or maybe when you have 5 kids, free food is free food. I guess I have an unusual number of memories about the Peasant group, not all of which are suitable for publication :)