Staplehouse Named One of GQ's Best New Restaurants in 2016

ATLANTA, GA -- Staplehouse, located in Atlanta's Old Fourth Ward, has only been open since September, but already has a long list of accolades to its credit.

Chef Ryan Smith was a semifinalist for best chef by the James Beard Foundation in the Southeast, and Atlanta Magazine has given the restaurant its first four-star rating since 2010.

Now, Staplehouse has been named one of GQ's best new restaurants for 2016.

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Writer (and the magazine's eater-in-chief) Brett Martin spent a year touring some of the nation's best restaurants, from San Francisco to New York and everyplace in between.

"My favorite meal in a new restaurant all year was at Staplehouse, a cozy onetime grocery in the Old Fourth Ward, just blocks from the church where Martin Luther King Jr. first preached," Martin wrote. "The place was born in sadness: Its original chef, Ryan Hidinger, and his wife, Jen, had been running an underground supper club in Atlanta for four years and were planning the move to brick-and-mortar when Ryan was diagnosed with cancer in 2012. He died a year later, but not before the restaurant had been re-conceived, now with his sister, Kara, and her husband, chef Ryan Smith, on board."

All post-tax profits from the restaurant go to The Giving Kitchen, which provides emergency aid to Atlanta service workers.

"As I traveled the country in search of what was new and wonderful in American dining, Staplehouse acted as a kind of template," Martin continued. "It was my first intimation that the best of what's out there are small, idiosyncratic, and intelligent restaurants, homey but not patronizing, borrowing from the evolution of fine dining but making it deeply personal—the kinds of places that make you want to move to their neighborhoods."