Eater Interviews Kevin Gillespie on His New Restaurant Gunshow
I live here, on this side of town, and once again, in trying to open a restaurant that was very personal, it seemed like I should open it closer to my own home. I felt like it made it even more personal to build it in my own neighborhood. And the other part is that I looked back at what Annie and Cliff [Quatrano and Harrison of Bacchanalia] did when they built on the west side. A lot of people said to them, “What the hell are you doing building it over there? That’s insane— that’s not where we build restaurants.” They proved a lot of people wrong, and they helped this city. That’s what’s most important, that them building over there gave other people confidence to build over there, and it’s grown the city of Atlanta and the dining scene in Atlanta tremendously. That’s, in my opinion, a debt that we all repay to them over the years.
Following the Shed and other great restaurants, I hope that building Gunshow over here will give a few more people confidence that this is a viable part of town. Hopefully it will draw people who are not familiar with this part of town over here, not just to open businesses, but also to visit. I hope that guests that have never seen the new parts of Grant Park and East Atlanta will have a chance to come over and find out more about the city, because it’s such a pocket, neighborhood-related place. My hope is that that exposure will be beneficial to everybody.
He also explains the strange choice of the name “Gunshow,” with which I think I’m at least partially on board now.
