We are so super stoked to announce an amazing collaborative event benefiting The Giving Kitchen. Nine Athens chefs and one special guest from Atlanta are cooking with beer and serving up some delicious vittles to you at a seated dinner at the brewery. Come early for a brewery tour (5:00-dinner starts at 5:30) or stay later for an in-depth behind the scenes look at how Creature Comforts makes their magic happen. Buy your ticket here starting April 1st.

Patrick Stubbers – Seabear
Trey Rayburn-The Branded Butcher
Jackie Burton-LRG Provisions
Chuck Ramsey-Pulaski Heights BBQ
Joel Penn-Heirloom
Mike Farr-5&10
Peter Dale-The National
Mimi Maumus-home.made
Special Guest: Ryan Smith-Staplehouse
Nick Dale-Condor Chocolates

The Giving Kitchen was started by the team behind Muss & Turner’s, the restaurant where I got my start in Atlanta. Ryan Hidinger, one of the amazing chefs that led Muss & Turner’s, moved to Atlanta with his wife Jen, with hopes of the two of them opening a restaurant together. Ryan began working at Muss & Turner’s on the path to opening his own place, and he and Jen started doing pop-up dinners out of their house as a way to build hype, test recipes, and prepare for their venture. These dinners, which were similar to those done here in Athens by The Four Coursemen, Coterie & Tie, and to a point similar to the Athens Chef’s Dinners, were called Prelude to Staplehouse.

Things were moving along and the dinners were a great success, but then Ryan was diagnosed with stage four cancer, and all of the money that they had worked so hard to save for their dream went to hospital bills. For a while it looked like Ryan would pull through, but things took a turn for the worse, and the Atlanta restaurant scene lost a beautiful soul. During Ryan’s struggle, the Atlanta restaurant community banded together to raise money to offset the cost of these bills. Event after event sprouted up to raise money for the Hidingers and to support them in their time of crisis. Through this support, not only were Jen and Ryan able to pay for the hospital bills but Jen, Ryan’s sister Kara, and Kara’s husband, Ryan Smith, were able to open Staplehouse in memory of Ryan this past summer. The outpouring of support from the restaurant community to help one of their own inspired the creation of The Giving Kitchen as a non-profit to pass financial support on to others in the restaurant community that may need it in a time of unanticipated hardship. Since its creation, The Giving Kitchen has provided close to 400 grants, given out almost $700,000, and brought Staplehouse to fruition. At Staplehouse, all profits will be given back to The Giving Kitchen. To grasp more fully what all of this means, take a look at the video below. You will see some footage of Ryan and Jen and some of the other people that The Giving Kitchen has helped.

We at Heirloom were excited to hear in 2015 that The Giving Kitchen had begun to spread its reach to the Athens restaurant community, and we thought it was about time that our Athens restaurant community begin to raise money to give back to the fund that could one day benefit any of our employees. Creature Comforts was ready to do an event, and I reached out to Mimi Maumus of home.made, who had taken the reigns of the Athens Chef’s Dinners upon Jason Zygmont’s departure. Together with a little hard work we have been able to round up an amazing team of chefs and to get Barron’s Rental, Inland Seafood, and Flagpole Magazine on board as sponsors. We have even recruited special guest, Ryan Smith of Staplehouse, as one of the chefs. We hope that this organization will touch your heart as much as it does ours, and that we will see you at Creature Comforts Brewery on Monday, April 25th.