Next Wave Awards Industry Icon of the Year: Kimball House

Kimball House stands in a former train depot in the Atlanta suburb of Decatur, Ga. It gets its name from a historic Atlanta hotel. Its moniker was chosen to honor the long-gone hotel bars that drove the city’s cocktail culture at the turn of the 20th century.

These elements help Kimball House share the history and traditions of a city which tend to gravitate toward contemporary design and aesthetic. Yet they’re not what make Kimball House such an enduring Atlanta institution. Rather, they are meant to be respectfully referential anecdotes for a space that began carving its own distinctive character from the moment it opened in 2013.

“When we opened, we wanted to make sure we were doing an homage without making it an amusement park,” explains Kimball House co-founder and beverage director Miles Macquarrie. “We also saw that so much of Atlanta had modern polish, and we knew we didn’t want that.”

The secret sauce allowing Kimball House to be a seamless portal linking past and present is its insistence to engage in honest hospitality. This is different from Southern hospitality, which can oftentimes be reduced to a cliched trope punctuated by y’alls and drawls. It’s a warm, familial form of service that’s meticulous in its execution but relaxed in its presentation, set in an environment that doesn’t take itself too seriously — it’s hard to be stuffy when there’s a taxidermied bobcat overlooking the space from a cozy nook. This formula shields their critically-acclaimed food menu from pretension, regardless of the dish’s ambitiousness.

While guests can feast on expected fare like sliced ribeye and oysters without feeling too fancy, they can also opt to dig into elevated dishes with distinctive regional elements to provide a touch of homespun flair, like trout with blue corn grits and okra or pork loin accompanied by green tomatoes and peaches. Kimball House’s must-have buttery Hawaiian rolls with peach preserves set a chic-yet-relaxed tone at the meal’s outset, regardless of the culinary direction the night takes.

Macquarrie’s bar program also provides a clean snapshot of this philosophy. The menu’s drinks draw equal inspiration from classic precision-driven techniques and modern technological innovation, underscored by a culinary approach accentuated by fresh ingredients grown in their on-site garden. This produces plenty of delicious, nerdy cocktails like a Fig & Honey Sour or a Cognac-based, force-carbonated take on the classic French 75.

“We use modern techniques, but we won’t mention them on the menu,” Macquarrie says. “To us, those techniques are just a component of a great drink.”

Kimball House’s glassware furthers such modesty. The venue presents drinks in a mismatched assortment of vintage vessels they’ve amassed through years of scouring Atlanta’s robust antique scene. The collection naturally plays into Kimball House’s easygoing homespun vibe, but it also allows the venue another avenue to connect with Atlanta’s past in a more intimate fashion.

“The glasses make you think of history. It may make you think what people were drinking in those glasses 30 or 40 years ago, or even longer,” Macquarrie says. “There’s a story in every glass, and using them shows that we care enough to share those stories.”

Such thoughtfulness is truly indicative of Kimball House’s devotion to honest hospitality, and this adherence fuels their iconic status. It also puts them in a position to help draw national attention to Atlanta and a cocktail scene that flies so under the radar, it’s practically subterranean. According to Macquarrie, any added attention is a bonus that supplements their main focus.

“Atlanta always takes a back seat to cities like New York and San Francisco,” he says. “I don’t know why, but that’s fine. After all these years, we still just want to run a good restaurant.”

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