Credit: Bob Townsend
Credit: Bob Townsend
Tara Mayfield is no longer the executive chef at the Consulate. Mayfield had been running the kitchen since the Midtown restaurant opened last summer .
The restaurant is in the search phase for Mayfield’s replacement. In the interim, Consulate co-owner Mei Lin is helming kitchen operations.
Lin does not have formal culinary training, however, the New York City native grew up in a family of restaurant owners, said her husband and Consulate co-owner Doug Hines. Since the restaurant’s inception, Lin has also been heavily involved with the menu and dish preparation, particularly vegetarian items like the popular Thai okra, Hines said. Lin herself is a vegetarian.
The Consulate offers a menu of "global tapas," with a rotating focus on the cuisine of a particular country . Currently, the spotlight is on Russia. On April 1, the menu shifts to Guam.
“We want to be recognized as one of best restaurants in Atlanta, and we want a chef that matches up and wants to deliver excellence,” said Hines.
Hines and Lin also own Honey Bubble on Ponce de Leon Avenue. The Consulate is their their first restaurant venture. Hines said that the Consulate is the first of eight dining concepts that they plan to roll out.
“We’re pretty close to pulling the trigger on a second lease,” Hines said. “Right now, we have to be here (at the Consulate) to keep our eye on everything." He expects to sign the lease on a space in Midtown “as soon as I am comfortable and we don’t have to be here every day.”
Hines did not disclose the next concept, but stated that it would be “very edgy” and “unlike any in Atlanta.”
Davio's Northern Italian Steakhouse also recently underwent a chef change. Matthew Rosekrans replaces Tim Magee as executive chef at the restaurant located at Phipps Plaza in Buckhead. An Atlanta native, Rosekrans was most recently executive sous chef at the Georgia Dome. In his career, Rosekrans opened Pricci in Buckhead, worked as sous chef at Blackberry Farm, as chef de cuisine at Chattahoochee Country Club and as a banquet chef at the Georgia World Congress Center.
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