A restaurant that will serve as a training ground for up-and-coming culinary talent is now open in Tucker.
Farmed Kitchen & Bar opened this week in the former Le Cordon Bleu space at 1927 Lakeside Parkway on the PREP Kitchen campus. The eatery is part of Shular Institute, a culinary school set to open in spring 2021.
Business partners Daryl Shular and Sean Rush are the brains behind both ventures, as well as catering company Earth First and Plated, a cooking school for non-chefs.
Shular, who previously served as the director of education at Le Cordon Bleu and a chef instructor at the Art Institute of Atlanta, was the first Black chef to get certified as a Master Chef through the American Culinary Federation.
The restaurant and culinary school will be housed in the same building, with a kitchen featuring four 18-foot European-style lines that will give customers “a bird’s-eye view of what that environment is like,” Shular said.
Staffed by students enrolled in the Shular Institute culinary program, Farmed will serve a seasonal menu with breakfast dishes that include a crispy chicken sweet potato biscuit and steel-cut oatmeal, and lunch options such as a charred pear-dehydrated blueberry salad, slow-cooked short rib pizza, a smoked bacon burger and kale-pesto chicken sandwich. Dinner will be added in the near future.
“The menu represents me as a chef,” Shular said. “I wanted to do something that ties me to my roots. But the core principle behind everything that we do is about sustainability and sourcing products within close proximity to the school.”
Farmed also offers a selection of coffee drinks, pastries and a full bar, including its own line of beer developed with local breweries.
The space features an outdoor patio that currently seats 12 due to COVID-19 restrictions. At regular capacity, it will seat up to 30. The 7,000 square-foot interior, which will will eventually offer seating for up to 100, is marked by wood floors and tables, a 20-foot granite-topped bar, a brick oven for breads and pizzas, a chef’s counter and a private dining room.
Credit: andrewsbraddy studios
Credit: andrewsbraddy studios
The idea behind Farmed, Shular said, is to offer Shular Institute students real-life experience in a restaurant during their formal culinary training. Through assistance from corporate sponsors, Farmed will also help offset the cost of the program’s tuition so that students leave with limited or zero debt.
The school, which offers a six-month program as well as two advanced 10-month tracks, has been a dream of Shular’s for a decade. He and Rush have been working on it in earnest for the past six years.
“We’ve been working on laying the groundwork and coming up with a strategic plan for rolling out this program. It was important to me to get it right,” Shular said. “The industry needs it more than ever. The industry is going to be a desert for now, but it’s going to come back with a fury, and you’ve got to have a workforce that’s ready for that post-COVID world.”
In addition to cooking skills, he said the Shular Institute’s curriculum will focus on developing students’ business skills and food science knowledge.
He said he sees the Shular Institute as a “playground for all culinarians,” allowing for research and development along with training in the fundamentals.
“I want to eliminate some of those road blocks for the next generation,” he said. “I want to put out a bunch of Navy SEALS in culinary arts out of my program.”
In addition to dine-in service, Farmed offers curbside pickup and delivery via third party services, including DoorDash.
Farmed is open 7:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays. Masks are required for patrons when not seated, as well as staff.
1927 Lakeside Parkway, Tucker. 470-294-2938, farmedkitchenandbar.com/
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