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441 Public Kitchen and Bar

It has practically become cliché, this being the most wonderful time of the year and all. The heat has snapped making the average disposition a little more friendly. Believe it or not, one of my favorite things to witness in the Fall is the weekly parade of colors through the Atlanta airport. It typically picks up on Friday mornings, rolls through the afternoons. The scenes are repeated on Sunday mornings and afternoons. What exactly is this parade of colors? Yellow Jackets headed to Blacksburg. Maybe it’s Hokies headed to Miami. It could be Gamecocks headed to College Station. It really is a sight to see if you enjoy the pageantry and passion surrounding college football as much as I do. Within the state of Georgia, cars are heading to and fro. A good many of those headed to Athens, but you cannot discount the number of fans headed to Statesboro to see the Georgia Southern Eagles. Those fans rolling up on Statesboro this season have a new, old place to eat. A welcomed return for the locals, but a new treat for visitors to the ‘boro.

441 Public Kitchen and Bar is the new kid on the block in Statesboro, a stones throw from the Eagles practice facility on the corner of campus. If you visit the area with any regularity, say for football in the Fall or basketball in the Winter, then you may remember the owner. Seni Alabi-Isama was owner/operator of South and Vine Public House in downtown Statesboro. In June 2014, a fire destroyed the space, leaving one of the most popular eateries in town closed up. Many thought for good. “There were a lot of people in this community hoping we’d come back”, Seni tells me. “For me, I was thinking about my guys. My main kitchen guy was having a baby. My main thing was all of the crew and the college students that depended on me”.  Fourteen months later, Seni returned in his new space with most of his staff (both back of the house as well as front of the house) in tact. Just one look at the crowds filling up this restaurant, even on random weeknights, will tell you there are a ton of people glad to see he’s back. It’s pretty obvious Seni and his family never really wanted to leave.

Seni first moved to Statesboro to attend Georgia Southern. He was a student during the late 90’s, early 2000 heyday when names like Adrian Peterson, Greg Hill and Paul Johnson were making national headlines. After dabbling in “the restaurant thing” as he calls it here and there, he finally decided to open a place of his own and bring a “big city feel” to the city he and his wife chose to make their home. “Chain restaurants aren’t my thing. Never really have been”, he says. “For me it was a feeling that a lot of people had when it came to going out to eat, which was…this can’t be it”.

No one is trying to take a shot at the dining scene in Statesboro, but in a city of that size, your choices will always be limited. “We all love coming to Savannah”, he says. “But that hour ride home after a good meal and a few cocktails is just brutal. When you can have an experience that rivals something in a larger city and you only have to go five minutes to get home, it’s kind of hard not to enjoy that”, he adds.

His menu he describes as eclectic. He is of Carribbean and African descent, but there isn’t a thing on the menu you can’t pronounce. Burgers, Fish and Chips, Pork Chops, Ribeyes and Shrimp and Grits.  “Anything I can think of that I like to eat, we’ll give it a shot”, he says. The “we” he refers to is his entire kitchen staff. They all have input but he and his Chef de Cuisine, Stephen Griffin, get final say. “The other day we brought in some wreckfish because it was the freshest thing we could get”, Seni tells me. “None of us had ever made wreckfish. So we did some research and played with a few things and we are selling out of it”. The Shrimp and Grits might be the most popular. They use Freeman’s Mill grits from right down the road in Statesboro and can hardly keep from running out. “That dish is derived from my love of gumbo”, he says. “We cook our grits for about two hours, then add the shrimp and gravy, which includes home made shrimp stock and Eagle Creek Praline Brown beer. It’s a perfect blend of spicy and savory to combine with the creaminess of the grits”. I’ve tried them and he’s right. “Sometimes, no matter how much we scale up on the batches of grits, we still run out”. There’s a nice sized bar area and bar scene, if you will, at 441 Public Kitchen and Bar. They carry a good selection of local and regional beers. The full menu is available anywhere in the restaurant.

No matter where you travel to support your team during any particular time of year, options on where to dine are always nice. Seni tells me 441 Public Kitchen and Bar recently got a nice write up in Georgia Southern’s Alumni magazine, which has exposed a great number of alums in the Atlanta area to his space. “We are starting to have a lot more contact with alumni”, he says. “They are starting to stream in here when they come to town”. If they know about it, I can’t imagine them not. Heck, why wait for a ball game. Statesboro is just up the road from Savannah. You can enjoy it any time of the year. Meanwhile, safe travels to all you enjoying our annual pilgrimages all over the South this fall. If you find anywhere out there you’ve been Eating and Liking, drop me a line. Let me know.

See you on TV.

Jesse

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