Daddy, write this down. Get your pen and write this down, Good customer service.”
That’s my son, Jess, age 7, speaking. We’re at Parish—a newly opened New Orleans–themed restaurant and market on the fringe of Atlanta’s Inman Park.
Upstairs is the restaurant, doing its best Emeril imitation, dishing sausage-and-crawfish cheesecake (a savory, quiche-like dish) and other modern Louisiana eats. The downstairs market space is cool, in that post-industrial refurb kid of way. Distressed surfaces everywhere. A communal table, elbow-to-elbow with laptop jockeys. Tchotchkes for sale in abundance, from cheese boards to thank-you cards flecked with flower seeds.
Breakfast at the market, ordered from a walk-up counter, is honest and good. Bran muffins, mixed, it seems, with a half-gallon of sorghum each. Righteous and diminutive croissants, paved with slivered almonds. Poofy omelets, tucked full of homegrown tomatoes. (And, sadly, tough biscuits that need some T.L.C.)
Most important, the staff smiles brightly, even if they’re tired from pulling a double shift the day before. That’s what Jess is thinking when he demands that I extract my pen and make note of our visit. What had happened immediately prior was this:
Jess fell backwards off a stool. Hit his head on a support beam. Then came a splat on the concrete floor. A hail of omelet trailed his dropped fork. And then a jagged cry.
Turns out, Jess wasn’t hurt. Just embarrassed to have fallen. Very embarrassed.
I was no help. And then this fellow named Chris Gaither came around the corner. He told Jess that he slips and falls all the time. That he had fallen backwards from that same perch.
Jess didn’t buy it. And then, to my amazement, Chris purposefully fell on the floor. A full Charlie Chaplin pratfall. And then he fell again. And again. By the fourth smack on the concrete, Jess was smiling, and I was writing in my Moleskine, as instructed: Good customer service.
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