BRAISE, a casual fine-dining concept by husband and wife chef duo Tanya Jimenez and Michael Le, is slated to open early-2021 at Fayetteville’s newest mixed-used development Pinewood Forest.
The shell will be delivered by May 2020.
“According to our architect, the build-out will take around six to eight months, so we’re hoping to open the end of this year or early next year, like late January, early February 2020, before Valentine’s Day,” Jimenez shared with What Now Atlanta during a phone interview.
“BRAISE is right below a residential building, more permits and paperwork that needs to be filled out since there are people living on top of us.”
Chef Jimenez, a James Beard grant-winner and her husband and fellow chef Le are planning a family-style menu of new American fare with French techniques and Asian influences.
Braise will seat up to 30 guests and will have an open kitchen that Jimenez will run.
Le who also has deep restaurant experience will run the day-to-day operations.
For three years, the couple has also run their Mushi Ni Asian street food pop-up concept out of the We Suki Suki food hall in East Atlanta Village at the suggestion of one of their earlier clients.
Most recently, on January 6, they took over the kitchen at Little Trouble on the Westside.
But BRAISE was always the endgame.
“Ever since we met each other, our passion was all about cooking and then when we got married we thought that we should have a small, cozy, homey restaurant, where people could get home-cooked food,” Jimenez said.
“It’s why we love the name BRAISE, not only is it one of our favorite techniques, everything that is good takes time.”
With their first brick and mortar, Jimenez and Le are hoping to be successful enough to do for other young chefs what our mentors did to help them.
“In the same way we were able to get our start as pop-ups in other establishments, we were thinking of having guest chefs at BRAISE.”
BRAISE will bring up the tail end of the other confirmed food offerings at Pinewood including Apple Butter Bakery, Honeysuckle Gelato which are both expected to open late Summer 2020.
Hop City and Barleygarden is slated for a Memorial Day weekend 2020 debut.
And we’re still standing by for an opening date for Anne Quatrano‘s Pancake Social’s Café + Coffee House.
