The big news this week was the unexpected closure of Revival, the Decatur-based Southern comfort food restaurant led by acclaimed Chef Kevin Gillespie. However, despite the significant storm damage and subsequent burglary leading to the closure, Gillespie says there are plenty of lessons to be learned, making for an even better Revival when it reopens in the future, though a location is still to be determined.
“We don’t have any specifics. We weren’t braced for this to happen. It all happened very, very quickly – right at the end of the year, beginning of the new year — so we haven’t had much time,” Gillespie tells What Now Atlanta, adding, that the team has “a lot of meetings set up,” but that they’re not at liberty to divulge those details.
Nevertheless, Gillespie says that he’s hoping to settle on a new location by year’s end and that when Revival reopens, it’ll be an opportunity to capitalize on some of the lessons he’s learned in the near-decade of operating the restaurant.
“What we have found over the eight years of operating Revival is that we do a lot more take-out than we anticipated ever doing,” says Gillespie, “and we have a pretty broad clientele, but we have way more older guests than we have at Gunshow and they require a pretty significant amount of parking — they’re not really into rideshares. So we have sort of learned that the hard way over time, and decided well, maybe, we’ll look for a space that better suits what we do here.”
Incidentally, 2023 marks the 10-year anniversary of Gunshow, Gillespie’s flagship concept, meaning much of what the restaurateur had in store for this year centered around that, as opposed to the usual schedule of launching a new idea.
“There wasn’t plans for any new projects in 2023…which is kind of uncommon for us,” says Gillespie. “So in a lot of ways, the timing of this Revival thing is not in any way ideal, but we had way less on our plate than we historically do going into the new year. So to a degree, I guess if it’s going to happen, I guess this was not the worst time for it to happen.”
While Gillespie admits that the first few weeks were difficult, he’s nonetheless made peace with it the best he can – the sheer violation of a burglary still leaves a “sour taste in his mouth” – and is finding the positives in an otherwise traumatic experience.
“It was certainly a surprise. You know, the thing I’ve told folks, that I’ve stressed to them, is that Revival was at the end of its lease anyways, so we knew we were going to have to do something…The other upshot to it is that we are robust enough in the company that no one lost their job — we just moved the entire team into Gunshow. We have a lot more extra hands than we need at the moment, but it’s actually pretty nice to have folks who have been our colleagues for years actually all working under the same roof.”
As the say, necessity is the mother of invention, and the reinvention of Revival — or revival of Revival, as one fan put it to Gillespie — is doubtlessly the silver lining to all of this.
“We’ve been kicking around the idea of finding a location that is a little bit more conducive to what Revival has evolved into, but I don’t know that we ever would’ve gotten around to it, to be really candid with you,” Gillespie says laughing. “Because we love that building, and we loved the people who we were serving. At the end of the day though, I think that our hands were forced into doing something that is probably going to be better for the Revival brand, and the restaurant, and frankly, the guests who will continue to eat here when we do reopen…once we’re able to get back open.”
