If you’re wondering what will become of John Perkins after his latest temporary restaurant, Agrarian ends after dinner service Oct. 5, you’re not alone. The space won’t be the hyper-local concept Perkins described late last year when he outlined his plans for four short-lived restaurant concepts at 360 N. Boyle Ave., in the Central West End, nor a wild game-focused menu. In fact, the Agrarian is “the last time for the quarterly thing,” he told The Scoop. “I’m not going to do that or a game-themed restaurant.”
Instead, Perkins plans to return to – and hopes to stick with for good – the southern dining concept he explored this spring with pop-up A Good Man is Hard to Find. “I want to explore that a little bit more. It went well in terms of numbers, and it was fun cuisine for us to make,” Perkins said. “The other factor is it’s kind of an unexplored style of cuisine here, I think, at least [being that it’s] southern food that’s not Cajun or Creole. I don’t see a lot of low-country southern, Mississippi Delta southern food.”
Perkins is still deciding what to call the southern-focused restaurant (It won’t be named A Good Man is Hard to Find.), which will debut mid-October. He expects it to be open for dinner Wednesday through Saturday, the same days of operation for his previous concepts. However, he plans to add carryout at lunch featuring fried chicken plus sides.
In the meantime, Perkins hopes for a strong finish for Agrarian in its final four weeks. The menu, which offers many plant- and grain-based dishes, was never exclusively vegetarian. “There’s always been meat on the menu,” he said. “Now we have four meat entrees on the menu – but we can make most dishes vegetarian – so we’re friendly to a vegetarian diet but extremely friendly to carnivores, as well.”
-Photo by Jonathan Gayman
This article appears in September 2013.