When the deal is everything, the OK Cafe is often where it gets done.
“Many a transaction has been done in that place,” noted Cousins Properties executive VP John McColl, one of many movers and shakers who’ve settled into a booth at the north Atlanta eatery.
For a while, at least, people like McColl will have to do their morning moving and shaking somewhere else.
The iconic restaurant at the corner of West Paces Ferry Road and Northside Parkway caught fire and burned early Sunday morning. Fire officials blamed a faulty water heater. One firefighter was injured, but not seriously, in a fall during the cleanup.
Plans are to repair and reopen, but when isn’t certain.
Regulars were buzzing about the closure on Monday. They say there’s no shortage of other places they can nosh, but none is quite like the OK.
“You’d say the OK must have the heaviest of the heavies,” said Sam Massell, president of the Buckhead Coalition and former mayor of Atlanta.
Ricky Steele, whose job involved connecting entrepreneurs with investors, remembers arriving at 6:15 one morning during the dot com boom — and not leaving until 3:30 that afternoon. He sat through back-to-back-to-back-to-back confabs, plowing through breakfast, brunch and lunch in the process.
“It’s still the power breakfast place in Atlanta,” said Steele, chief development officer at Hunter Technical Resources, a recruiting firm.
Atlanta PR exec Tony Wilbert recalled that as he planned to launch his firm, he “camped out” at the OK each morning and had multiple breakfast meetings to run his idea past business people he respected.
While working on the Kasim Reed for Mayor campaign, he introduced the candidate to the Buckhead business community there. Before this week he still ate at the OK several times a week, having what he calls a “spec” breakfast.
“I sit at the counter and grab people I need to catch up with as they walk by,” he explained, adding, “I hope the place re-opens very soon.”
Raymond King has been eating at the OK Cafe for at least 15 years — it opened in 1987 — typically a few times a week. The president and CEO of Zoo Atlanta said he goes there “to tell our story” and cultivate support for the zoo.
At the OK Cafe, he said, it’s not necessarily about deals, though. It’s about building relationships, he said, making a point echoed by other frequent patrons.
Business people who eat there often say there’s a lot to like about the OK Cafe, from the location off I-75 to the long time employees who make you feel at home.
The food is regarded as good, but even those who don’t eat show up.
Steve Hennessy, a co-owner of the Hennessy Automobile Companies, has had plenty of business meetings at the OK Cafe, but often he goes by himself, gets just an iced tea and reads the newspapers.
“It’s how I start my morning,” he said.
Tradition is a big part of the restaurant, right down to the seating. Some regulars have — unofficially — their own booths, in fact. Not that they’ve been assigned. But everyone know that’s so-and-so’s spot.
“We pay respect to each other,” King said.
An open table might be unavailable until, say 8 o’clock, for example, because of that customer. But if it’s not taken by the usual time, King laughed,”It’s fair game.”
There’s some literary history of a sort, too. On the wall is a signed note from Harper Lee, wishing “many great meals” to come at the OK Cafe to its customers. The restaurant was named in honor of the OK Cafe in Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
Posted: 7:38 p.m. Monday, Dec. 8, 2014
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