In 1997, I was broke and had quit my job in advertising and fled NYC. I opened a "supper club" private underground dinner party in a rented Victorian in Atlanta's Inman Park, mostly to pay bills and partly because I needed a career change. It blossomed in an old timey 'salon style' with elaborate decor, decadent culinary experiments and live acoustic jazz. I developed it into a commercial venture in the (then) abandoned, uncool, vacant downtown Decatur. Cheap rent, close to Atlanta. I renovated the building with an old black guy living in a car behind my warehouse apartment and ran it on a shoe string until suddenly, I was kinda famous. The rest is history in A Decade of Dish.