“Culture is something that’s ever-growing and changing and you can’t stop it.
“-Kevin Spencer
The Birth
As a central business district in Atlanta, Midtown mirrors our complex modern economy. The fast-paced competition may challenge meaningful human connections; however, Kevin Spencer, co-founder of Table at Ten, is up for the challenge.
Table at Ten lies west of Piedmont Park, only a block or two away. Its front patio is furnished with wooden chairs and tables that resemble a lounge more than a restaurant. Black cushions and bold tapestry accentuate a calm maturity mirrored by its commercial habitat. However, there is a whisper of passion and culture that co-owner Kevin Spencer finds crucial.
“Culture is something that’s ever-growing and changing and you can’t stop it,” explains Spencer. “We’re in Midtown, Atlanta which attracts an automatic colorful base of people and we like it that way.”
Spencer makes a living by finding different ways to express this culture. As a touring musician with over 20 years of experience, he understands the value of entertaining others and says the restaurant is rooted in entertaining guests at home and elsewhere.
“We used to do a lot of gatherings at our house; my wife is quite an incredible cook in her own right,” Spencer said. “She puts a lot of effort into the food, making sure that it’s cooked and prepared the right way and a good, quality product. All of our friends have always benefited from that.”
Spencer reveres his co-owner and wife, Krystee. He attributes the birth of the restaurant to her dedication in the face of exorbitant crowds.
“She cooked for 20, then it was 30, then it was 40,” Spencer explains. “Then she was cooking for 40 people plus we were doing 40 to 50 homeless plates for the holidays. We would all eat together. Then after that, we would take out all these plates to the homeless and deliver them food on the holidays.”
As gracious hosts, the Spencers were well-acquainted. Spencer remembers when friends approached his wife and him with a business proposition.
“Friends of ours that we used to do business with had started a bar called Ten and it was an opportunity where they wanted to have a restaurant inside it,” explains Spencer. “They turned to us and said, ‘You guys would be the perfect partners to bring in.’ And so that’s where the business was born. My wife and I took it on as something we wanted to do.”
The Life
Table at Ten is a restaurant and transitively, a business. For many, this label connotes logic, money, work and utility. The food business is an odd hybrid—making powerful enterprise out of an originally humble hospitality. As customers purchase sustenance, they also sell sustenance, in dollars and in culture. The diversity and humanity of each guest creates an atmosphere that exists independently of the restaurant. Although this atmosphere may be a selling point or marketing tool, its authenticity as a warm collection of human beings is priceless.
As a musician and businessman, Spencer rejects the notion that commerce and culture are mutually exclusive, weaving them together in a tapestry of financial success and powerful, authentic human communication. He describes the specialized roles of employees that facilitate this communication.
“Picture a big figure eight. There’s the kitchen staff and then there’s us as the owners and chef is in the middle,” explains Spencer. “We come in the middle with him and we kind of go back and forth between each. My job is to help to assist and focusing and manifesting a good culture.”
At Table of Ten, vibrant and volatile culture is created and creates. Large art pieces with flavors of post-impressionism adorn each wall. The calm maturity and reason of rich, solid reds and browns is challenged by this art which contrasts starkly while oddly blending in. Spencer discusses this paradox.
“Everything is very, very streamlined so that anything that is color inside here, including the people, is the important part,” Spender notes. “The people become the art—let colorful characters shine and don’t overshadow them.”
The contrast between the art and its surroundings reflects the liminal state of the restaurant’s southern cuisine. As Spencer explains, the food diverges from its southern roots but fails to converge completely as a different style.
“It’s a southern restaurant, but we pull in from other influences. We offer salmon and it’s done on a pureed, cauliflower base, so it looks like cream, but it’s not; it’s all cauliflower; it’s very healthy,” Spencer explains. “And then cauliflower and thyme carrots mixed in with field greens on top and it’s grilled salmon—that’s not traditionally a southern dish.The way we look at it is it all falls under comfort food.”
The blatantly recursive idea is paradox or inconsistency. However, a strange harmony is born with consistent inconsistency—the confluence of contradictions ironically creates an overarching affirmation. What is affirmed?
To Spencer, the restaurant is a means to an end. These means involve logistics, business and professionalism—a necessary veneer. Spencer understands the necessity of this skeleton but passionately exposes the flesh and blood of his corporeal enterprise in many manifestations such as music.
“When there are certain songs that you just hear and you just know that it was stunningly well-prepared, [it’s the] same with food. When you hear John Lennon sing one of his songs like ‘Imagine,’ you know that it came from a place of unrest on the planet of just being,” explains Spencer. “War is not right—hurting people is not right. Can you imagine a planet without all that [and] how gorgeous this place would be that we could all live together?”
This may be an ideal, but it’s plausibility or lack thereof is irrelevant. The song brings Spencer to this magical state of peace and love, seemingly the same state in which Lennon composed. In this way, Lennon has connected to Spencer and countless others.
Could this communion be the aforementioned affirmation? If so, this harmony between souls has roots in disharmony. The liminal food, the discordant visitors, the aesthetic contradiction—this formidable existential confusion creates a profound and harmonizing universal: an honest acceptance of other people sustains us. Table at Ten offers this sustenance in varied and dreamy ideals as well as on sheen porcelain plates.
