A little Chattanooga, five minutes from home: brunch at STIR in Medley

The first STIR I knew was in Chattanooga, in the old Terminal Station building at the Chattanooga Choo Choo. In my mind, it belongs to a whole trip: the impressive station, the hotel, Lookout Mountain and the gardens and storybook gnomes at Rock City.

The second is about five minutes from home.

We visited STIR at Medley on Sunday, Oct. 25, for brunch during its soft opening, ahead of the restaurant’s public debut Thursday, Oct. 29. The Johns Creek location is the brand’s first in Georgia, with an oyster bar, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch, plus the adjoining Tonic House for cocktails.

Exclusive sponsor

SAT or ACT? Start with a free practice test.Try a full-length diagnostic, in person or from home. Get a score report and recommendations for your next steps.Find a free mock test ↗

There is a pleasing connection between the two places. Chattanooga’s rail network once carried travelers between Tennessee and Atlanta; its grand Terminal Station opened in 1909 and sent off its last passenger train in 1970. The building later became the Chattanooga Choo Choo hotel and entertainment complex. Now a restaurant from that old station has made its way to our neighborhood.

Medley’s STIR occupies a new building, without the station’s century of history. But sitting there with the big windows open and a breeze coming through, I found myself thinking of Chattanooga anyway. Close your eyes for a moment, concentrate on the food and the Southern hospitality, and the distance feels shorter.

Admittedly, this breeze was coming from the direction of McGinnis Ferry Road.

Brunch beneath the chandeliers

Inside, chandeliers hang beneath exposed wooden beams, with tall bottle shelves above the bar and large openings connecting the dining room to the seating outside. Blue stools line an outdoor counter. It is a room that lets daylight and the outdoors into the meal.

The brunch choices ranged from a country breakfast to lobster crab cakes. The country breakfast came with three eggs any style, breakfast potatoes, white cheddar grits, a biscuit and a choice of bacon, pork sausage or chicken sausage.

Seafood appeared throughout the menu we were offered. The lobster crab cake breakfast paired lobster claw and lump crab with caper remoulade, eggs, arugula and breakfast potatoes. Shrimp and crab Benedict combined crab meat and crispy fried shrimp with poached eggs, English muffins and hollandaise.

There were familiar eggs Benedict, too, alongside a Baja omelette with peppers, onions, cheese, pico de gallo, avocado, Mexican crema and charred salsa. A breakfast burger added a fried egg and bacon; a chopped seafood salad brought together shrimp, lobster, greens, avocado and citrus vinaigrette.

At our table, brunch included steak and eggs with roasted vegetables and farro, hollandaise on the side, and a country breakfast ordered with scrambled eggs and chicken sausage. The steak arrived sliced across a large white plate, with two sunny-side-up eggs and the vegetables and farro in a separate bowl.

The brunch drinks included mimosas, Bloody Marys, an espresso martini and STIR’s signature tonics, made with gin or vodka and a choice of original or elderberry-and-hibiscus tonic syrup.

A server who wants to hear the small news

Our server, Danielle, had heard about the job through a friend. She said the company’s approach to hospitality and its charitable work, including support for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, helped persuade her to join.

“They really care about the customer,” she said.

Asked for a dish recommendation beyond our brunch choices, she picked the chicken piccata. But the detail that stayed with me had less to do with the kitchen.

Danielle wants to know what her guests are celebrating. A birthday, certainly, but smaller occasions count. If a child has lost a tooth, she wants to hear about it.

Her early tables had left her optimistic. “I haven’t had one complaint, and I’ve had several tables over the past three days,” she said.

We also spoke briefly with Brandon, another server, who had previously worked at Avalon. He liked the food, cocktails and his co-workers, and described the soft-opening shifts as a chance for the team to get experience before the public opening. People were still learning the work and getting to know one another.

The work before opening day

Kevin, a manager whose responsibilities include the service team, said hiring and keeping staff had been central to preparing for the opening.

He credited the managers who arrived before him with much of the preparation. Almost everyone hired had stayed so far, he said, and he hoped to keep that team together.

Pay matters, he said, but so does creating a workplace people want to return to. That means engaging with employees and making them feel involved.

“A lot of people are in the restaurant business,” he said. “I think we are in the experience business.”

Even the ice gets three days

STIR prepares its food from scratch, serves craft cocktails and rotates its oyster selection, Kevin said. It also makes its own cocktail ice.

The restaurant freezes its cocktail ice in-house in large blocks, a process he said takes three days. Those blocks are cut down with a band saw into pieces suited to different glasses and drinks. A server can also bring a mold to the table to shape an ice sphere in front of a guest.

It is a surprising amount of preparation for something most of us notice only when there is too much of it in a glass.

By the end of brunch, I was already thinking about coming back. There is no Lookout Mountain outside these windows, and no Rock City gnomes tucked among the landscaping. But for a place five minutes from home, this is about as close as I can get to that particular Chattanooga memory.

I suspect regular visits will make me want to go back to Tennessee. For now, I am glad a little of it has come here.

Disclosure: STIR provided a complimentary brunch during this soft-opening visit.

Explore our Medley guide for opening plans, restaurants, photographs and continuing coverage: https://northatlantastar.com/medley/