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When diners walk into The Grey, they’ll see one of the more attractive and aesthetically aware restaurants to open in Savannah in recent years.
But its beauty is more than skin deep.
The new restaurant and bar at 109 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. officially opened Thursday after more than two years and a few million dollars of painstaking restoration.
Owner John Morisano said he fell for the space instantly when he toured it in March 2012.
“I immediately fell in love with the building and was awestruck by this room,” he said.
That room is the main dining room, which seats around 70, with its high ceilings, retro light fixtures, steel blue booths, U-shaped bar and original Masonite walls.
The former Greyhound Bus Station, from which the restaurant derives its name, also has a number of nooks and crannies where diners can gather, including an upstairs private dining room, outside seating and a front diner bar that recalls Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks.”
It took Morisano another year before the owner would sell, but in March 2013 he closed on the building for $945,000.
Immediately, he set to bring it back to life, hiring New York design firm Parts and Labor to handle the interior layout and local architecture firm Felder & Associates to tackle the preservation side. The building is currently being reviewed for state and national historic preservation tax credits.
Even though the space previously housed a restaurant, Cafe Metropole, which closed in the fall of 2002, Morisano wasn’t sure about his intentions for the space. The native New Yorker also owns SLAAM Ventures, an angel investment group that focuses on tech and media startups.
“I’ve been involved with so many businesses in my life ... but I’ve always loved food and wine,” he said. “I think secretly I always knew, but I didn’t admit it to myself for a few months.”
The former bus station served Savannahians at a time when MLK was still called West Broad and African-Americans were made to stand in separate waiting rooms and use segregated bathrooms.
Morisano said it was far more important to him to get the preservation right than making it trendy.
“It’s those little pieces of history that are most amazing to me,” he said. “We didn’t invest multiple millions of dollars in the restaurant; we invested the money in preservation of the building. That’s the infrastructure.”
The space is filled with small details and grand gestures that encapsulate that rich history. The big plate glass window that looks into its front diner space is mostly original as are the pink terrazzo floors. A worn spot in the floor next to the kitchen partition is where passengers stood to buy tickets.
In a cathartic nod to Savannah’s past, the words “Waiting Room” are printed above the back section of the restaurant, where African-American passengers used to wait for buses. Framed photographs of African-American life in Savannah adorn the walls, including original prints taken by photographer Jerry Harris of a performance by gospel singer James Cleveland at the First African Baptist Church during the ’70s.
Other local artists featured in The Grey include photographer Adam Kuehl, mixed-media artist Marcus Kenney and painter Betsy Cain.
The façade is its own work of art. In 1938, Greyhound used a blue and white material called Vitrolite, a structural glass used in many Art Deco and Art Moderne buildings of that era.
Although the material is no longer fabricated, Morisano found a man in St. Louis named Tim Dunn, a Vitrolite specialist, who helped locate similar materials and oversaw the façade installation over a series of months.
A 2o-foot neon blue sign of a greyhound was installed Friday.
The ’60s-influenced interior will likely cause more than a few references to AMC’s “Mad Men” with two full bars serving classic cocktails like Gimlets and Manhattans.
Chef Mashama Bailey
In the summer of 2013, after Morisano knew he was going to open a restaurant, he began listening to audio books by restaurateurs he admired. One book he happened upon was “Blood, Bones & Butter,” the critically acclaimed memoir of chef Gabrielle Hamilton, who owns Prune in the East Village in New York.
“As I was listening to it, I thought, ‘I have to meet this woman,’ I feel like Gabrielle Hamilton can help me find my chef and give me direction,” he said. “So I stalked her.”
Not literally, but Morisano was dogged. He first wrote a letter to Hamilton and dropped it off at Prune but never heard back. Six weeks later, he figured out her email and sent another note.
Even then it took a couple more weeks before he finally got through. They met at her restaurant, where he told her his plans.
Hamilton listened to his vision for The Grey and although she called him crazy for opening a restaurant, she agreed to help.
“She said, ‘The perfect person for you to partner with on this thing happens to be my protégé, and I know she’s at the point in her career where she’s ready to do her own thing,’” he recalled.
A few weeks later, he said, he was introduced to Mashama Bailey, who’d worked under Hamilton for four years.
“As soon as we met, we were both convinced immediately that we were going to do this together,” he said.
Bailey was born in the Bronx, but had spent some of her youth in the south, including about five years in Savannah during the early ’80s. She said she remembers Victory Drive, Chuck E. Cheese’s on Abercorn and, most vividly, the diabetically sweet popsicles called “Thrills” that a neighbor sold from her house.
“They were made of Kool-Aid and sugar, and they were sold for about 10 cents apiece to kids during the summertime,” she said.
Despite some nostalgia, leaving her home city did give her pause.
“When John O. asked me to come back, I thought maybe it’s time,” she said.
After packing up all her possessions, she took a road trip on her way to Savannah to look for inspiration, taking a detour through New Orleans and Lafayette, La. While there, she saw boudin, a Cajun rice- and meat-stuffed sausage, and pork cracklins at gas stations everywhere. Someone recommended a restaurant where she tried a seafood boudin, and she knew she wanted to incorporate it on her menu.
She said customers who attended their trial runs earlier this week really gravitated toward it.
“It’s been a real surprise,” she said.
Another menu highlight for Bailey is the braised eel, a dish inspired by a trip she took to Italy with Morisano after they agreed to partner on The Grey. She said most people think of eel as an Asian ingredient, but they actually migrate South from Rhode Island each year and are easily overlooked in the culinary landscape.
“It’s homey, it’s different and in a lot of ways it’s very American, but an old English American, which is really the type of food I like to focus on,” she said.
When she describes her approach to cooking, she said it’s really just about making good food.
“I love old, traditional comforting ingredients and figuring out how to update it and make it more interesting and approachable,” she said.
For example, after browsing the Southern Foodways Alliance website one day, she found a guy in Louisiana doing dried shrimp jerky. She ordered some, loved it and wanted to figure out how to use it. After visiting a local Hispanic market and finding shrimp powder, she came up with a savory egg pie with a double crust, sour cream and chives.
“I wanted it to be like if you’re drunk, you remember it the next day,” she said, laughing.
On the weekends, Bailey said, they plan to do whole hog roasts outside with bloody marys. Though some restaurants start with hard concepts, Bailey said she’s more interested in getting to know the local farmers and ingredients here.
“When people ask us who we are, we’re still a baby. … You pick a perspective and you grow and develop within that perspective,” she said.
Finding a niche
Morisano has been a Savannah resident for four years and does a lot of eating out, which he’s documented through The Grey’s Instagram feed during construction. He said he wants to build something that Savannahians will appreciate.
“I knew they were going to appreciate us doing something with the building, but are they going to appreciate it from a food and wine experience?” he said.
The restaurant is soon to be joined by several new hotels along the MLK corridor — two on the same block — and will likely see healthy foot traffic from tourists, but that’s not The Grey’s target demographic.
“We built the restaurant for Savannahians, and we’re cooking for Savannahians because those are the people we’re friends with, that we hang out with and get drunk with,” he said.
He believes the tourists who come to the restaurant will do so to be around the locals.
Bailey agrees, saying they’ve tried to keep the menu approachable for more than just one income level.
“We can be a very nice evening out, we can be a quick snack at the bar or we can also be the place you bring your family, come outside, grab a plate and spend 10 bucks until you pop,” she said.
During the interview, conducted the day before their opening, Bailey exuded calm, though she admitted she was feeling anxious. A passage in Gabrielle Hamilton’s book described Sunday brunch service at Prune as “the Indy 500 of services” with hungry stampede of customers every 40 minutes.
Asked whether her test runs felt like those Sundays at Prune, she said there were certainly flashes.
“Brunch service was like running for your life — you are in the weeds and fighting to feed everyone as fast you can,” she said. “It’s turn and burn, it’s dirty, but you have to work as clean as possible.”
Bailey said she expects Hamilton to visit The Grey in the new year after they get settled.
Morisano said he knows restaurants, like startups, can be risky, but they’ve done their homework.
“We invested in the right things: we invested in the building, we invested in the people. That’s what you do to mitigate risk in a startup; you make sure you’re spending time and resources that matter. That’s what we’re doing.”
THE GREY
The Grey’s regular hours will be Tuesday through Sunday, with dinner from 5:30-10 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday, and an hour later Thursday through Saturday. The Grey will close Dec. 24-26.
Check out
thegreyrestaurant.com or opentable.com for reservations.