Preserving Atlanta’s beloved restaurants is a balancing act

Park was never much of a biscuit lover. She grew up in the South, and she had worked in brunch restaurants before, so she swore she’d tried at least 100 biscuits in her lifetime and was never very impressed.

Until she took a bite of that biscuit. It was huge, fluffy and made in-house with just five ingredients.

“I’m like ‘Oh my God, this is the best biscuit I’ve ever had in my life,’” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution one breezy morning on the Pastries A Go Go patio. “I’m stunned by this biscuit, like stunned. … And that biscuit is the reason I decided that this was gonna be it.”

A heavenly biscuit experience encouraged her to approach Light about buying the restaurant. He had been looking for someone to sell it to for a while, Park said, but he wasn’t going to let just anyone take over the breakfast place he had been running since 1995.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Light, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, now, said he recognized Park would be able to do some of the things for the restaurant that he didn’t have an interest in — like building a presence on social media.

“I really wanted somebody just to take the business, kind of as it was, and just elevate it,” Light said on a phone call. “There was a lot of potential to the place, like any small business that you have to put the work into it, and she seemed willing to do that.”

Park has been running the restaurant for two years now.

As the owner, she balances between the customers that have made Pastries A Go Go a neighborhood haunt for more than 30 years, and the demographic that will keep it around for decades to come. She is abreast of the latest food trends, but she also understands the importance of a simple plate of eggs and really great produce.

Park has been in and out of the restaurant industry since she was in high school. She worked at various restaurants in her teens and 20s, including Zucca in Smyrna, where she really learned to cook. For several years, the 32-year-old left the food industry to work in the corporate world until she was laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When she started helping her friend’s parents with their collection of restaurants, she thought it would be a temporary arrangement, but over time Park added more hours until she was a full-time manager, transforming their restaurants until they were bustling.

Working at Jam & Toast in Suwanee is where Park fell in love with breakfast. The hours are great, the speed of service is quick and there’s less of an emphasis on alcohol, she said.

But if she was going to dedicate so much of herself to a restaurant, she wanted it to be her own.

She began looking for opportunities to run her own brunch restaurant and learned about Pastries A Go Go from the Decatur Development Authorities. While Light was looking to sell, he had never publicly advertised it.

Park said she was very anxious about meeting him that first time, so she baked him some ginger cookies.

“It took me two hours to bake a batch of cookies,” she said. “Which is crazy ‘cause I can bake a batch of cookies in like 30 minutes.”

Those same cookies can be found in the bakery case now at Pastries A Go Go — they’re big, chewy, crinkled on the top and balanced in spice and sweetness.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Park had learned in her business classes that mergers and acquisitions often fail. It’s already rare for a restaurant to exist for over 25 years, and ownership changes can be the death of them.

So she was going to do this right. Park worked at the restaurant for several months while Light was still running it. Once she took over, Park retained the prep cook who had been there for years, and she waited at least a year before making many changes. On the back end, the biggest thing she incorporated was “written structure,” including details about how to make all the menu items Light served.

She also made the restaurant full service since that’s “just what good food deserves.”

While she lost some customers during the transition, many stuck around.

In the second year, she began experimenting with a few new menu items, like adding a crab cake benedict special and a breakfast burrito.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

“My family has really confusing cookouts,” she added. Park is Korean, Argentinian and Southern, so she brings all of those food cultures together when she cooks.

Park also renovated the restaurant’s interior. It has sunny, yellow paint on the walls (because Pastries A Go Go uses so much butter and eggs) with hand-painted flowers scattered everywhere you look.

Park recognized that younger generations are eating differently than their predecessors — they find their information on social media and they like trendy food items, beverages and bagels — so she began incorporating her expertise at Pastries A Go Go.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

She started sourcing bagels from Bronx Bagel Buggy in Chamblee, and the restaurant began an espresso program for specialty lattes. Park also adds a few trendy items to the menu from time-to-time, like chai cinnamon pancakes.

“What’s the longevity of this place really look like?” she said.

For 28 years, Pastries A Go Go solidified itself as a local staple just through word of mouth, plus a very supportive Decatur community, Light said.

Now, Park knows she needs to keep that same feeling alive while making sure she’s attracting new customers, too.

“I do feel a pressure to keep this place what it is, which is a true community staple,” she said.

Her regulars keep coming with their usual consistency, sitting at their usual tables, like Scott Kay, who’s been eating at Pastries A Go Go for about 20 years. He visits the restaurant every day, even though he’s moved away from Decatur. He loves the Traditional Southern Breakfast — but in an effort to be healthier, he sometimes opts for a bagel, eggs and oatmeal.

“Well, I always tell Adriana it’s a second home — a home away from home,” he said on a recent morning, a newspaper spread out before him and the scraps of breakfast sitting on his plate.

Many people have built their routines around the restaurant, around its Traditional Southern Breakfast and drip coffee and sugary cinnamon rolls, Park said.

“We’re here to make (customers) happy because they’re so good to us,” she said. “You will not find people who are this loyal.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

But it can be hard to get the next generation to build their lives around a restaurant, especially as she sees fewer young people prioritizing community and physical gatherings.

It’s worth the effort, though. It’s worth keeping the classic biscuits and grits on the menu, just as much as it’s necessary to market the restaurant on social media and add menu specials that might attract a new crowd.

As Kay said, “It’s something for the oldies, and something for the newbies.”

Park must walk that tight rope between remaining a legacy Atlanta restaurant while ushering it into the next decade.

“I really love this place. I want it to go on even past me,” she said. “I hope that places like this stay for the future, not for me, but for the future.”