May/June 2007From Number Cruncher to Potato Peeler to RestaurateurBy Sally HansellFor Chef Tony Morrow, owner of The Pecan restaurant in downtown College Park, menu management and regularly analyzing data are as critical for success as turning out consistently good Southern fusion food.Morrow, who launched The Pecan a year ago, studies his point-of-sales results a minimum of twice a day. “I’m looking at the menu all the time to see what’s moving,” he says. “The more you look at the data, the faster you can correct it if something is wrong. I look at financials and trends on a daily basis. That may be a bit overwhelming for many people who open a restaurant, but it helps take the risk out of it.”If number crunching comes more easily for Morrow than other chefs, this is no coincidence. The 42-year-old has an MBA and eight years of management experience in the corporate world. He completed his MBA in management at the University of South Dakota while stationed in Rapid City as a U.S. Air Force captain supervising 125 officers. Unusual among chefs, the business school degree has proven enormously helpful. “An MBA gives you the tools to focus on the business. You know what to look for. You understand marketing and all the components of the business,” he says.Sipping peach tea at The Pecan’s bar counter, Morrow discusses his career change and rapid ascent in Atlanta’s restaurant scene. The Pecan is located in a charming 1920s store front formerly occupied by Oscar’s, a restaurant run by Todd Immel and Oscar Morales that drew rave reviews.Morrow began cooking seriously only five years ago after being downsized from a major computer corporation in Atlanta, where he managed 80 employees in a call center. “When I searched my soul to find out what I really enjoy, it was food,” he says. In a dramatic change, he took a job as a prep cook at Pano’s & Paul’s and enrolled in The Art Institute of Atlanta’s culinary program. “I was an adult peeling potatoes, but I was happy to be in that environment working for the best,” he recalls. “I had a purpose. I was focused. I knew what I wanted,” he explains. “While I was starting from scratch in a formal culinary environment, I paid attention to my environment.”Morrow carried a notebook, taking daily notes on tasks like how to make a dressing. “I may have been corrected on how I was doing something by either the chef or a sous chef. You want to keep those little jewels.” After Pano’s & Paul’s he trained at other Buckhead Life Restaurant Group eateries, including an internship at 103 West with Chef Hilary White and a stint at Kyma with Chef Pano Karatassos, Jr.Next he took on institutional dining as Executive Chef and General Manager at Morehouse School of Medicine’s first cafeteria. “Every opportunity I got to move up, I took it, even if it took me into another area,” Morrow says. Two years later he worked for Compass Group as general manager of the Bank of America Plaza restaurant in downtown Atlanta. “Then I said, OK. If I’m going to work 90 hours a week, I’m going to be working in my own business.'”Born in New York but raised in southwest Atlanta, Morrow grew up with a love of pecans nurtured by his mother’s Southern-style cooking. As a student at Tuskegee University, he strolled through pecan orchards stuffing his pockets with the nuts and mailing the booty home to his mother. She sent back care packages with pecan pies, German chocolate cakes and pecan-studded breads.The namesake nut makes multiple appearances on the menu, sustaining a theme while demonstrating efficiency with a versatile use of ingredients. Entrees include roasted buttermilk pecan chicken, sea bass with pecan crust, and New York strip steak grilled over pecan wood, which lends a sweet, smoky flavor. For dessert, soft-shelled Georgia pecans show up in pecan pie, sweet potato creme brulee with toasted pecans, and house-made pralines folded into ice cream. Even the restaurant’s Web site (www.thepecanonline.com) sports pecan-themed lines and colors.Morrow developed the concept for his Southern fusion-style menu as a project for culinary school. As he defines it, Southern fusion is classical Southern cuisine with influences from France, Italy and New Orleans.Some dishes were created by putting a spin on his mother’s recipes. “Italian” collard greens are local collards topped finely diced tomatoes with a nod to Italy’s tomato bruschetta. Oxtail osso busso matches braised oxtails and vegetables with a bed of jasmine rice. A flavorful bowl of pepper jack grits gets drizzled with Cajun cream sauce and festooned with blackened tiger shrimp. Presented on contemporary plates, the dishes combine humble ingredients with elegance.With the track record provided by his POSitouch system, Morrow evaluates each item on the menu. If a dish is not selling, he explores why not, asking if it is priced too high or paired with the right side dishes. Menus at comparable fine dining restaurants provide a benchmark for pricing.The top-selling appetizer at the 85-seat restaurant is the Tybee Island crab cake. Are the crabs really caught off Tybee Island? No, but they are huge cakes plumped with four ounces of crab and lightly covered with panko. Morrow estimates he sells 48 crab cakes a night, or about 60 to 70 a day at $14 each.Entrees at The Pecan hover around $30. Morrow crosses the $40 mark with the surf and turf entree at $42, a price he sees as reasonable for a 14-ounce New York strip steak and a six-ounce lobster tail. While these luxury meats are “loss leaders” with a low profit margin, they lead to more lucrative sales in wine.Like the fusion food, the environment at The Pecan integrates the old with the new. Morrow made only minor changes to make the already stylish Oscar’s space warmer and more formal. He kept the sleek blond furniture and faded Coca-Cola mural painted on a brick wall. He added an artichoke chandelier and off-white carpeting on the concrete floors. Heavy red drapes hang like stage curtains, adding a dramatic note while reducing the noise level and creating a partition between bar and dining room for corporate dining events.Morrow spends most of his time in the front of the house while the kitchen is run by Chef de Cuisine Paul Lewis, who was Morrow’s sous chef at Morehouse. “I need to be out here in front because this is a relationship-building business,” says Morrow, who exudes confidence and enjoys greeting customers. “We have close to an 85 percent return rate.”The Pecan is the only fine dining establishment in College Park, Morrow says, and it’s one stop from the world’s busiest airport with numerous nearby hotels. Morrow reports strong relationships with the hotels and substantial business from Delta Air Lines. The restaurant also draws a large following from his catering business Flavors Gourmet Catering.Morrow is banking on continued development in College Park. With three new hotels being built in the airport area, “wonderful things are happening,” he says. “This is an under-served area. It’s a sleeper town that’s about to wake up.”
