Hi Everyone!
Wow! We now have over six years of tremendously fun dinners under our belts and a ton of new friends (that means you) as a result. During our time cooking and learning with each other, new ideas have been spawned and a number of amazing opportunities have been presented to each of us. Some of these ideas and opportunities are too good for us as individuals to pass up. As a result, we have decided to make some exciting new changes in our lives that do affect the future of the The Four Coursemen. These changes unfortunately mean that The Four Coursemen will no longer be functioning as you may know them, so we wanted to take an opportunity to tell you what each of us are going to be doing in hopes that you will continue to offer the same kind of support and interest you gave to The Four Coursemen to each of us as individuals in our new endeavors. The endeavors are all inspired by the spirit of The Four Coursemen and we hope that you will get as much enjoyment out of them as you have from what we did as a group.
For those of you who still want a chance to eat at the small shotgun house on the hill, never fear! The founding members of The Four Coursemen Damien, Randy and Patrick, along with old Coursemen friends Noah and Chrissy, and our new friend Nathan Brand, are continuing the bimonthly dining experience at the house under the new name Shotgun Dinners. These dinners will maintain the integrity of the original Four Coursemen dinners but will offer occasional departures form the normal five course format based on season and occasion. Reservations for these dinners will continue as usual, but notifications on when reservations will open will be sent to a new Shotgun Dinner mailing list rather than The Four Coursemen mailing list. If you would like to receive notifications for these dinners please sign up for the Shotgun Dinners mailing list by clicking here to visit the new site and entering your email address in the field on the home page. After this, we will no longer be sending dinner notifications to The Four Coursemen mailing list, so make sure you sign up on the new list in order to come eat with us.
Damien is in the process of launching a brewery named Normaltown Craft Beers that will focus on creating unique culinarily inspired artisan beers meant to push beer into the same food pairing realm that wine occupies. Normaltown’s first beers will hopefully be available for purchase in Georgia soon, but will be available for rare tasting opportunities in the near future. If you are interested in participating in these tasting opportunities and learning more about the beers, please click here to visit the site and join the Normaltown Craft Beers mailing list and stay up on the latest news.
In addition to the beers, Damien has started a new traveling series of dinners called Public Domain Dinners, where he and a revolving cast of talented chef’s visit a town and, with the help of a local chef and local farmers, put together a compelling and educational dining experience based around local flavors, seasonal ingredients, and people in the town who share a common passion for good local food. The first dinner took place on July 17th in Charleston, SC and was a tremendous success! The next one happens in Athens at Woodland Gardens on Friday, October 26th and features executive chef of 5&10, Dean Neff. If you want to learn more about this, or have suggestions of great cities for a Public Domain dinner, please click here to visit the site and join the Public Domain Dinners mailing list.
Nancy has started her own beverage consulting business, Cork & Key, and is working with Farm 255, Trappeze, and Matt’s new endeavor the Branded Butcher on their wine lists. In addition to working with restaurants and bars, she’s also doing private buying, wine education courses, and private events for individuals, groups, and corporations. If you’d like to find out more about Cork & Key, you can check out the website or email Nancy at nancy@corkandkey.com. In addition to consulting, Nancy has also been se- lected as the Vice President of Development for the Georgia Craft Brewers Guild. She very excited to continue her work with the breweries, brewpubs, and beer enthusiasts of Georgia!
Nancy is also working on putting together occasional culinary shindigs under the marque “Coterie & Tie”, for the young at heart and adventurous of stomach. Coterie & Tie is a series of events reflecting the culinary imaginations and skills of Matt, Eddie, Nancy, and their cohort. They’ll be doing all types of events featuring food, beverage, and excellent conversation. If you’re interested in coming to a Coterie & Tie event, you can sign up for their mailing list by clicking here and following the “sign up” link!
Matt is working hard as the Branded Butcher (downtown, next to the Georgia Theatre) has just opened and is very, very busy. The menu relies heavily on Matt’s charcuterie skills and will maintains the farm-to-table philosophy that he championed at Farm 255 and The FourCoursemen. If you haven’t already, you should definitely visit the Branded Butcher during Matt’s oyster and champagne happy hour – it can’t be missed. If you’d like to keep up with Matt, you can visit The Branded Butcher’s Facebook page, you can sign up for the Coterie & Tie mailing list, or you can reach him directly at matthewpalmerlee@gmail.com.
Eddie has recently moved to Atlanta and is settling in at Parish in Inman Park as their new executive chef. He’s enjoying his work and would be happy to see some of your friendly faces in the dining room! He’s also made this move to Atlanta to be closer to his new baby girl. That’s right…we have our very first course-baby!! If you’d like to keep tabs on Eddie you can check out Parish’s website or sign up for the Coterie & Tie mailing list.
Though we are all working in directions that seem to be pushing us apart, we can assure all of you that our culinary stylings and shining personalities will forever be just an email away. We want to let you all know that we are grateful for all of the support you have offered us on this amazing journey we have been on. The opportunities that have arisen from it are thanks to that support and your adventurous spirit. We hope you will involve yourselves in the many exciting things we have mentioned above and everything the future holds.
That being said, we will no longer be sending emails to this email list, so please use the information above to stay in touch and join our new email lists. Otherwise you will not receive updates on the many new exciting happenings. We hope to see all of you soon and offer you the sincerest thanks for being a part of something so dear to all of our hearts!
Cheers,
Damien, Nancy, Patrick, Eddie, Matt, & Randy
