BaZzaaR’s location has been anything but kind to past regimes, but you’ve always had a soft spot in your heart for this space. Why?
Dining here in the past, just as a guest, I’ve always been taken by this spot. Ya’ know, I lived a few blocks down the road, so I've spent some time here. It’s a place you can be away from a lot of the action that’s going on outside, but you can sit here, like where we are sitting now, and watch the traffic ...and the pulse & vibe of the city. And we think our food is pretty urban, so I think it’s a better match for our cuisine than Buckhead, where the street theme was a little different.

But yeah, we love it down here. Everything is just a few steps away, just like it is in New York.

In terms of BaZzaaR vs. Blais, what are some of the differences we should expect?
Well, the main thing is that it’s not Blais. I mean, that doesn’t really get into the differences, but our biggest hurdle is perception. Even at Blais the question was; is it a fine dining avant-garde gourmet restaurant or is it a night clubby, cool sorta hang out place. So perception, we definitely know, lessen learned from the last project – perception is key. BaZzaar is a lounge; it’s not trying to be the next Blais, its not trying to be the best avant-garde culinary destination in Atlanta. It’s supposed to be a cool hang out where you can get great food.

Philosophically, in the kitchen what’s different here is that we’re not focusing on going to get super expensive, luxurious ingredients, that’s not the goal. A lot of fine dining restaurants, I think, spent too much time trying to get ...say, special black truffles from France. That’s not what this about, BaZzaaR is about getting chicken and beef, and things you could go get at whole foods, real mainstream ingredients and doing extraordinary things with them. We want to sell chicken breast here. That’s the challenge of this place, it’s like wow, it’s chicken breast …everyone loves chicken breast …everyone loves filet mignon, but we put our spin on it and now it’s not as much -- oh my god it’s pork belly, or it’s hamachi -- the ingredients are more mainstream.

I don’t know if you want to call it avant-garde on training wheels, and some people are unfortunately going to say it’s a step back from what we were doing at Blais. I don’t think it is. Really, our goal at Blais was to introduce a style of food, our style of food. We did that. Without that we wouldn’t be able to do what we are doing here. But I think here it will be more successful. We are planting the seed for the next project, the next invention.

BaZzaaR has now been open for about nine weeks, what has been your biggest challenge to date?
I think probably different aspects of the operation have different challenges. The first one was documented on Atlanta Cuisine pretty thoroughly – staffing. Inheriting a staff is always an issue, at Blais we got to hand pick our staff ...and we had months to prepare.

I had the same issue at Fishbone. It’s like the Brady Bunch, we moved in and I’m Mr. Brady. Misses Brady is already here and she’s got three kids and now we gotta figure out what Janet, Cindy and Marsha are capable of doing.

Also, being right next to the theatre (The Fox) has been a challenge. When people came to Blais they knew what they were coming for, they knew what it was all about – it was a chef-driven restaurant with a lot of talk. Here, we have people who just walk in off the street on their way to a show and not have any idea what they are walking into. We embrace it, but it’s a challenge. People are like – “hey, at Applebee’s in Alpharetta I usually get a baked potato and side salad with my chicken. Not only is the chicken three times smaller here, but I don’t get a baked potato or side salad.” So it’s obviously a challenge, but I think every chef in this city probably goes through that.

We all learn something from every experience, good or bad. What did you learn from your experience at Blais that has been the most beneficial for you now at BaZzaaR?
This is where it could get dirty, I guess. This is a great question because you learn so much from everything that you do, whether it’s good or bad.

At Blais I learned how to open a restaurant from scratch, which not too many chefs get to do even once in their lifetime.

Partnerships and the business side of things is probably where I learned most of my lessons. Again, not to knock anyone who was involved with Blais, when you get hurt the first thing you want to do is sling mud. Certainly, there is some bad blood from that partnership and some hurt feelings, probably on both sides. The benefit is to realize that you should know someone before you go to bed with them. It’s best to know what they’re all about before you make a real big commitment because you have to be on the same page from the get-go. Here, I feel like we’re on the same page and at Blais we weren’t on the same page. And that’s really why it ended. It wasn’t because there were not enough people in the restaurant.

If everybody is not happy with what you’re doing in the partnership, then it’s not going to work. And that’s been the most beneficial lesson.

During an interview about the closing of Blais, George McKerrow Jr. (a major investor in Blais) told the AJC that Atlanta is a ‘meat and potatoes’ town. What are your thoughts about that comment? In your opinion, is Atlanta strictly a ‘meat and potatoes’ town?
I think, as with any interview, it can be spun a bunch of different ways. I think there probably is some proof to it, Atlanta probably is a ‘meat and potatoes’ town but I think probably ninety-five percent of all the major cities in the US are ‘meat and potato’ towns. So, Atlanta is a ‘meat and potatoes’ town, we enjoy that challenge.

I guess the real question is; what does that really mean? Does ‘meat and potatoes’ mean people are uneducated and stupid, or does it mean that they really like eating simple food, things that they’re familiar with. I think that’s really the key to me with that question. And in that respect, I don’t think of Atlanta as a ‘meat and potatoes’ town because I don’t think Atlanta is uneducated, I think there are a lot of educated diners ...and there are a lot of gourmands ...and a lot of great restaurants in Atlanta. Atlanta has got to be in the top three, I would say, and definitely in everyone’s top five restaurant cities in the US. So, I don’t think it is a ‘meat and potatoes’ town, in that regard.

I’ve been dying to ask you, more than any other chef this question; is cooking: Art, Craft or Science?
The cop-out answer is that it’s all three. Right? And it’s the correct answer I think. I think to talk about the three individually is probably the best way to go.

It’s a craft, to be a chef you have to be a craftsman. There is a lot of truth to that. A lot of people think what we do is crazy and weird, but we are not allowed to do crazy and weird things until we’ve achieved a certain level of craftsmanship. We can cut fish, we can dice and mince, and we can cook technically as well as anyone else. So, we’re craftsman.

Art, yeah, I’ll do art next. My personal strength is probably more as an artist than anything else. I don’t really know what the definition of art is but I think what we do is art. I think that’s the way you have to look at it. It’s what gets us up, to get up in the morning and say -- wow -- I’m going to chop up a bunch of onions today because I’m a dedicated craftsman doesn’t do it for us. We get up and we look at the sun ...and the sky ...and we walk down the street ...or we go to a baseball game ...or watch a telivision show, we see art in other things then we bring it inside the kitchen. So, I think we’re artist.

Then the question is; can you eat art? I think that’s pretty cool if you can. It’s gotta taste good though, so the craft has got to be there. That’s the essential building block. If you’re not a craftsman, then you can’t be an artist.

And from there, like what we’re really getting into now, is that we’re delving into science, that’s my personal weakness and I think it’s a weakness of other chefs as well. We don’t have a science degree, but we do read a lot of books like Harold McGee – On Food and Cooking. It’s something that we are extremely interested in and that we draw inspiration from. Like we have those little breath mints, little crystal balls that are just gelatin that pop in your mouth like caviar. Ferran Adria has a dish that features that technique. Those things are science.

What’s amazing to me is that we are pulling science from things like Cracker Jacks ?and Breath Mints ?and dehydrated potato flakes. What’s the recipe for Idaho dehydrated potato flakes?, the stuff you go buy for sixty-nine cents at Kroger -- that’s science.

I think people get scared when you say science because they think we’re back there with test tubes and sulfurs blowing up in the kitchen, they think we all have goggles on. The science of it is, it took a craftsman and an artist to be able to make dehydrated potato flakes. And a lot of chefs will probably turn their nose up at that. We don’t use them as mashed potatoes, but we are really interested in the process. So, technology and science -- we love those two things. We’ll always be looking at new science and technology to make our job more exciting.

Journalists and foodies alike have a strange fear that you won’t be in Atlanta too much longer. However, it seems to me that you have become attached to Atlanta. Is it your plan to stay here? If so, what can we expect from Richard Blais in the near future?
First, the people that say we’re going to leave; it’s the same thing as the situation at Blais. Blais was what it was way before the doors ever opened. And it was a good thing. The whole situation now is that somebody wrote; you have to go to BaZzaar now because I don’t think he’s going to be here very long. We had a guest come in last night and say, “I’m here now because I heard you’re leaving.” Because somebody wrote something as simple as that, now people think we are leaving and they are coming here to get it before we leave.

Is it good for us business-wise? Sure, because people want to experience it before it leaves. But we don’t plan on leaving. We don’t have a crystal ball, and we are not predicting the future, but we never planned on leaving. Even when Blais closed, a lot of people, including my old partners, getting back into the dirty thing, “oh, you’ll have to leave Atlanta.”

I don’t like people telling me what to do, that’s why we cook the food we do. And part of the reason why we are in Atlanta is because I don’t like people telling me it’s not going to work. We wear blue aprons because it’s our references to being blue-collar. Work hard. That’s what this about and we don’t plan on leaving.
What we plan on doing is really just broadcasting the message louder and clearer of what our food is all about, whether you want to call it avant-garde, new school, or whatever anybody wants to coin it.

How about molecular gastronomy?
Yeah, we are a part of that movement. That’s what I hope Atlanta really understands. We are not trying to do something that nobody else has already done, everyone’s heard of Ferran Adria now.

Really, anything we can do to make that movement grow. We want to see other restaurants do this in Atlanta. And we want to be involved in other projects in Atlanta to help get this message across.

This food philosophy doesn’t have to be just fine dining, it can be casual; you can eat this type of food and enjoy it while you’re wearing jeans. And you can cook ingredients like chicken breast; you can make cracker jacks, popcorn and potato chips. You can do avant-garde food at the ballpark ?and you can do it at white cloth restaurants ?and you can do it at bars. But we do plan on being involved in other projects here in Atlanta.