THE BEST LITTLE STEAKHOUSE IN TALLAHASSEE
Chef Edmunds is proud to feature select oysters in season and handmade bread baked in The Hawthorn’s wood-fired brick oven.
to plate dishes and fix sandwiches, and finally opened Liberty Bar with two friends from Mockingbird Cafe’s kitchen. Edmunds is now Liberty Bar’s sole owner as well as the owner of El Cocinero and The Hawthorn. He calls himself a self-motivator. “To learn to debone a chicken, I watched videos of Jacques Pépin deboning a chicken. I bought 12 chickens at Publix and practiced while watching my phone in the kitchen at home,” he said. The learning curve can be steep in the restaurant business. Every job is different, and every job is important. “A cook is not a chef, and a chef is not an owner,” Edmunds said, recalling how he became a chef, and then an owner, at Liberty Bar. A second restaurant presented new and bigger challenges. “Opening El Cocinero was hands-down the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. With the second restaurant, you have to know how to create and develop a culture, develop managers, delegate and trust. I feel more comfortable with the third restaurant,” he said. “The team is everything,” Edmunds said of his current collaborators, some of whom have been with him since the early days at the Liberty Bar. “Our people are professionals. We wake up every day and work hard to do our best to serve people.” “Food-from-scratch is part of the culture now,” Edmunds said. “For people in Tallahassee who want local ingredients and homemade fare, I want to find the business model to serve them.” TM
Join us for lunch and dinner at our beautiful location on Apalachee Parkway. Our steaks are not only the best in Tallahassee, but USDA choice Midwestern corn-fed beef, specially selected, aged to our specifications and cut daily. We also serve fresh jumbo shrimp and fish — grilled, blackened or fried. So please join us for lunch and dinner or just meet up for drinks at our fully stocked bar.
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MARIE LIVINGSTON’S STEAK HOUSE
2705 Apalachee Parkway | Tallahassee, FL (850) 270-9506
TALL AHASSEEMAGA ZINE.COM
July–August 2018
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