As they often do, the McElhaney clan – Beth and Chris and their children Zeke, Eli, Jonas, Caelyn, Zander and Clara-Anne -- gathered around the oak kitchen table where they share family meals and talk through life’s big decisions.
Beth and Chris, who met in high school, had worked in restaurants from Pensacola to Auburn to Charleston to New Orleans.
After years of moving around from city to city and restaurant to restaurant, though, they were ready to open a place of their own in Atmore, the South Alabama town of about 8,300 people that sits just across the Florida state line from the little community of Bratt, Fla., where they both grew up.
“It’s not that easy to haul a family that size anywhere,” Chris recalls. “We like Atmore. We like our home. So we decided it was time to do something closer to home.”
They had a concept – a comfortable and inviting place with inspired but familiar food that made their guests feel right at home – but they needed a name.
“We had numerous conversations around the table about, ‘What are we gonna name this restaurant? What’s God telling us?‘” Chris says. “And one day, Beth just looked at me -- she had a look in her eyes – and she said, ‘Let’s just gather around the table again.‘”
That’s when it came to them.
“As soon as she said, ‘Gather around the table,’ it hit her, and it hit me,‘” Chris adds. “We were like, ‘Oh my gosh -- Gather Restaurant. Why not?‘”
Later that night, while Chris tossed and turned trying to fall asleep, he had another inspiration.
“Every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was wheat bundles, and I just kept thinking about the harvest and gathering the wheat,” he remembers.
“When you gather that bundle, it’s knit tightly, and, you know, we’re a close-knit family,” he adds. “That all fit with what our idea and concept is.”
The next morning, Chris sketched the wheat bundle that would become the Gather Restaurant logo on a piece of notebook paper.
Then, within a month, the McElhaneys closed on the location for their restaurant -- a century-old, cottage-style former Pure Oil filling station that had most recently been home to a downtown women’s boutique. They spent the next six months restoring and adding on to the space to transform it into a 76-seat restaurant.
Finally, in October 2017, right around the fall harvest that year, they welcomed their first guests to Gather.
The inspiration for the bundled wheat logo for Gather Restaurant came to chef and co-owner Chris McElhaney one night when he had trouble sleeping. (Photo courtesy of Beth McElhaney; used with permission)
‘Passion to cook’
Beth Stuckey and Chris McElhaney met as students at Northview High School in their little hometown of Bratt. She was in the ninth grade at the time, and he was in the 11th.
They’ve been together ever since.
“We are high school sweethearts,” Beth says. “We met back in ‘95, and this year will be our 25th wedding anniversary.”
After he graduated, Chris went to Auburn University and studied mechanical engineering. Between classes, he got his first taste of the restaurant business working in the kitchen at the Red Lobster in Auburn.
Beth enrolled at Pensacola State College after she finished high school, and she, too, got her first restaurant job at a Red Lobster in Pensacola, where she started as a hostess.
“College wasn’t for me, so I dropped out,” she says. “I’ve pretty much been in restaurants ever since.”
Meanwhile, a couple of semesters shy of graduating from Auburn, Chris discovered he wasn’t meant to be an engineer, either.
“I always had that joy and passion to cook,” he says. “I remember watching (Cajun chef) Justin Wilson on PBS growing up, and I always thought to myself that nothing could be more fun in life than to have that cooking and camaraderie and fellowship. He always made it look fun.”
So, Chris dropped out of Auburn, and he and Beth got married in August 2000. The week after their wedding, they moved to Charleston, S.C., where Chris started culinary school at Johnson & Wales University while Beth worked as a manager at the Red Lobster there.
While earning his culinary degree, Chris also got some real-world restaurant experience working under celebrated Charleston chef Frank McMahon at his revered Hank’s Seafood Restaurant.
“Just one of the best experiences in life, ever, was at Hank’s Seafood under Frank McMahon,” Chris recalls. “He’s just a good friend and a great guy. He’s like the chef daddy I never had.”
A quarter-century later, Chris still has a keepsake from his days with McMahon at Hank’s.
“He told me to taste everything you cook, and gave me a spoon and goes, ‘This will remind you to never forget to taste what you cook, because if you don’t taste it, how do you know it’s good?‘” Chris says. “I still have that spoon, and it’s like a sacred artifact here at my house.”
McMahon remembers a young, aspiring chef who was eager to learn, and although he’s yet to make it to Atmore to visit Gather, he has kept up with Chris from a distance.
“You always remember the good ones, the ones with the drive and the passion, and he was certainly one of those,” McMahon says. “Chris was an absolute gem. Great work ethic, really focused on the details, and just a good human being all the way around.”
In a previous life, Gather Restaurant in downtown Atmore had been home to a Pure Oil filling station.(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
‘A destination location’
With a renewed sense of purpose, Chris and Beth left Charleston after Chris finished culinary school and moved closer to home.
They spent a year in New Orleans, where they both worked for celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse at his Emeril’s Delmonico steakhouse. Chris served as a line cook, and Beth quickly rose through the ranks to become the captain of a wait service team.
“She started as a back waiter, and within about four weeks, she was a captain,” Chris remembers. “She really exploded at Delmonico. If we had stayed longer, she probably would have been managing the place.”
After they left New Orleans, Chris later served as a chef consultant who helped open Fire Steakhouse at Wind Creek Casino in Atmore and then as the executive chef at Steelwood Country Club in Loxley.
All those roads eventually led them to Gather, which has helped reinvigorate downtown Atmore since Beth and Chris opened their restaurant seven and a half years ago.
“Gather has become a destination location,” longtime Atmore resident Dale Ash says. “I know pretty much everybody in Atmore, and when I go to eat, there will be lots of people there I don’t know. You’ll find out they’re here from Montgomery, Mobile, Pensacola, Brewton, Bay Minette -- just all coming to eat at Gather.”
Beth and Chris McElhaney met in high school before embarking on a culinary journey that eventually led them back home to Atmore, where they opened Gather Restaurant in October 2017.(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
‘Like a train wreck’
Some of the menu favorites include Chris’ Brussels Sprouts with honey balsamic, shaved red onion and Nueske’s thick bacon; an Alabama Charcuterie plate with pimento cheese, whipped goat cheese, grilled Conecuh Sausage, fried mortadella, pickles and fig jam; the Big Momma Burger with barbecue sauce, pimento cheese, Nueske’s pork belly and crispy jalapenos; and Gather’s Signature Ribeye with mashed potatoes and a house-made Worcestershire sauce.
Perhaps Gather’s most famous entrée, though, is the aptly named Train Wreck, a breakfast-meets-dinner mashup that features two petite beef filets, a thick slice of Nueske’s pork belly, fried green tomatoes, pimento cheese grits, Conecuh crab sauce and a fried egg. The Alabama Cattlemen’s Association named it the winner of its Bama’s Best Beef contest in 2020.
Of course, there’s a story behind the name.
“When I plated the first one, I was like, ‘Wow, I kinda like the way it looks, but it looks like a train wreck,” Chris says. “Lots of folks come in and order that once, and then I don’t think they’ve ever ordered anything else.”
In honor of Ash -- one of Gather’s best customers and the vice-president of Pepsi-Cola Bottling Company of Atmore -- Chris also came up with the Heritage Pepsi Pork Chop, a Pepsi-brined pork chop with bacon caramel sweet potatoes and brown butter cabbage. It has become one of the restaurant’s top-selling entrées.
“Atmore is a Pepsi town,” Chris says. “The Pepsi distribution company here in town is just two blocks up the street from us.
“And the owners – Ms. Dale Ash, especially -- eat with us, gosh, at least twice a week, if not more. Since they’re so loyal to us, I started brining the pork chops in Pepsi. We used to brine them with sweet tea, but the (phosphoric) acid of the Pepsi gives it a barbecue flavor.”
Beth is in charge of the desserts, which include Warm Chocolate Butter Cake with ice cream, caramel, pecans and whipped cream; Granny Betty’s Blueberry Cream Pie with blueberry compote, pecan shortbread and a light cream filling; and Gather’s Signature Pecan Pie Cheesecake, with bourbon caramel, whipped cream and fried pecans.
“I love the front of the house; that’s where my heart is,” Beth says. “About 15 years ago, though, I started on the baking side and got into that. My grandmother and my mom both helped with that and with recipes, and I just took a loving to that as well.”
Gather's Signature Pecan Pie Cheesecake is the Atmore restaurant's most popular dessert.(Bob Carlton/bcarlton@al.com)
‘Live and breathe it’
All of the McElhaneys’ six children, who now range in age from 10 to 19, have grown up in the restaurant and each of them has worked there at one time or another, either helping their mom out in the front of the house or working with their dad in the kitchen.
“It’s so amazing to watch because each of them knows their way so very well around the restaurant,” Beth says. “They cook, and they host. They live and breathe it just as much as we do.”
These days, though, coming up on eight years since they opened Gather, the McElhaneys still make time to gather around that family dinner table that inspired their restaurant.
A couple of years ago, Beth and Chris hired sous chef Brett Pate and front of the house manager Aletha Lee Kyser, so they can get away and be with their family more often.
“They have been a blessing to us, and it’s allowed us to step away some and be at home a lot more at nighttime with our kids,” Beth says. “We cook (at home) twice a day, every day, for our family -- breakfast and then dinner.
“Chris and I both have been in the business, goodness, for almost 27 years,” she adds. “It’s taken us some time to get to the point where we’re at, and we’re just very thankful.”
Gather Restaurant is at 111 West Nashville Ave. in Atmore, Ala. The phone number is 251-303-8080. For more information, go here.
