Local Catering Company Provides Five-Star Cuisine to South Cobb

Many residents of Mableton still remember a small restaurant on Veterans Memorial Highway known as Pearl’s Country Kitchen. Serving up old-fashioned Southern comfort food at its best, the restaurant would be filled to capacity most of the time.

Brian Winbush, owner of , said, “We missed out on a lot of holidays during those years. If we weren’t working in the restaurant, we were making food or catering private parties for other people’s holiday celebrations.”

A graduate of the Washington, D.C. Culinary School of the Arts, Winbush and his wife decided to move to the Mableton area after visiting for an aunt’s wedding one year.

“It was 1992, and our daughter had just been born. We decided to move to Georgia because it seemed like the best place to raise our child. Georgia is very different from D.C. The people are so friendly here and it just feels like home.”

Based on his exceptional culinary skills, Winbush quickly found work as a chef at several fine dining establishments in Atlanta such as the 191 Club, the Marietta Country Club and the World Congress Center.

Eventually Winbush became the sole proprietor of a sandwich shop for employees at the now defunct Wachovia Money Center in downtown Atlanta.

“When Wachovia was in the process of closing the money center, I happened to see an old Waffle House location for rent on my way home one day. That’s when my wife and I decided to open our own restaurant and name it after my wife’s mother, Pearl.”

According to Winbush, Pearl was an exceptional woman who cooked the most delicious Southern food anyone could ever have. Unfortunately, Pearl passed away shortly before the restaurant was opened in 2003, but Winbush stayed true to his mother-in-law’s Southern way of cooking.

Based on the success of the first restaurant, Winbush decided to rent a larger building just across the street and open Pearl’s Southern Bistro. The bistro was a more upscale dining establishment, that included live jazz entertainment in the evenings.

During this time, Winbush was still operating his catering buisness, as well as providing daily lunches for the children at his daughter’s school, the Seeds of Faith Christian Academy.

“We would make the kids' meals fresh every morning and take them over to the school for lunchtime. We were serving about 30 children a day,” said Winbush.

In 2008, Winbush was approached by two members of the about putting in a proposal for catering services for the school’s daily lunch program.

“At the time, business had slowed down at Pearl’s because of the drop in economy. Since I was already catering school lunches anyway, I decided to go ahead and put in an offer,” said Winbush.

Winbush was awarded the contract, and has subsequently gone on to win contracts with the , the Fulton Leadership Academy, and beginning this fall, the Imagine Wesley International Academy.

With the newly acquired addition of the Imagine Wesley International Academy, Winbush will be providing lunches for approximately 1,000 students a day at the start of the 2011 school year.

Winbush also makes certain no food goes to waste at the end of each week. Anything that is still fresh is taken to a local Atlanta homeless shelter and donated to those in need.

The Pearl’s Southern Bistro building site is still in operation, but currently Winbush only opens it for rental purposes for private family functions such as wedding receptions and graduation parties.

As active as Winbush is these days, he still provides private catering services to the residents of the local community. One of the most popular being a romantic dinner for two specially cooked and served in your home.

“I like to call it bringing Buckhead to Bankhead,” quipped Winbush.

The Pearl’s Southern Bistro website will be available soon but in the meantime, interested parties can contact Winbush at 770-709-2666.