General Muir serves its community

Restaurant heat-and-eat family-style meals and an expanded menu.

The General Muir was named for the refugee ship that brought co-owner Jennifer Johnson’s Holocaust-survivor family to New York after World War II. That fact, and the restaurant’s location across from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, make it a poignant reminder of troubled times, past and present.

Besides the General Muir, Johnson and her husband, Ben, are partners, along with Shelley Sweet and chef Todd Ginsberg, in several popular Atlanta spots in the Rye Restaurants group, including Wood’s Chapel BBQ , Fred’s Meat & Bread, Yalla and the Canteen.

Yalla and the Canteen currently are closed. Fred’s Meat & Bread, a deli-style sandwich shop at Krog Street Market, has remained open for takeout. Woods Chapel in Summerhill briefly opened for takeout, then closed, and recently reopened for takeout with a new menu that includes “take and bake” family meals, and options for delivery and curbside pickup.

The General Muir also is open for takeout. “We’ve been doing the heat-and-eat family-style meals for the past several weeks,” Ginsberg said by phone, “and we implemented an expanded menu last week.” That was a step toward trying to get to “a reopening of sorts,” he said, though he’s not sure yet what that will look like. “It’s to get more people working again, get people in the kitchen.”

Certainly, the General Muir remains the group’s flagship restaurant — celebrated for its mix of deli staples enhanced

by Ginsberg’s fine-dining background and inventive entrees. It has been tough to see it struggle during the pandemic, he said, since its success “led us to have our other restaurants.”

Interestingly, some of the neighbors from across the street were among the first to step in and help.

“The CDC has brought us great business,” Ginsberg said. “They’ve been very loyal customers. They’ve done fundraising for us over the past two months. And, they’ve even had some fundraisers with their employees for our employees, so that’s been great. Between the CDC and Emory, those are the driving forces of our breakfast and lunch service, and we’re very grateful.”

Since opening, the General Muir has been a fixture for the area’s Jewish community, too, and that has continued during the pandemic, with heat-and-eat Friday night Shabbat dinners available for takeout weekly.

“The Friday night Shab- bat meal is probably something we should have been doing for a long time,” Ginsberg said. “But, we’ve been so busy that we didn’t really entertain the idea until things slowed down, like so many things in life, now. It’s been kind of fantastic. It’s just another example of the community rallying around us.”

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CONTRIBUTED BY BOB TOWNSEND The General Muir’s familystyle brisket dinner comes with potatoes and carrots.

The General Muir’s pastrami sandwich with mustard on double-baked rye comes with a whole half-sour pickle.