Locally owned Kudzu Seafood opens in downtown Macon

A new, locally owned restaurant specializing in seafood with some New Orleans flavor is now open in downtown Macon.

Kudzu Seafood Co. opened Thursday at 480 Third St. in the historic Dannenberg Building.

“This is just good Southern coastal seafood,” said Lee Clack, who owns the restaurant with his wife, Kelley Wrigley. The Macon couple also owns Kudzu Catering.

They had hoped to open the restaurant last spring.

“It takes a lot to open a restaurant and do it right, and we were not going to open until it was absolutely right,” Clack said.

Kudzu Seafood offers a variety of seafood specializing in po’boy sandwiches, shrimp, oysters, grouper “and other specialties, like we do jambalaya daily,” he said. “We also do a barbecue shrimp and cheddar cheese grits and fish tacos,” along with non-seafood items such as salads, chicken fingers and burgers.

The eatery is fully staffed with about 10 workers, he said. The restaurant will seat 48 people and will offer takeout. This spring it will offer downtown delivery via an adult-size tricycle.

It is open for lunch 11 a.m.-3p.m. Monday through Friday.

“We will offer the space for Kudzu Catering of private events on nights and weekends,” Clack said.

Clack has more than 30 years in the restaurant business.“I grew up on the coast of Alabama,” he said. “The menu is designed around specialties I’ve eaten all my life and done all my life. My po’boy sandwiches are going to be like you are in New Orleans. I’m actually bringing the bread in from New Orleans for the po’boys. ... Basically I brought the Gulf Coast to Middle Georgia.”

Kudzu joins Kinetix Health Club and Ocmulgee Traders grocery store on the first floor of the Dannenberg. About 70 lofts are on the building’s upper floors.

The building used to house the Dannenberg department store, which is believed to have first opened in about 1875 on Cotton Avenue. It moved to Third Street and expanded in 1903 with another building on the corner of Third and Poplar streets. When the store closed in 1965, it was the largest department store in the area.

When a public-private partnership to transform the historic Dannenberg Building into lofts and retail space was announced in 2012, it was hailed as Macon’s “first major renovation project since the Great Recession.”

Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report.

To contact writer Linda S. Morris, call 744-4223.

This story was originally published January 29, 2015 at 1:44 PM.