Ask Rachael Pack how business is going at So. Fox, the new restaurant she and her husband, chef Myles Moody, opened next door to Kinship Butcher & Sundry on July 2, and she’ll forget all about the numbers. Instead, she’ll tell you about the butcher shop regulars who walk in for a hug. She knows all their names. She knows their spouses’ names. She even knows their dogs’ names. That’s not typical for a restaurant that’s only been open a matter of weeks. But then again, So. Fox isn’t your typical new restaurant.
The Butcher Shop Came First, Just Not on Purpose
Moody and Pack met in New York, cooking and running the wine program, respectively, at two Michelin-starred Scandinavian restaurant, Aska. The couple started dreaming up an exit plan from their one-bedroom basement in Fort Greene with three concepts: a fine-dining restaurant, an upscale neighborhood spot, and a butcher shop. The plan was to open in that order. When the world shut down, plans changed.
The butcher shop came first because it was an essential business. In hindsight, Kinship became the connective tissue for future expansion. It’s where they met farmers like Woodland Gardens and Châtel Farms, and it’s where the relationships now feeding So. Fox, including Pack Hospitality’s own organic Under Acre Farm in Ormewood, took root.
“How much storytelling can we do with a to-go sandwich?” Moody says of Kinship. “How much can we do when storytelling is the center of the restaurant—that’s the same ethos and approach, but in a different medium.”
What’s on the Plate
So. Fox is a Southern restaurant that subverts expectations. Rather than serving predictable meat-and-threes and shrimp and grits, Moody’s menu lets Southern ingredients tell their own story: ribbons of summer squash lounge on a cloud of herbed farmer’s cheese and sweet corn dumplings evoke the memory of a seafood boil with a velvety seafood sauce of lump blue crab and gulf bottarga.
The menu is printed daily to best reflect what’s coming from the farms, though it may not always be served in familiar ways. “We’re using collard greens, local seafood, and Southern produce because that’s what surrounds us,” Moody says, “but maybe the collards are raw, fermented, or preserved instead of braised.”
What’s in the Glass
Pack crafted her wine list the same way Moody built the menu: around small producers she actually believes in, with a bias towards low-intervention bottles that still taste like somewhere specific. Most importantly, she wanted it to be approachable.
“I’m carrying everything that Arnot-Roberts makes, so you can see the breadth of what he does—his artistry—on one page,” Pack offers as an example of her methodology. “There’s so many wine words out there, and it’s very intimidating. I wanted to give everyone a little extra room.”
She calls the result “our version of an anti-wine bar wine bar”—serious enough for oenophiles, casual enough for those just dipping their toes in. Even the name plays both sides. So. Fox is short for Southern Fox, another name for the native Muscadine grape, which early American winemakers tried and largely failed to turn into something drinkable, and another wink to the restaurant’s provenance.
A Room Built For Lingering
The building So. Fox occupies began its life as a service station before spending 15 years as a burger joint—humble origins when you consider what the space looks like today. Thanks to his mom’s architectural background, Moody took the lead on the interiors.
“This space is very airy. It’s very open—you can literally see the neighborhood, and the neighborhood can see you,” Moody says. “I love that about this place.”
He furnished the natural light-filled space in a minimalist style akin to what the pair found on their honeymoon in Japan. White oak furniture and cement floors are simple and functional, but Pack made sure to add a few fun twists, like the orange benches (part of an extremely subtle fox motif) and a Carrara marble bar that ran over budget, but she insists was worth every cent.
Tables are built roughly six inches wider than standard, specifically so a table of four can order the whole menu without jockeying for space. The window-facing bar got reworked into individual standing “bump-outs,” each one sized for a glass of wine, a snack, and an elbow.
“It’s been fun to create converts,” Pack says. “People say, ‘I don’t want to stand’—then they have a nice lean, a glass of wine, and go ‘No, I don’t need a table. I’m just going to stay here.’”
But none of it would matter much without the parking lot. So. Fox and Kinship share 25 spaces, an extremely rare gem in the compact Vi-Hi neighborhood. Even rarer? Parking is free.
Beyond the parking lot, the two venues share proteins, ideas, and, most importantly, regulars. Pack has counted eight tables of Kinship customers in the So. Fox dining room on a single night. So. Fox is open Thursday through Monday from 5 to 10 p.m., with reservations available through Resy and a portion of the dining room held for walk-ins each night.
That’s the throughline at So. Fox: nothing here is new so much as it’s the next room in a relationship that started years ago, one butcher counter over.
So. Fox, 1017 N. Highland Ave. NE, Atlanta, sofoxatl.com
