On May 16, 2005, the Chattanooga Fire Dept. responded to an alarm in the 200 block of Broad Street, just up from the aquarium.

It was a rainy afternoon. There, firefighters found a young chef, outside getting soaked, trying to silence the alarm. (Thankfully, no fire.)

"We were opening at 5," Erik Niel remembers. "At 3.45, the fire alarm goes off."

It was the debut night for Easy Seafood Company, a restaurant Erik and Amanda Niel had spent two years creating.

Soft openings had gone well, their menu offering the city a new form of seafood: shrimp with remoulade, a Creole brisket po-boy.

And oysters.

Then, the alarm. And firefighters.  

"I run back in and start cooking," Erik said, while this scary little thought emerged: What the fuck just happened?

It got messier. One of their first guests? A friend called T-Boy, who'd just returned from Army basic training. He started drinking, and didn't stop.

"He was the first person to puke on the patio," said Erik.

"On night one," said Amanda. "It was a total mess."

The Niels had left jobs at St. John's; Amanda had been  bartending and Erik, sous chef.

In 2003, he'd spent a few months at Clumpies - yes, Clumpies - where he'd prepare a week's worth of ice cream, then, used the quiet to craft this new restaurant idea.

"I'd come in at 6 and work through the night so there was nobody to bother me," he said.

Both had a vision: a Creole-inspired seafood restaurant in the heart of downtown.

But that fire-alarm-T-Boy-patio-mess-opening night?

"It was chaos," said Erik. "In a very slightly controlled way."

Looking back, the story seems nostalgic; today, the Niels have three restaurants known across the South and multiple James Beard nominations. Easy Bistro & Bar is a culinary and cultural foundation, the place where the Big Moments are celebrated: first oysters eaten, engagements, business deals, birthdays.

Yet within this first night story are all the ingredients of the following 20 years, from then until now. The unpredictable nature of restaurant-owning in Chattanooga. Of guests. Of the industry's little fires everywhere.

And the steady, calm, never-give-up attitude from the Niels.

Twenty years ago this week, a pair of 20-somethings took the biggest risk of their lives.

And on opening night, a fire.

A fire, indeed.

This week, Easy Bistro & Bar reaches a milestone claimed by very few Southern restaurants: 20 years.

"For someone to have a 20-year restaurant under 50 is unheard of," said Easy's Chef Joe Milenkovic Jr.

"They've dug in their heels in and done a great job. The cream rises to the top. You can't deny the Niels's perseverance or bullishness. You also can't deny their flexibility and ability to retain relevancy.

"It started out with po boys, very New Orleans. It's very different now. And very different from what it was in 2015 and 2016.

"Erik and Amanda have refined this restaurant more and more throughout the years. That path of refinement tells a huge story."

In the fall of 2000, Erik moved to Chattanooga from Vail, where he graduated culinary school. His goal: own his own restaurant, which meant he could own his own business.

"I was 23," he said.

His younger brother had broken his back during a Baylor-McCallie football game the year before. Erik moved here to cheer him on during his senior year.

He got a line cook job at Southside Grille - "I asked for every Friday night off" - with a plan: leave for Charleston after his brother graduates. Instead, he met Amanda Landreth, who grew up in Soddy Daisy, the daughter of a blue-collar family.

"I've worked in restaurants since I was 15," she said. "I worked to pay for school."

"She was hosting and serving at the old Southside Grill when we met.  She was at the door when I walked in for my interview," said Erik. "The rest is history.

"We met here and fell in love and opened a restaurant five years later."

The early Easy had a smoking section. For music, they burned cds.

The idea?

"Nobody was doing seafood," said Amanda.

Growing up, they both encountered food as communal, a gravity that draws people together. Erik in New Iberia, with Louisiana crawfish boils and turkey necks in crab pots.

"It's like a language," said Erik. "Meaningful and soulful in a way people communicate with each other. It's a way to share emotion and love and whole neighborhoods.

"I thought everybody felt like that about food until I moved away."

Amanda grew up with a large family that gathered for meals, cookouts, potlucks. They both saw potential here; then, in 2003, they found the building. The last tenant: a high school band, which used it for practice.

"It had been vacant for 12 years," said Amanda. "Nothing was going on in that area."

"I'll bring seafood to a town where everybody eats fried," Erik thought.

"We took a lot of risk," said Amanda, "and it blew up in our face."

Seafood? In a landlocked city?

Where are the crackers? You can't serve oysters without Saltines.

Your food's too spicy.

"People were scared from the heat," said Amanda.

"We pivoted to a bistro," said Erik.

It was a defining moment for any restaurant owner: the tension between what you want to serve and what guests want to eat.

"Boy, was I wrong," he said. "But I'm all the better for the struggle. Open what you want and serve what it needs to be."

The Riverfront expanded; tourists came, but with what sort of appetite? Amanda and Erik both remember folks walking in Easy's door, stopping, reading the menu and leaving, headed for nearby Mellow Mushroom: this looks good, but, we'll just have pizza.

Then, 2008.

"The longest year of my life," said Erik.

In the early part of 2008, they'd reworked the menu, rebranded the inside, a beta version of Easy today.

"In September 2008, it crashed," said Erik.

Nobody came through the door.

"The whole year was like one long continuous sad, sorry, terrible note played over and over again the whole time," he said.

But?

"I know how much I can do," said Erik. "I will never have to prove that much to myself again. I know how deep the well goes."

As a girl, Amanda grew up close to her grandmother and aunt, both of whom ran her family's plumbing and construction business.

"I learned how to run a small business from my grandmother and aunt," she said.

A fire, too, began to burn in her, lit from the matriarchal strength of these two women - grandmother and aunt - who were independent and tough.

In 2007, she was working as a full-time designer for a national firm while bartending and book-keeping at Easy on the weekends.

In 2008, she lost her job.

"That's when I started at Easy full-time," she said, "and haven't looked back."

"She's the glue," said Erik.

She remembers one big lesson from the recession.

"How to be more patient," said Amanda. "How to focus on one person at a time. We could really focus in on the guest in the most minute of ways. If you've only got 10 or 15 people coming in per night, you'd better take good care of them."

The old-school mentality - selling the costliest bottle of wine - shifted to something more enduring:

"Trust," said Amanda. "You're gaining trust."

And 10 guests a night became 30. And 30 guests per night became 80 in 2009.

"When you find the bottom and take one step up. Finding how to build those solid steps was the gift of 2009," he said.

"And in 2012 and 2013, that's when Chattanooga started growing again."

"I love this place," said Robin Tilley. "This place is such a gem for this city."

Fourteen years ago, she walked in, applying for a job. She knew little about wine. Today, she's a wine expert and one of the city's top servers.

"Erik has been my mentor since day one," she said. "Erik and Amanda have given me a passion for this industry I never had before working here."

On her 44th birthday, she and her husband came to the Easy bar: raw oysters, clams, pasta and cheesecake. Fellow servers sent over a bottle of brut rose.  

She's been working in restaurants since she was 16.

"There’s not another place like this," she said. "The people who mean the most to me in my life I’ve met at this restaurant."

"People we meet that have grown up in this area and still don't know about Easy? We send them here and it will change their life."

Hundreds and hundreds of people have worked for the Niels. Laura Kelton, who managed the Easy bar. Alex Jump, who's now opening a bar in Colorado and speaking about mental health issues within the service industry.

"I’m so proud our restaurant is 20 years old," said Erik. "I'm really proud of the team we've built."

"We wouldn't be where we are without the team we currently have. They are the greats!" said Amanda.

Earlier this year, Tyler Harris, 18, became the newest member of the Easy team, working the raw bar.

"It's very, very exciting," he said. "Everybody is accepting. I was fortunate."

Next to him, Ben Wilt.

"Damn, dude," he said. "Working in a restaurant that is as storied as Easy Bistro coming up on 20 years? I've not heard of that anywhere at all other than corporate restaurants."

He started on the raw bar. Then, line cook. Today, he's the executive sous chef.

"The priority is working with food. I don't think I could find this restaurant anywhere else. I have skyrocketed as a chef under Joe and Erik. Fifty to 60 hours a week, but there's never a moment I'm walking in going through the motions."

Ten years ago, John Bilderback took his father out for dinner. Both grew up on a working farm, giving them a truer perspective on food and how it's prepared.

"That steak has to come from somewhere, right?" he said.

Here's John's memory from that night with his father, some 10 years ago:

All of our meals at Easy that night were fantastic, as usual, but my dad was particularly excited about his seared duck. He kept saying there was a flavor that he couldn't quite put his finger on, but it paired perfectly with the duck.

A minute or two later, he saw a couple of small morel mushrooms and exclaimed, “That's it! It's the morels that really paired so well with this duck!”

To this day, my dad still mentions that meal, and he has said something I have always believed to be true: “You can taste the love in the food there.”

I think that says it all; we eat with our loved ones almost daily from birth.

We gather to celebrate accomplishments and to remember those we lost, but always around food. Sometimes that love shows up in granny’s stew, and other times it appears in a couple of morel mushrooms.

There's a secret to it all.

Bar manager Garth Poe calls Erik "a human quaalude."

"Erik's a very good manager of people," said Amanda.

"I feel like I have a calm and comforting presence when I'm managing people," he said. "I'm good at understanding what they need to hear to feel confident about themselves. I'm trying to give them the comfort to feel confident in themselves."

He tears up easily. Certain things do it: just mentioning grandparents. Or their son, Cade. The folks who've worked with them and for them. The pains and heartaches others face in the industry. Remembering a beloved English teacher from high school.

Where do the tears come from?

"I went through all the emotional trauma of children of divorce, of children of parents who hated each other," he said. "I developed an emotional intelligence very early out of necessity."

Erik, the oldest sibling. His mom - a psychologist - taught him to turn that sensitivity away from anger, towards empathy.

"It was a solution to being mad," he said.

Amanda, too.

"My parents divorced, got remarried, then divorced again," she said. "You learn that emotional maturity early because of being pulled in different directions. You have a lot of empathy for people."

Over the years, a dynamic - a double-standard - emerged. Erik seen as calm, Amanda seen as mean.

"I've seen it through the years," she said. "Erik can ask somebody to do something and I can ask somebody to do something and they can perceive me as being mean even though I'm asking them to do the exact same thing."

"I've learned how to dial back my tone," she continued. "But I've had to be mean. I'm a female in a male-dominated industry. I've always been tough as nails in that regard."

In 2020, they would be challenged in ways never before imagined.

Five years ago, Easy moved to its current location in the West Village.

"It was just time to do something different. We needed to reinvent the wheel," Erik said. "We needed to move forward and not be stuck in the past or an idyllic version of something people are stuck with."

Then, the pandemic.

Erik shifted from cooking to managing and on-the-fly problem-solving. During Covid, more than 10% of all restaurants shut down; the Niels kept their restaurants alive.

"We don't stop. We problem solve," said Amanda.

Today, they acknowledge: Easy in 2025 would be impossible to open.

Costs are too high. Permits, too suffocating. You can't work 60-90 hour weeks ... and parent.

Today, Amanda and Erik - 45 and 47 - talk about a fourth restaurant. They talk about public education, revamping curriculum for more food-integrated classrooms.

"Everyone does better when kids know how to eat," he said.

Look around. Nashville. Atlanta. Charleston. Few restaurants reach the 20-year milestone.

"It means we are exceptionally stupid," Erik said, "or exceptionally ahead of our time."

"Or both," said Amanda. "And stubborn."

The future for Easy?

There are 20th anniversary celebrations scheduled this week and next.

But long-term?

"I’d like to think of Easy as an institution but not because it has a long system of worthless shit you pass around but because it is so original," said Erik.

"I think Easy in its current iteration is not fully mature, but close."

Erik's also fishing more, with dreams of long days by a trout stream. They've built a team of chefs and managers - the future of Easy.

"The next big step for us? We’ll be 50-year old restauranteurs who started at 27. What do we do with our lives? We keep working with really great people and develop them even more into this great organization," he said.

In the late 90s, Erik was still in Vail, cooking at a restaurant. One night, a bear broke in, found its way into the cooler and licked clean a bowlful of pastry cream and 50 pounds of butter.

The next morning, a young Erik Niel walked in and saw the mess.

The mess.

A bear.

On the horizon, more mess to come.

A fire alarm on opening night. Basic training chaos.

A pandemic. A recession. 70-hour weeks.

Marriage. Parenthood. The lingering wounds of childhood divorce.

A changing city. A skeptical city.

He saw the mess. The mess from the bear. The mess from life.

"I just went in there and cleaned it all up," he said.

Long before Garth called him a "human quaalude," Erik's Colorado mates had already given him a nickname. Said it was like the way he's moving so fast, but also moving so slow.

Said it matched his presence, his vibe, the way he cooks and fills a kitchen.

"Easy," said Erik. "'Easy' was my nickname.

"Easy, but the fire burns hot."

Story ideas, questions, feedback? Interested in partnering with us? Email: david@foodasaverb.com

This story is 100% human generated; no AI chatbot was used in the creation of this content.

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