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In Marietta, breakfast and brunch restaurant Season hums without a hitch. At 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday, a tendril of customers already waits to be seated. People seated at tables appear glad they came closer to the 7 a.m. opening time, or made a reservation in advance.
The standalone building in which Season resides lacks flash and gimmickry. Vehicles wait in a gravel parking lot surrounded by kudzu. The “OPEN” sign’s capital N angles to the left. Locals, regulars, and the curious squeeze into Season’s tiny dining room. By appearances, it’s hard to believe Season has only been open for a little more than a year, rather than decades.
So, when Season opened a satellite location at nearby Gabriel’s Restaurant & Bakery on Whitlock Avenue earlier this month, the expansion felt natural — necessary, even. Season at Gabriel’s gives the restaurant the space it needs to grow.
Season founders and operating partners Nick and Theresa Jennings started plotting the second location last summer. In August 2025, they launched a fundraiser. Nick serves as Season’s Executive Chef, while Theresa handles daily operations as the restaurant’s Director of Hospitality.
“We started considering the second location when we started to have to send away guests because we were too full and stacked with reservations,” Nick Jennings said. “It really hurts us to turn away guests.”
While they don’t try to actively turn people away from dining at the 22-seat Lemon Street restaurant, Jennings said wait times can be as much as an hour long.
The couple looked at one space to expand Season, but it wasn’t quite right. The owner, Dale Hughes, reached out again to say he had another space for them to consider: Gabriel’s Restaurant & Bakery on Whitlock Avenue, just on the other side of Marietta Square. Jennings and Hughes met and discovered they had a lot in common. Everything fell into place, and Hughes, along with his wife, Cindy, and sister, Rene Fowler, partnered with the Jenningses in the Gabriel’s location.
Johnnie Gabriel opened Gabriel’s Desserts in 1996. Gabriel opened the much larger Whitlock Avenue location, renamed Gabriel’s Bakery, in 2003.
“It’s a really beautiful partnership because you have Season, which is chef-driven, nuanced classics focused on good energy and positivity, and we’re sort of like the new kid on the block,” Jennings said. “On the other side, you have this amazing bakery that has literally survived the ages here at Gabriel’s. They’ve been a part of [Marietta] for so long and they’ve been a part of so many people’s special occasions.”
During Season’s early days, Jennings said he focused on quality over anything else. Many of Season’s original lunch dishes were donated to local organizations, including the Marietta police and fire departments, because the fresh ingredients he used would otherwise go to waste.
Now, when Season on Lemon Street gets too full, and wait times stretch beyond 15 minutes, the couple can redirect people to Season at Gabriel’s, which seats around 100. This location also allows them to bring back Season’s original lunch menu, offer meat-and-three options, and launch a salad operation called Farm Bar.
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Everything on your plate at Season sings: the side of hockey-puck biscuits accompanied by a stalwart silver gravy boat; huevos rancheros served atop seasonal tamales; and chilaquiles with just enough sauce to balance softness and crunch. Theresa Jennings refers to Season’s fare as “nuanced classics.”
“We’re not trying to do anything brand new, but we find that we can put such a level of care into crafting it, that even though it is still a red velvet cake, we will be able to push it into new boundaries, like what we do with tamales or pancakes or biscuits,” Nick Jennings said.
As Season finds its groove at Gabriel’s, Jennings expects to make some changes. The couple will adjust the decor and the menu, offering more of Season’s popular biscuits and a variety of pastries like croissants and danishes. With the partnership, Gabriel’s legacy in Marietta will also continue.
“Usually with a legacy business [like Gabriel’s], it stays the same after a certain [period] and then just fizzles out,” Jennings said. “It’s hard to keep a business going for that long. So we’re really proud to lock arms with [Gabriel’s].”
Season at Gabriel’s, 800 Whitlock Ave. Marietta. Open Wednesday – Saturday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m.