Like big brothers do, Phil Bryant, former owner of Bryant’s Breakfast, teased his sister, Kerrie Burton, who also was a co-owner.
He’d jokingly make fun of her, she says. She remembers customers “just cracking up laughing. He was so funny. He was like my dad. He was never going to make you sad. He was going to make you laugh.
“His legacy? My brother was a trip. He was a funny, funny guy.”
Bryant, 57, died May 31st — Memorial Day — of glioblastoma several months after selling the family restaurant, which is famous for its “Bryant’s Big Breakfast” special — two biscuits, two eggs, grits and gravy on the side, and choice of meat: sausage, bacon, city ham, county ham, beef bologna, and pork tenderloin. .
Bryant, Burton, and their sister, Sandy Connell, began working at the family restaurant when they were kids. Burton remembers her dad, Jimmy Bryant, who was in the grocery business, telling her mother, Jane, “I’m wanting to either start a nursery or get in the restaurant business.”
“My mom said, ‘Nursery.’ And you know what happened.”
Bryant got a Loeb’s barbecue restaurant franchise around 1969 in Parkway Village at Knight Arnold at Perkins. They sold barbecue and hamburgers until a customer, Dale Crane, who was working in construction in the area, asked her mom, “Would you fix me some breakfast in here? I come in here. I leave the house. I have a hankering for breakfast.”
“And my mother started making breakfast. And this lady named Inez started making it. And some other ladies. My mother started making biscuits right there on Knight Arnold.”
They had to move in the mid ‘70s. “We had to move because they told us they would no longer let us lease there. I don’t know for what reasons.”
Her dad went back into the grocery business, but about a year later they moved to their iconic location at 3965 Summer Avenue at Graham.
The restaurant was another Loeb’s barbecue at first. But a few years later, Jimmy Bryant took over the restaurant, changed the sign, and it became Bryant’s Breakfast and Bar-B-Q. “The breakfast just kind of took over, really.
“We sold barbecue after my dad died in 2003. Maybe a year after he died we didn’t do barbecue anymore. We did breakfast. Cut our hours. Did sandwiches. All kinds of sandwiches. We started plate lunches at some time.”
The pandemic changed things. “We closed last year with the COVID and when everything closed. We opened, closed, opened, closed, opened, closed.”
Phil finally decided to sell the restaurant. “He couldn’t write the checks. His right hand wouldn’t work. When he’d walk in the parking lot, he was stumbling on things. His right foot wasn’t lifting up. His tumor was on the left side.”
Selling the restaurant was fine with Burton. “I felt like it was whatever he wanted to do. I knew he didn’t need any of that. Stress. He just needed to think about taking care of himself and getting rid of this cancer. You read about this cancer. There’s nothing good about it at all. It’s a terrible, terrible cancer.”
Bryant let David Pickler’s law firm find a buyer, Burton says. “I remember David Pickler telling me he took his grandchildren to Pink Palace to see Santa Claus. And he said the Santa Claus motioned him over: ‘Come here.’ And he told him, ‘For Christmas, I want you to get Bryant’s breakfast opened back up.’”
Santa was “somebody that knew who he (Pickler) was.”
Bryant’s Breakfast was sold to the Tashie Restaurant Group. The restaurant reopened April 14th. Customers returned to eating Bryant’s biscuits and white gravy, country ham, pork sausage, and other favorite Southern culinary delights.
Her brother teased her, but he also had a gentle side to him. “He loved animals so much. And it was rescues he always took care of.”
He also adopted stray dogs that showed up in the restaurant parking lot. “I know ‘Biscuit’ was one of them.
“He was something else. He really was. He was a great brother, a great boss. He just had a kind heart. He really did. He’ll always be with me.”
In addition to his two sisters, Bryant leaves two sons, Sergei Bryant and Mike Bryant, two nieces, Olivia Burton and Aiden Connell, and two nephews, Reed Burton and Cormac Connell.
