Rebekah “Bekah” Barr is used to chaotic environments. The former teacher, unlike some of her colleagues, used to love field trips for their unpredictability.

“Field trip days are crazy,” Barr said. “The children are running. They scream. They touch things. You’re trying to count heads to figure out where everyone is, and I like that.”

Now you can find Barr tracking plates instead of copies at Margeaux, Dinner in Cambridge, where he made his debut as a restaurant owner in September. The restaurant is located in the Porter Square Hotel at 1924 Massachusetts Ave. from Cambridge.

Barr told MassLive how teaching prepared her to run a restaurant, whether dealing with angry customers who “have a lot in common” with 12-year-olds or coming up with a menu rather than a lesson plan. Now that she’s working in a more controlled environment, Barr feels confident about her decision to change careers.

“I feel fulfilled because I feel like this is very similar, especially on a busy Friday or Saturday,” Barr said. “There’s a lot of energy and chaos and momentum, but it’s all going to a great place.”

The restaurant world allowed Barr to be more creative, unlike the world of education where she felt “very small and in a square box”.

“Being a teacher, you make a lot of decisions on your own and there’s that responsibility, which makes it very scary and there’s a lot of pressure,” she said. “With running a restaurant, there’s always a team. And I’m lucky to have a great team.”

While this is Barr’s first time owning a restaurant, her experience in the industry began long before Margeaux existed.

Barr’s love of cooking came from growing up on a blueberry farm in Exeter, New Hampshire, where fresh food was always a staple of her childhood.

“My parents had this huge garden in the back yard and they grew all our vegetables,” Barr said. “My grandmother now owns a goat farm in Lee, New Hampshire. She makes her own cheese and fudge.”

At age 14, Barr began working in fine dining restaurants during her summer vacations. She continued to waitress while studying education at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee and often visited New Orleans, Louisiana. These backgrounds helped Barr fall in love with private events and acclimated her to Southern cuisine while teaching sixth and seventh graders.

Barr, who currently lives in Everett, moved to Boston in 2019, where she taught for two years as part of Teach for America.

In 2020, she launched her cocktail kit company called “&Luck,” which Barr continues to direct. She contracted bartenders who were off duty during the COVID-19 pandemic to create cocktails based on popular Netflix series such as “Tiger King,” “Ozark” and “Bridgerton.”

Barr later started showing people how to make the cocktails via Zoom while she was working full-time for the Department of Primary and Secondary Education (DESE). As the business grew, Barr began looking for a physical space to host the private mixology classes.

But he never considered owning a restaurant until he was told to think bigger.

“A very dear family friend, Cliff, told me that you have to have three horses in the race. You should have a space that has food and drink and private events,” Barr said. “So I started looking for a restaurant in November 2022.”

However, Barr initially struggled to find a space. The owners consistently turned her down because Barr had no formal record of running a restaurant. She also had few connections in the restaurant world and said being a woman in the industry was a big barrier. After about a year and a half of searching, things fell into place.

“It all came together with a broker I met, Krista, she’s amazing,” Barr said. “We met by chance.”

The broker called Barr randomly one day and told her to come tour a restaurant — the former space of Colette Wine Bistro — the next day. Barr showed up and immediately fell in love.

“I walked into the space and I was like, ‘This is beautiful,'” she recalled. “There’s so much opportunity here and it’s been a labor of love ever since.”

Barr purchased Colette Wine Bistro in March 2024. She spent six months learning how to run a restaurant before Margeaux officially opened on September 16.

The restaurant has a capacity of approximately 158 people, with 115 people in the dining room, 13 seats at the bar and 30 seats in the outdoor terrace. There is also a private event space that can be closed off from the rest of the dining room.

Barr wanted the restaurant to introduce Southern cuisine to more people in the Boston area and created a menu inspired by her upbringing in New Hampshire as well as her college years.

“Some of the things I love most about the South and my time there is the heat. And it is the warmth of the people. It’s the warmth of the food, the comforting nature of Southern cooking,” she said. “There are some similarities here in New England, but I think we could learn … to embrace more warmth, both in our kitchen and in our restaurants.”

Margeaux’s South-meets-New England vibe is reflected in its upscale Southern comfort food. The menu consists of several shareable plates, including shrimp and grits Boursin, eggs with crispy fried Maine oysters, and grilled smoked pork chop with Gruyere mac n’ cheese.

Barr chose this style of dining because he felt it was growing in popularity in the Boston area. She also said it inspires diners to try things they wouldn’t normally try by seeing what others are eating at their table.

“I want you to be a little selfish to put exactly what you want on your plate,” she said. “It’s all about having exactly what you like and trying as hard as you can.”

Guests are encouraged to order multiple dishes from different or similar collections. Besides giving diners the freedom to try as much as possible, Margeaux’s concept is meant to make people feel like they’re eating with their families on special occasions.

“I didn’t want to create a menu that was pretentious or had ingredients and descriptions that no one knew what was in the dish or what to expect,” Barr said. “I wanted someone to come and look at all these things and feel special. Feel that the dishes themselves are special, but they’re also accessible, like holiday meals with the family.”

Meanwhile, each of Margeaux’s drinks was inspired by the food menu. Cocktails include an Oaxacan in Memphis—a riff on an Oaxacan Old Fashioned—made with Memphis barbecue bitters, sweet maple, hints of apple and topped with beef.

Then there’s the Lady Cherry—a seasonal take on Douglas Anrah’s “porn star” martini—made with tequila, cherries, warm amaretto and a sparkling wine on the side.

Margeaux also offers wine pairings with each dish. The wines were selected by Margeaux’s wine director, Brandon Farrell, who tasted every item on Margeaux’s menu to ensure that each dish had the perfect wine.

“He’s brilliant at what he does,” Barr said of Farrell.

That effort helped Margeaux sell more wine than when the restaurant was actually a wine bistro, according to Barr.

“We have a lot of people who come in, have a cocktail, an appetizer, share with the table, and then dive right into the wines and entrees,” she said.

With the successful launch of Margeaux, Barr is still reeling from the craziness of opening a restaurant for the first time.

“I think I’m going to get to a point in the next few months where I’m going to stop and reflect on everything that’s happened and it’s going to be real. But when you’re in the middle of chaos and there’s a thousand different things going on, there’s not really that mental space to reflect, like, ‘oh, this is a big deal,'” she said. “Every day is just putting one foot in front of the other.”

Once she’s more established in the space, Barr plans to further fuel her recent creativity by hosting more private events with custom touches for guests, such as special mocktails for moms-to-be and holiday menus.

“Creativity is the next step,” she said with a chuckle. “Creativity and private events.”

People can taste Barr’s creativity through booking your own event or visiting Margeaux, Supper Parlor for breakfast, brunch or dinner. More information about the opening hours can be found at the restaurant website.