The Best Places to Eat and Do in Atlanta

On the 71st floor of a round Peachtree tower, this steakhouse rotates slowly enough that you won't notice until Stone Mountain has quietly switched sides. The menu is tight: steaks, chops, braised short ribs, roasted chicken, and a minimum spend per adult that keeps things honest. Business casual, reservations required. The bar two floors up lets you trade a full dinner for a cocktail and a small plate with the same view and fewer expectations.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The elevator opens and wood smoke hits you before the tiki art does, drifting up from the massive open-flame grills below. This Polynesian lounge has been tucked under the Hilton Downtown forever, all bamboo and novelty glassware and rum drinks served in bowls the size of a small birdbath. Staff in Hawaiian shirts keep things unhurried. Order widely and let the table become the buffet it was always meant to be.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Fawn builds its identity around amaro, with a selection deep enough to suggest the staff has opinions about bitterness profiles. It's a seafood wine bar in downtown Decatur where you can drop in for crudos and a glass or commit to a tasting menu that leans into dry-aged fish, fermented everything, and combinations that sound strange until they don't. The Michelin Guide has it listed as a Selected Restaurant.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Exposed ducts, charcoal-gray walls, and metal chairs set the tone at this Malaysian street food restaurant on Buford Highway, designed to feel like a night market and largely succeeding. The menu is enormous, the portions match it, and everything is built for sharing. The Michelin Guide has it listed, which tracks for a place this comfortable feeding a table of eight without breaking a sweat.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The pagoda roof on Buford Highway is not subtle, and neither is the dining room inside, a sprawling, bright space with tabletop grills built right into the tables. This is a traditional Korean BBQ spot where you come for marinated certified Angus beef cooked at your seat, but the kitchen also does haemul-pajeon and a kimchi jjigae that arrives still bubbling. Bring a crowd; the room is built for one.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Knotty pine paneling and booth seating give this Reynoldstown breakfast cafe the feel of a diner that's been around forever, but the menu keeps you guessing. Southern country cooking anchors everything, with local sourcing running through the whole operation, and the daily specials can swing from house-made tamales to frog legs without warning. The open-faced buttermilk biscuit buried under pork sausage gravy is the kind of thing people drive across town for.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A Taiwanese café and cocktail bar tucked into a Star Metals office lobby, which sounds like it shouldn't work until you're sitting on a green velvet couch at noon eating a scallion pancake stuffed with braised beef shank. The menu shifts as the day does, coffee and pastries giving way to oyster omelets and rice bowls, then cocktails after dark. A James Beard semifinalist for Best New Bar, it holds a Michelin Guide selection too.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Best New Bar

Order at the register, find a seat, and eat until you feel better about everything: that's the full operating model at this Vietnamese comfort food spot in Duluth. Pho anchors the menu, with a combination bowl running filet mignon, flank steak, brisket, and meatball, and the bánh mì packed with chargrilled pork and pâté pulls equal weight. The Michelin Guide has it listed, which seems to please nobody and surprise everybody in equal measure.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The sizzling doesn't stop when the bowl hits the table, and that's the point. Stone Bowl House is a busy Korean spot in a Buford Highway shopping center where nearly every table has the same thing in front of it: the namesake bibimbap, beef and egg over rice that's gone crispy against the hot stone. The menu sprawls well beyond that, but the room has already voted.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A pasta shop tucked into a Buckhead shopping center, which sounds like a contradiction until you see the cement floors, open shelving, and sidewalk tables full of people working through house-made cacio e pepe. Nearly a dozen pasta formats run the menu at lunch and dinner, with focaccia sandwiches rounding things out at midday. The room is genuinely convivial in a way that feels earned rather than designed.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Plush leather banquettes and low, sexy lighting set the tone at this fine dining room tucked into a Chamblee strip, where the chef pulls local Georgia ingredients through a quietly globe-trotting lens. The menu lands in unexpected places without announcing it too loudly, which is a harder trick than it sounds. The Michelin Guide has taken notice. Dress up a little; the room will meet you there.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Butterscotch leather booths and gas lamps inside what feels like a restored carriage house on the wooded edge of Chastain Park. This is a proper sit-down bistro serving seasonally driven Southern American cooking, the kind of room that makes a Tuesday feel like an occasion. The chef keeps the menu tight and focused, and the chocolate chip cookie with black lava sea salt at the end is not a thing to wave off.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

A light-filled New York-style Jewish deli in Atlanta, which already sets the scene. Black-and-white photos on the walls, display cases lined with cheesecake, and both a market counter and a proper sit-down room. The matzoh ball soup and smoked Nova platters read like they've been on the menu forever. Transplanted New Yorkers tend to show up looking slightly too relieved.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

The name nods to Hemingway's phrase for the blank page, though the room in Decatur's Court Square plays it subtle enough that you'd miss it without context. This is a seasonal New American restaurant where the kitchen mills its own flour and churns its own butter, which tells you roughly how seriously they're taking things. Small plates, house-made pastas, and main dishes move with the seasons. The Michelin Guide has it selected.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Floor-to-ceiling windows anchor the dining room of this contemporary sushi restaurant tucked into the Ritz-Carlton Residences on Peachtree. The menu leans slightly American in sensibility, running through eight plated courses before the sushi sequence begins. Four seats are reserved for omakase only, booked well ahead, while the rest of the room moves at a quieter pace that suits the address.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

Hand-pulled biang biang noodles are the point at this counter-service Xi'an noodle shop in Midtown, an offshoot of the original out in Duluth. You order, you grab a paper plate, you find a seat. The cooking leans on cumin and chili in a way that feels more like a region asserting itself than a kitchen showing off. The boiled dumplings, pork or lamb, come by the baker's dozen with a house dipping sauce that does most of the talking.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta
2. The Infatuation #19 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Atlanta

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Claudia Martinez
2. Spirited Awards 2026 · Regional Top 10 Honoree · Best New U.S. Cocktail Bar – U.S. East

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best New Restaurant

1. Eater Best New Restaurant

1. Bon Appétit The Very Best Bagels in the US (Yes, Outside New York)

1. Bon Appétit The Very Best Bagels in the US (Yes, Outside New York)

Momo Cafe is the Japanese bakery counter tucked inside Momonoki, and it takes croissants seriously enough to offer them filled with cream, coiled into circles, or just classically layered. The menu rotates, so a savory one with onion, gruyere, and rosemary might be there or might be a memory. Matcha lattes and mochi donuts round things out. A small alcove upstairs lets you eat while watching the ramen crowd below.

1. The Infatuation The 12 Best Coffee Shops In Atlanta
2. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta
2. The Infatuation #20 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Atlanta

The name is short for Southern Fox, a nickname for the muscadine grape, which tells you everything about how seriously this fine dining room takes its regional roots. The chef's résumé runs from a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta to Eleven Madison Park, and that arc shows: leather-britches bean dashi, blue crab with bottarga, fermented peaches under marshmallow fluff. A former burger spot with a soft Scandi makeover, it landed on the New York Times Restaurant List for 2026.

1. The New York Times 2026 · The Restaurant List

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

A French cafe that does breakfast and lunch by the book, then quietly pivots at dinner into something else entirely. The chef spent time doing pop-ups before taking over this spot, and his French-Haitian dinner menu carries that earned confidence: Haitian epis perfumes a beef patty, djon-djon gets English peas and local mushrooms, and the kitchen-driven cocktail list includes non-alcoholic drinks worth ordering on purpose.

1. The New York Times 2024 · The Restaurant List
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Atlanta Right Now

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

A soju distillery in Doraville that also makes its own makgeolli, a Korean rice wine brewed in-house, Minhwa Spirits is a cocktail bar where the spirits on the menu began a few feet away. Food pop-ups and a coffee counter share the space. The bar program draws on serious talent, and the cocktails lean toward floral and aromatic rather than punishing. Small, unpretentious, and a long way from Midtown's usual scene.

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta
2. Eater Coolest Place to Hang Out · The 2025 Eater Atlanta Award Winners

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. The Infatuation #4 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Atlanta

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. The Infatuation #12 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Atlanta
2. The Infatuation #2 · Atlanta’s Best New Restaurants

A neighborhood restaurant in Decatur where the menu drifts happily between lamb shepherd's pie, shrimp and grits, and a roster of signature burgers without feeling like it's having an identity crisis. Small plates and big entrées coexist, much of it gluten-free or adaptable. Craft cocktails, solid beer and wine, and a patio that pulls people into the kind of long, unhurried evening nobody planned to have.

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. AAA Approved

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

A sculpted amethyst rock anchors the coffee bar, a gold nugget juts from the back wall, and a mural covers the entire side of the room, which is a lot to take in before your first sip. This Johns Creek coffee shop looks like a strip-mall afterthought from the parking lot, so the interior earns its surprise. Specialty lattes use beans from Cafe Campesino, and Dutch coffee and waffles round out the menu.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

This is the Morningside flagship of a longtime Atlanta bakery, where four separate counters operate behind glass doors in a state of organized chaos. One handles bread and sweet, sticky cinnamon twists, another does delicate desserts like opera cakes and macarons, and the prepared foods case is where you go to look like you cooked for the dinner party. The Infatuation has it on its list of the city's best bakeries. Order a sandwich first, so you shop with a clear head.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta

1. The Infatuation The 12 Best Coffee Shops In Atlanta

A coffee shop that moonlights as a cocktail bar Wednesday through Saturday, Bellwood Coffee is also a working roastery, so the smell alone does some of the selling. The Glenwood Avenue location draws a neighborhood crowd for daytime espresso drinks and, come evening, craft cocktails alongside occasional jazz and open mic nights that keep things loose enough that nobody feels overdressed or underdressed.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

The rotating pour-over menu runs five or six options deep, which for a coffee shop is either impressive or a little daunting depending on how early you showed up. Belux started as a micro-roastery before opening this Roswell cafe, and the roasting pedigree shows in the sourcing: Jamaica Blue Mountain and Panama Geisha sit alongside the espresso and matcha standards. Monthly coffee tastings for anyone who wants to go further down the rabbit hole.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

The cafe itself is a repurposed shipping container tucked into the Westside Provisions District, which tells you something about the aesthetic before you even order. Brash is a specialty coffee shop that sources directly from farmers in El Salvador, and the menu runs from careful pour-overs to straightforward drip. Other locations have since spread across Atlanta, with the Beltline outpost adding espresso martinis after dark for when the line blurs.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta

1. The Infatuation The 12 Best Coffee Shops In Atlanta

The coffee ceremony here arrives in a jebena, the traditional Ethiopian clay flask, and it's not a performance for tourists but the way the place works. Chibo is an Ethiopian coffee shop tucked into a Lilburn strip mall, serving espresso and drip alongside house-roasted beans you can take home. Sambusa and kinche are made to order. The couple who run it treat every visitor like a regular they just haven't met yet.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

Colette is a Poncey-Highland bakery where the order counter sits right in front of the open kitchen, so you can watch the bakers knead dough while you wait behind a weekend line of stroller-pushing locals. The case runs from brioche tarts to sour cream-iced cinnamon rolls the size of a toddler's head, plus savory scones made with shishito peppers. It's a counter-service pastry stop, so wear whatever you rolled out of bed in.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta

1. The Infatuation The 12 Best Coffee Shops In Atlanta

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

Rows of smokers out front and a cooler stocked with Fanta set the tone at this Grant Park BBQ shop, which leans into Georgia's anything-goes approach to smoked meat. Pork shoulder gets a splash of vinegary Carolina sauce, brisket and turkey come naked or sauced, and the mac and cheese is made with shells and sharp Cheddar. Local beer pours from the taps, cornhole and bocce fill the yard, and Oakland Cemetery is a short walk away if you need to walk it all off.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Atlanta Right Now

The injera arrives as the plate, not a side, and the whole table leans in to tear pieces and scoop from communal piles of stew and spiced meat. This Briarcliff Road neighborhood restaurant has been an Atlanta Ethiopian staple for ages, run by two partners who grew up in Ethiopia and cook like it. The meat platter is sized for sharing among several people and covers serious ground. There's also a full vegan menu, Ethiopian tea, and Ethiopian beer.

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

Handmade dumplings folded in a bright counter-service spot inside the Westside Paper complex, a refurbished industrial sprawl on the west side of the city. The menu is compact on purpose: soup dumplings, potstickers, buns, a few noodle dishes. The New York Times put it on its list of Atlanta's 25 best restaurants. Order the lamb and cilantro dumplings if they have them, and they'll tell you if they don't.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Atlanta Right Now

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta
2. The Infatuation The 18 Best Bars In Atlanta

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta

Fad Classic Bakery sits in Smyrna beside a loud blue building that does its best to upstage it. The bakery is a quiet counter-service spot, cheap and unfussy, with cinnamon rolls that stay soft without going gummy under a generous slab of cream cheese icing. Weekends bring Nutella, Oreo, and strawberry versions, which also means they sell out early, so the alarm clock is part of the plan. The Infatuation lists it among Atlanta's best bakeries.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

Galette is a pocket-size bakery in Avondale Estates that keeps Thursday-through-Sunday hours, which sounds like a hobby until you see the weekend line. Saturday and Sunday bring the oversized cinnamon rolls under a generous slick of icing, plus breakfast sandwiches on croissants, and the rolls vanish early. Weekdays are calmer, with apple cider donuts, pistachio croissants, and an apple galette that earns the name.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta

Heart Roasters espresso anchors the coffee program at this compact Inman Park shop, which spent years as a cart before finally settling into a brick-and-mortar on Elizabeth Street. Colette Bread pastries show up on weekdays, while weekend pop-ups with local bakers keep the regulars guessing. The after-hours events have made it something of a neighborhood living room for people who like their coffee shop to do a little more than just open at seven.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

This Inman Park bakeshop is entirely gluten-free and enthusiastic enough about it to put the exclamation point right in the name. The case runs from Funfetti donuts to blueberry cheesecake pop tarts, plus savory empanadas that take well to a dab of hot sauce. It's a grab-and-go counter with nowhere to sit, so plan on eating in the car or on a nearby curb. The Infatuation lists it among Atlanta's best bakeries.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta

This is an old-school bakery and deli where the display cases do most of the talking, stocked with muffins, rugelach, shortbread, and gingerbread men that apparently never go out of season. It's also a sandwich counter, so a juicy french dip is on the table, with plenty of seating so the au jus stays out of your car. The petit fours, topped with tiny icing leaves, are the sort of thing you mean to share. The Infatuation lists it among the best bakeries in Atlanta.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta

Locals call it "steak basement," which tells you nearly everything: it's a kinda-casual steakhouse tucked below street level in Virginia-Highland, the kind of room that hasn't tried to reinvent itself and doesn't need to. Old-school cuts arrive on heaping platters with starchy sides, and the martinis come with a sidecar so the drink stays cold. Weekend brunch pulls a crowd, but really any night works fine.

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta

Atlanta takes its lemon pepper wings seriously, and Magic City, the city's most famous strip club, has been quietly central to that argument for decades. The wings are small, seasoned deep into the bone, and come with a blue cheese dressing good enough to make you mourn the missing celery. The crowd runs from music executives to athletes to travelers killing time before a flight. Wings are available to go, for the bashful or the principled.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Atlanta Right Now

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

1. Eater 38 Essential Restaurants Around Atlanta

The roastery and training lab behind the counter make this Decatur coffee shop feel more like a working operation than a cafe that happens to have good espresso. Drip, nitro, and latte specials share the menu with fresh pastries, and the large back patio has both sun and shade for the laptop-and-novel crowd. Courses in latte art and roasting run out of the on-site lab, if you want to graduate beyond being a customer.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

1. The Infatuation #21 · The 25 Best Restaurants In Atlanta

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta
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1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

1. The Infatuation The 12 Best Coffee Shops In Atlanta

1. The Infatuation Where To Eat When You’re Visiting Atlanta

The roastery is right there behind the counter, so the smell hits you before the menu does. Portrait Coffee is a specialty coffee shop and roaster in West End, founded by a collective that set out to bring more diverse representation to Atlanta's coffee scene. The beans are roasted on-site inside the historic Lottie Watkins Building, and the same coffee turns up at shops across the city for those who can't make the trip.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

Postern Coffee lives inside the Minhwa Spirits space in Doraville, which sounds like an odd arrangement until you're holding an espresso built with sweet rice syrup and perilla oil and suddenly it makes sense. The coffee shop leans into the Asian-American backgrounds of its three co-founders, so the menu runs from coconut ube lattes to carefully sourced matcha options. A young, curious crowd that knows the neighborhood fills the room.

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

1. The Infatuation The 12 Best Coffee Shops In Atlanta

1. The Infatuation The 12 Best Coffee Shops In Atlanta

1. Eater The Best Coffee Shops Around Town

Saint Germain is a French bakery and cafe at the Interlock, with Parisian-style tables roomy enough that you can set up a laptop and stay until closing without a single glare. The display cases hold frilly cakes so decorated you hesitate before the first forkful, briefly. The macaron selection runs past twenty flavors, lavender to pistachio, which is a lot of decisions for someone who only came in for coffee.

1. The Infatuation The Best Bakeries In Atlanta