Atlanta Magazine

Navin Norling's childhood frugal mindset informs his artistic practice to this day, exemplified in his upcoming solo exhibition at Johnson Lowe Gallery in Buckhead. Dangerous Games continues Norling’s use of salvaged materials, this time with a few exciting twists.

When Beth Hyland first shopped around the script for her play Fires, Ohio, multiple theater companies told her it was unproducible. There wasn’t a problem with the dialogue or the plot; the script, humorous and gripping, had already won both the Kennedy Center’s Paula Vogel Award in Playwriting and the Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting. The setting itself was the issue: a two-story house in an Ohio town, surrounded by a raging wildfire.

In March 2025, Rumi’s Kitchen Sandy Springs closed for a planned $3.5 million renovation, estimated to be complete in six months. Nearly a year later, Rumi’s flagship location is reopening after nearly tripling its original budget. New offerings include innovative cocktails and desserts, a selection of water offerings complete with tasting notes, and a glassed-in patio.

Christalyn Hampton’s directorial career couldn’t have got off to a better start. Her debut as a filmmaker, The Devil is Busy, which she co-directed with Geeta Gandbhir, has been nominated for the Best Documentary Short Film at the 98th Academy Awards. Set at a women’s healthcare clinic in Atlanta, the film shows a day in the life of Tracii, its head of security. Atlanta magazine spoke with Hampton about the film, why documentaries are so important, and what she hopes the film's impact will be. 

James Beard–recognized chefs have put Raleigh’s dining scene on the national map, and Michelin’s inaugural American South guide arrived last November, cementing Raleigh as a culinary hotbed. Add world-class museums, transformative outdoor developments, and that unbeatable North Carolina hospitality, and you’ve got a city worthy of a weekend escape.

In 2021, beloved bartender Katie Janness was brutally murdered at the Charles Allen Gate entrance to Piedmont Park. With broken security cameras, no eyewitnesses, and few leads, the case remains unsolved nearly five years later.

When Muchacho first opened along the Atlanta Beltline and Memorial Drive, it became known as a place shaped as much by its surroundings as by its menu. That site, housed in a 100‑year‑old train depot, set the tone for how the brand approaches expansion: start with the bones of a building, then let the space tell the story. The newly opened Muchacho West Midtown follows that same philosophy.

For 30 years, Jasmine Jamil has worked at Subs & Salads Junction Downtown, greeting regulars with a smile. Her son Shafi Jamil had barely started school when his parents opened the tiny takeout shop adjacent to a parking garage, and he’s grown up with the business. Though he began his official career as a mechanical engineer for Porsche, Jamil took over management of Subs & Salads in 2015 after his father, Sal Jamil, passed away. The biggest changes, however, have occurred in the past few months: Subs & Salads has undergone a complete renovation with new menu items added. It also has a new name: the Junction.

Unassumingly wedged between a bike shop, an auto repair shop, and the train tracks on the upper Westside is Atlanta’s only traditional Chinese-style teahouse. The shop is called Wai’s Gong Fu Tea House. Wai is Belonoha’s adopted name as a certified kung fu master, and gong fu (which roughly means “mastery”) is the Chinese style of tea service in which whole tea leaves are steeped several times, each time brewing only a few ounces of tea for each guest.

Over the past 15 years, Dunwoody native Ryan White has established himself as one of the most entertaining and captivating documentary filmmakers working in American cinema. Come See Me in the Good Light has earned White his first Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature. The film celebrates the life, work, career, and activism of Andrea Gibson, the late poet who garnered a legion of fans as a spoken-word artist. We spoke with White about how growing up in Atlanta inspired him to become a documentary filmmaker, his love for Southern stories, and his connection to Gibson’s poetry.