May 2025
Features
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5 Atlanta sister restaurants with lower price points
Atlanta is a big small town, and the restaurant community is no exception. It’s like an extended family, and many well-known Atlanta restaurants are related in some way. Did you know Krog Street Market’s excellent sandwich shop Fred’s Meat and Bread started as a cheesesteak pop-up at The General Muir? Now you do.
These 6 Atlanta restaurants feed families on a budget
Feeding a group is a tricky balancing act of ordering enough food and not spending too much. Fortunately, several Atlanta restaurants make it easy on families looking to feed their brood affordably, whether it’s a weeknight fix or a weekend treat.
We asked. You answered: Your picks for cheap eats in Atlanta
We put out a call on Instagram asking Atlantans for their favorite cheap eats. Here’s what some of you had to say.
We ask the experts: Where do you find quality meals at decent prices?
We asked a cohort of Atlanta chefs and tastemakers to share their favorite spots for cheap eats around town.
Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, a thriving Vietnamese community calls Atlanta home
This spring marks 50 years since the fall of Saigon—an event many refugees call “the day we lost the country.” A turbulent postwar era followed, with South Vietnamese people suffering imprisonment and persecution by the Communist regime. At that time, there was hardly a Vietnamese presence in Georgia. But in the decades since, metro Atlanta’s Vietnamese population has grown immensely and now ranks as the ninth-largest Viet community in the United States.
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The Connector
The Beltline Lantern Parade has illuminated Atlanta for 15 years
A puppet in a white suit, with a smiley face for a head, towers over every Beltline Lantern Parade. His name is Mr. Happy, and he’s the creation of Cam Ayer, who has marched every year since 2010 as a member of the Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons. On May 3, Mr. Happy will join thousands of others at Adair Park and head up the Southwest Beltline trail for the 15th annual Lantern Parade, a free community event that has become an iconic Atlanta tradition.
Frustrated by MARTA’s app, this Georgia Tech grad made his own
“The official MARTA app was pretty rough,” Chad Etzel says of the On the Go app. A former Apple engineer, Etzel found all the data he needed online and began tinkering with an app that would provide more accurate, user-friendly information about MARTA’s buses and trains. A few days later, he had his prototype, which he named Terminus.
Why did Cornelius Taylor die?
Cornelius Taylor, 46, was killed on the morning of January 16, when a front loader truck struck him inside his tent during an attempted clearing of the homeless encampment where he was living. The tragedy sent shock waves through Atlanta and ignited a fierce debate over how the city handles the residents of homeless encampments. How did a supposedly routine encampment clearance go so wrong—and how can the city prevent it from happening again?
Atlanta’s All Y’all offers gender-affirming care and a safe space
All Y’all, which opened last September, is one of Atlanta’s first queer-run primary care providers that specializes in gender-affirming care such as gender transition support. While the practice is open to all adult patients, Mandy Smith is most passionate about ensuring that transgender individuals have a safe space to receive healthcare.
Will the World Cup revive downtown? The view from one year out.
In preparation for the 2026 World Cup next June, city and state leadership, alongside local developers, are focusing their efforts on fast-track redevelopment for the long-blighted downtown Atlanta. The list of major redevelopments downtown is dizzying. The real question is: Will any of this be ready by June 11, 2026, when the World Cup kicks off?
The Bite
These 4 standout metro Atlanta dining spots are worth the drive
When people ask me where I’m eating, the places I always tend to recommend require a bit of a drive, but they are worth it—and this comes from someone who hates driving in Atlanta traffic just as much as you do.
Manners matter: Carol Rey’s 5 table etiquette tips to get you ahead
When you call Carol Rey, CEO and founder of the Elite School of Etiquette, you may get her voicemail, which ends with the following mantra: “Great manners and dining skills can take you places that your friends and family can’t.”
Heaps serves savory New Zealand meat pies in Decatur
New Zealand native Jake Harvey arrived in Atlanta via New York, his first stateside stop as a budding hip-hop producer. Owner of the newly opened Heaps, his savory-pie emporium and eatery in Decatur, Harvey is serving the meat pies that were a staple back home.
Review: While waiting for his pizzeria to open next door, Anthony Spina is excelling at Small Fry
The vestiges of Anthony Spina’s Italian American childhood, spent largely in New Jersey, are all over the 25-year-old chef’s first restaurant. That would be Small Fry, a tiny slip of a room at Atlanta Dairies on Memorial Drive, where Spina makes magic by embellishing deep-fried foods with Italian touches. The takeaway on Spina: Baby, he was born to fry.
The Goods
Finding the light: Out Front Theatre leans into queer joy
Out Front Theatre, Atlanta’s queer-led performance company, has embraced its role in sustaining the idea that “joy is an act of resistance.” Its season-closing production, this month’s world premiere of Trick! The Musical, based on the 1999 film, trains the spotlight on the bright side of LGBTQ+ life.
Welcome to The Tenth, Atlanta’s new salon-style social club
The Tenth is a new salon-style social club in Atlanta, founded by married couple and longtime Atlantans Clint and Nasim Fluker. Part of the Flukers’ mission is to facilitate discussions that highlight important perspectives on today’s issues. The couple created The Tenth as a space for the “intellectually curious and creative,” as the club’s website puts it. It is a gathering place for people seeking meaningful conversation, deeper connections in their community, and initiation into the city’s arts and culture scene.
Miscellaneous
Editor’s Journal: Cheap eats—where budgeting and belonging meet
Food is the oldest and easiest way for us to be social and build community, whether it’s served in a family dining room or at the table of a good restaurant with your family of choice. We hope this month’s list of cheap eats in and around Atlanta will inspire you to take a minute, gather good friends, and go eat good food.
A love letter to Beverly, the so-called “worst” soda
The Beverly lives on only through the tasting room at the World of Coca-Cola here in Atlanta, as well as two others, at Epcot in Disney World and the Coca-Cola Store in Las Vegas. Recently, it has gained a cult following on TikTok, mainly from younger generations discovering it for the first time. Several Reddit threads offer enthusiastic skewerings of its intense flavor and lingering aftertaste; one poster called it the “worst soda in the world.”
