Tag: Manuel’s Tavern

We knew this day was coming; now the date is finally on the calendar. On December 27, the Sunday after Christmas, Manuel's Tavern will shut down to begin the long-overdue process of renovating the building it's occupied since 1956.

Manuel Maloof opened his eponymous tavern in 1956 with conversation as a founding principle. “Where else can a guy who makes $50 a week and a guy doing $200,000 a year sit next to each other and find out what each other is thinking?” He banned live music or even a jukebox “because those things keep people from talking to each other.” As he told this magazine back in 1968, “A tavern ought to be a place where people from all over can come in and say what’s on their mind.”

Brian Maloof speaks of chickens with a combination of reverence and zeal. For several years, he has been having visions of chickens; they would come to him in dreams, while he was praying, when...

In 2005 Georgia enacted a smoking ban for restaurants and pubs that serve or employ people under age eighteen. At the time, a bartender at Manuel’s Tavern announced, “Don’t worry, we’re not banning cigarettes; we’re banning kids!”

Throughout its storied 58-year history, three things have remained constant at Atlanta’s politico watering hole Manuel’s Tavern. The city’s scribblers can always score a scoop if you wait around long enough. The tavern’s telepathic bartenders know you want another drink before you do. And at the end of the evening, your clothes are a walking billboard for Lucky Strikes.

Near the end of Maynard Jackson’s second term, a few of us from his office used to get together after work to hoist a few and gossip and bitch. Manuel’s Tavern became one of our gathering places.

Start easy with a sherry cobbler—the subtly sweet, low-octane cocktail of the moment—at H. Harper Station, housed in a former train depot in Reynoldstown. Head over to Poncey-Highland to eavesdrop on the journalists and politicos at Manuel’s Tavern and sip a SweetWater 420.

For many people, myself included, beer is an acquired taste. Compared with wine, whose familiar fruitiness caresses the palate, beer brings bitterness to the forefront. As a child in Paris, I was occasionally given beer diluted with carbonated lemonade while the adults around me drank thin Alsatian drafts I thought were just awful. Known in England as shandy, in Spain as clara, and in Germany as radler, beer cut with citrus-flavored soda is something I still love. Snakebite is a strong variation made of hard cider and beer in equal proportions that most respectable bars (including Manuel’s Tavern in Poncey-Highland) will pour into a tall pint glass for me.

When Manuel Maloof bought Harry’s Delicatessen at 602 N. Highland in 1956, DeKalb County was dry. Manuel’s fortuitous location just across the county line brought Emory University’s thirsty knowledge-seekers and thus established the intellectual branch of a most eclectic clientele.