Here's a look at the best new Atlanta restaurants, corporate event venues, hotels, conference centers, and private and party rooms to open for events this summer. These new and renovated Atlanta venues can accommodate groups large or small for private and corporate events, conferences, meetings, weddings, business dinners, teambuilding activities, cocktail parties, and more.
Chef Ford Fry continues his furious pace of restaurant openings with Superica, a Tex-Mex eatery at Krog Street Market in Inman Park. The stylishly eclectic space aims to evoke Austin, Texas, and has weathered leather seats and banquettes, taxidermy, an open kitchen, and an oversize guitar prop that nods to the venue’s live music. The inside seats 136 and has space for private events, while a patio seats 40. It opened in February.
The $100 million Porsche Experience Center opened near Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in May, offering sports car enthusiasts a chance to drive on a 1.6-mile track, tour a classic car gallery, or hold an event. The 27-acre complex represents the company’s largest investment ever outside Germany, and more than 30,000 people are expected to visit the center annually. The space includes a business center with 13,000 square feet of conference and event space. The main atrium holds 600 for receptions, smaller meeting rooms seat as many as 150, and a boardroom seats 15. Outdoor spaces include a large terrace overlooking the track and a courtyard. The venue also has its own restaurant, Restaurant 356.
Located about an hour from Atlanta, the Ritz-Carlton Lodge, Reynolds Plantation finished a multimillion-dollar renovation to its meeting space as well as renovated its spa and expanded its outdoor pool deck. Designer Duncan Miller oversaw the project, which finished in May, and renovated 15,000 square feet of indoor meeting space with new carpet, fixtures, and furniture. The design took inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright and the Arts and Crafts style, with color inspiration from the surrounding Lake Oconee. The property’s largest space is the 7,200-square-foot Ritz-Carlton Ballroom, which holds 600 for receptions or theater-style events or seats 450 for banquets. The property also has extensive outdoor event space.
At the Spanish restaurant Gypsy Kitchen in Buckhead, the design reflects its Spanish heritage with a mosaic-tiled bar and geometric-patterned ironwork and screens, while a bull sculpture oversees the dining room from its perch above the bar. Buyouts are available for reception-style events of about 300 guests. The restaurant also has several spaces for private events: the chef’s table seats six guests; the private Madrid Room seats 40; and the semiprivate Valencia patio seats 50 or holds 70 for receptions and can be combined with another patio to seat 100 or hold 150 for receptions. The Sevilla Patio, a rooftop cocktail lounge, holds 75 guests for receptions. It opened in October.
A portrait of Mark Twain overlooks diners at the Southern Gentleman, a gastropub with modern takes on Southern cuisine staples like chicken and waffles served with chicken liver mousse and a carrot risotto made with Carolina Gold rice. The design from New York-based Lacina Heitler features seersucker window treatments, tufted camel leather booths, and herringbone floors. The restaurant has two semiprivate spaces. For small groups, the Twain Room seats 12. The Magnolia Porch seats 50 or holds 70 for receptions and can be combined with another patio for seated events of 100 or receptions of 150 guests. The restaurant offers buyouts for groups of about 200 people. It opened in December in the Buckhead Atlanta development.
Guests access the Prohibition-era-inspired speakeasy the Blind Pig Parlour Bar by ringing a doorbell and giving a password (one recent example was “scofflaw”). The cocktail bar opened in January behind Smokebelly restaurant. The venue, which is designed in Victorian-era decor, is available for buyouts and holds 75 guests for receptions. Smaller groups can gather in the parlor.
Fans of regional barbecue—from Southern-style to Texas-style—can get their fix at Twin Smokers BBQ. As its name implies, there are two smokers where locally sourced meat is cooked low and slow. The 4,000-square-foot restaurant seats 80 or holds 115 for receptions. It’s available for buyouts or semiprivate events and also caters events. It opened in December.
Outdoor dining is now available at Last Word Food & Cocktails following the debut of a 20-seat patio in April. The Old Fourth Ward restaurant, which serves a changing menu of locally sourced dishes, also has a new executive chef, Layla Walk.
This summer the Southern Museum of Civil War & Locomotive History in Kennesaw expects to unveil a 8,700-square-foot research center, part of a $1.1 million expansion to the Smithsonian-affiliated museum. The museum offers three spaces for events. The Cobb Energy Gallery holds 145 people for receptions, a freestanding 1908 Historic Depot holds about 40 people for receptions, and the Museum Classroom holds 50 people.
From the owner of popular Bucktown restaurant Bocado comes the new cocktail bar Amer (the French word for "bitters"), which is slated to open in July in Inman Quarter, a neighborhood within Inman Park. The space comprises 1,000 square feet and seats 52, with a semiprivate room for 17 people. The space is available for buyouts, and owner Brian Lewis hopes the space will serve groups that are too big for Bocado’s private room but not big enough for a buyout of the entire restaurant.
