Now Open, Garden and Gun Club Brings Southern Magazine to Life

The Garden & Gun Club is open at the Battery Atlanta. The all-day restaurant and cocktail bar is a first for the Charleston-based Southern lifestyle magazine, Garden & Gun. Chefs/owners Mike Lata and Adam Nemirow of widely-acclaimed Charleston restaurants Fig and The Ordinary created the menu of classic Southern dishes. Former chef de cuisine for Spanish tapas spot Joya in Palo Alto, California, Ann Kim, leads the kitchen.

The 1700-square-foot Garden & Gun Club was designed by Workstead; the firm involved in the designs of Charleston’s ultra swanky Dewberry hotel and Wythe Hotel in Brooklyn. The restaurant is sleek, polished, and mixed with antique and traditional elements like a China cupboard and sculptures from around the South throughout the space—a familiar aesthetic to fans of the magazine.

This is what the pages of Garden & Gun look like brought to life.

A 21-seat cocktail bar sits in the center of the front room capped by a raw bar at its rear. The dining room beyond the raw bar seats up to 38 people with additional bistro table seating outdoors.

Food leans light and sticks to Southern classics and snacks like pimento cheese crackers and crudités, smoked tuna dip with saltines, and boiled peanuts. Entrees include rabbit and dumplings and cast iron chopped steak with banana pudding for dessert. Expect blue crab cocktail claws, oysters, and peel and eat shrimp from the raw bar.

Classically-based cocktails such as the bourbon-based old fashioned or brandy crusta are listed among the beverage offerings along with wine, beer, 28 bourbons, and a sizable list of amari and digestifs for after dinner.

Take a look at the food and drink menus for Garden & Gun Club.

There are touches of Atlanta at the club, too. The server uniforms have been designed by Atlanta-based upscale clothing designers Sid and Ann Mashburn who have a shop and tailor at Westside Provisions District. A small, 60-square-foot retail shop with items from the Southern magazine’s Mercantile + Co. e-commerce site is located in the back of the restaurant. The Mashburns and Atlanta silver purveyor Beverly Bremer have items for sale in the shop.

As to why Garden & Gun chose Atlanta over their hometown of Charleston to open the magazine’s first restaurant venture, founder and publisher Rebecca Darwin referenced the overlap between the magazine’s audience and this area of the metro Atlanta market as factors.

The Battery and Braves SunTrust Park are located just outside the Perimeter in the heart of the Cumberland business district of Cobb County, which is home to several major corporations as well as the Atlanta Opera and the Weather Channel. The area also lies within close proximity to a handful of wealthy Atlanta neighborhoods like Vinings, Buckhead, Sandy Springs, and East Cobb.

”Opening at the Battery meant joining the ranks of some of the South’s most interesting and exciting happenings — to be neighbors with many of Atlanta’s best chefs, the Coca-Cola Roxy, the new Omni Hotel, and above all, the Braves.”

Chef Hugh Acheson opened Achie’s at the Omni Hotel in January and oversees the food at Punch Bowl Social. Atlanta chef Linton Hopkins (Restaurant Eugene, Holeman and Finch) owns C. Ellet’s Steakhouse and chef Ford Fry has a second outpost of his Tex-Mex restaurant the El Felix at the Battery.

Darwin anticipates the club being a “busy” and “bustling new social spot” at the Battery.

Open for dinner Sunday - Thursday, 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday - Saturday, 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. Lunch is daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will begin on Monday, April 30.

2605 Circle 75 Parkway, Atlanta. gardenandgunclub.com.

• Garden & Gun is Opening a Cocktail Bar at The Battery [EATL]
• All Battery Atlanta coverage [EATL]