Atlanta, GA

Hey there friends!

Josh and I spent a few days in Atlanta to split our drive back from Charleston up, it was a very nice stopping point for us. I picked Atlanta mostly because I have been obsessed with a boutique called Red Dress Boutique who has exploded in popularity online and they have a store front based in Athens which is an hour drive away from Atlanta. Josh and I have also been wanting to check out Atlanta for a while now and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do so!

We arrived around dinner time and we decided to check out their popular Ponce City Market and grab some dinner there. We stopped at JIA, a Szechuan inspired Chinese cuisine and it was very yummy! We had their fish in chili oil and their fried pork belly although I will say I wish they were both spicier (because that’s what that type of cuisine is supposed to be known for). We would rate them a 7/10. Following that I stopped at Batter Cookie Dough Counter and got their bourbon brown sugar cookie dough and topped it with some caramel bits, it was delicious! We ended the night with a stop to City Winery and ended up staying there a while and eventually got their Burrata and it was really yummy!

The next day was our day to shop, we traveled to Athens where Red Dress Boutique’s store front is. We looked around Athens once I was finished in Red Dress, but honestly there wasn’t a whole lot there so we headed back to Atlanta and did more shopping. I have a separate blog post for where I went shopping and pictures of what I purchased here! We had dinner at one of our favorite Top Chef alum Kevin Gillespie’s restaurant called Gunshow. They have a 10 dish tasting menu that is meant to be shared amongst two people. Some of the dishes were amazing and some were lacking. We would rate it a 6/10.

On our last full day we started with the World of Coke and the Georgia Aquarium. Both places were pretty cool, my personal favorites at World of Coke was the tasting room where you could taste various drinks that are popular from all over the world as well as their mock coke factory where you could see the various machines in action. The Georgia Aquarium was one of the largest I’ve been in and they had some animals I hadn’t seen before including the fat bellied seahorses, I also really enjoyed their Dolphin show as Dolphins are my favorite animal!

We were so hungry after seeing the attractions back to back that we picked somewhere we could walk to and stumbled on this hidden gem called Aviva Mediterranean inside a shopping center, I totally forgot to take any pictures but they were SO yummy! The owner was there and he was such a character, it was nice to see the owner there and interacting with the customers. I’d rate his place a 9/10. We ended our last day with dinner at Umi Sushi. We had their red snapper appetizer, sweet shrimp nigiri, octopus nigiri, tamago, unagi nigiri, wagyu beef nigiri, tuna nigiri, and lastly their crunch lobster box. It sounds like a ton of food but we split all of it and all nigiri were just 2 pieces. I’d rate them an 7.5/10.

The nice thing about driving is you have more leeway with when you leave, so we decided to leave after lunch. The first time we were at Ponce City Market we stumbled across The Splatter Studio and I thought it was so cool I made reservations for Saturday (the day we were leaving). It is what it sounds, you book a time you want to come and you get to splatter a bunch of paint on a canvas. It was a lot of fun! One thing to note is it takes about a week for them to dry, so keep that in mind if you are just visiting Atlanta you’ll have to pay to have them shipped back to your home. After we ate some lunch inside the market again, this time Josh had Botiwalla and I had Minero Mexican. Josh had the lamb boti kabab and I had a steak quesadilla and chips and queso. I would rate Minero a 7/10, it was very good!

That about sums up our experience in Atlanta, we enjoyed our stay here and hope to be back one day! Have you ever been to Atlanta?