Food

The Best Bars in Atlanta Right Now

Don’t Miss: Written in chalk above the bar, the cocktail menu shifts seasonally, but the Watermelon Man (a Negroni-esque tipple featuring the summertime fruit and basil), is a great example of how this new-school Inman Park haunt updates classics.

661 Auburn Ave NE, Ste 280, Atlanta

Brittany Wages

The James Room’s dark, sexy backroom lounge reveals itself through a convincingly simple lobby café front, past a door disguised as a bookshelf. You’re here for the vibrations, and perhs the Beltline location plays a large part as well. But ultimately, the James Room is all about the people, Atlanta’s in-town movers and shakers, who show up stylishly for refined drinks, great music, and the requisite mingling and mixing.

Don’t Miss: Jungle birds, palomas and chili-oiled dirty martinis line the menu of classic cocktails, but consider the Until You See the Cross, essentially a premium spicy margarita but clarified with milk, adding silky sophistication.

99 Krog Street NE, Ste W, Atlanta

You always feel good leaving Ticon’, however you felt coming in notwithstanding. That’s because this supercool, charming cocktail den, dimly lit with string lights, was crafted by a group of partners that include beloved ATL bartenders Greg Best and Paul Calvert, before the let’s open a ’70s-themed bar craze hit ATL a few years ago. The crew here not only serves thoughtfully balanced drinks—including very reasonably priced wines as low as $12 per glass—but delivers outstanding hospitality worthy of a James Beard finalist.

Don’t Miss: There’s no way to go wrong with the cocktail menu, whether you’re into dry gin and sherry martinis or mint- and amaretto-kissed mai tais, but the power move is the Reserve Ticonderoga Cup, a fancier play on the bar’s regular $15 version of pineple, lemon, and mint with cherry, cognac and aged rum. This choice variation upgrades your spirits, literally and figuratively, to VSOP and select levels, all over pebbled ice in a metallic vessel, for $8 more.

Where to Stay in Atlanta If You Like to Eat

These hotels are the perfect home base while eating your way through the ATL.

931 Monroe Dr NE, Ste C-106, Atlanta

Food

37 Summer Desserts Thatll Sweeten Even the Hottest Days

Open the summer desserts file, and you’ll find everything from easy no-bake desserts and frozen treats to fruit-packed pies, cobblers, and icebox cakes. Hot summer days call for low-effort sweet treats—but we’ve also included some special-occasion showstoppers for celebratory nights.

These summer desserts make the most of the season’s fleeting pleasures: ripe berries, stone fruit at its peak, bright and sunny citrus, cold cream, and crisp textures meant for hot evenings. Some recipes come together in minutes with little more than a knife and a freezer, while others are built for birthdays, dinner parties, and long holiday weekends. Whatever your pleasure, there’s a dessert here for you that feels distinctly suited to summer.

Jump ahead

Food

Rhubarb Double Chocolate Loaf Cake

Lots of rhubarb and chocolate chips in this cake!

Prep Time 5 minutes

Cook Time 1 hour

Course Dessert, Snack

Cuisine American

for the cake:

1 egg at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk at room temperature
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup sugar
pinch salt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups sliced rhubarb about 1 1/2 stalks

for the glaze:

1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the cake:

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour (or cocoa) a standard loaf pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. Set aside.
In a medium bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the egg, buttermilk, canola oil and vanilla. While the mixer is running, slowly stream in the dry ingredients and mix to combine.
Fold in chocolate chips and rhubarb. Pour into prepared pan, bake 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the pan comes out nearly clean. Unmold to a wire rack and cool.

Keyword cake, dessert, pantry baking

Rhubarb and chocolate is an underrated flavor combination. It’s similar to cherry and dark chocolate—tart and rich but with vegetal touch.

Rhubarb makes the cake really moist and slightly crumbly but who doesn’t love a craggy cake?

The beauty of a loaf cake is that it is quick to put together and quick to eat. Low commitment baking.

Food

The Best Immersion Blenders Will Save You Money and Counterspace

Braun’s 500-watt MultiQuick 7 is the Goldilocks of immersion blenders and a meal-prep MVP. It’s powerful, lightweight, has a comfortable grip, makes speed adjustments ridiculously easy, and excelled at all of the tests we put it through with no splashing and very little noise. It also comes with a number of attachments that only add to its versatility.

What we love: If we had to choose one word to describe the Braun MultiQuick 7 immersion blender, it’s easy. Everything about it makes meal-prep breezy and less of a chore. Unlike the All-Clad Corded Immersion Blender that topped this review in past years, the MultiQuick 7 is extremely lightweight and we never felt fatigued, even while performing multiple jobs in a row. The rubberized ergonomic handle provided a firm, comfortable grip as we powered through tasks, and Braun’s Easy SmartSpeed technology made switching speeds a sn: Squeeze the trigger-like control button tighter to speed things up and loosen your grip to slow things down.

The MultiQuick 7’s ActiveBlade technology, which allows the blade to move up and down during operation instead of remaining static, proved an incredible upgrade when prepping our soup and smoothies. The spinning stainless steel blade created a swirling vortex that effortlessly broke down carrots and frozen fruit without any suctioning to the bottom of the pot or the included blending container—an issue we experienced with several other models we tested.

Besides the container, the MultiQuick 7 comes with a whisk attachment, a puree attachment, and a food processor bowl. The whisk, which attached to the handle with a simple click, quickly produced a mountain of fluffy whipped cream and a creamy, perfectly emulsified aioli with no separation. It took just a few pulses of the chopper to create a he of finely chopped onions for our carrot soup (more on that below). Is the chopper better than a knife? Not necessarily, but we liked the added convenience.

What we’d leave: There really isn’t much we didn’t love about the MultiQuick 7 immersion blender; the blade and whisk both did a superior job in our tests. The chopper attachment, however, can be a little overzealous. Even though we only gave it a few pulses, our chopped onions were slightly mushy. They were fine for our carrot soup recipe, but be careful if you want more crunch in something like a salsa.

Speaking of attachments, this stick blender comes with a lot of extras and no container or bag for storing them. Immersion blenders are typically space savers, but these can actually clutter up a cabinet.

Pros:

Affordable
Simple design
Ergonomic handle
Blending jar doubles as measuring cup

Cons:

Less powerful motor
Requires more effort to break down hard, fibrous fruits and vegetables

Blending depth: 8″
Power: 300 watts
Power settings: 2
Attachments: Whisk attachment, measuring mixing cup
Warranty: Limited 1-year warranty

Food

13 Protein Bars Youll Actually Want to Eat

What we love: These bars are a great option for anyone who dislikes a typical dense protein bar. They’re crispy and light despite packing a hefty 15 grams of protein and 5 grams of fiber, and they truly do evoke that familiar lunchbox goodie. They’re available in a wide range of flavors (think Snickerdoodle, Matcha, Banana Bread, Vanilla, and Chocolate Chip), so I’d recommend picking up a variety pack if it’s your first time trying them.

What we’d leave: If whey protein powders tend to give you tummy troubles, we’d recommend steering clear of these bars.

How we tested protein bars

To test protein bars, we did what was necessary: tasted a lot of protein bars. To find those bars, we sourced recommendations from fellow BA staffers and browsed grocery store aisles to find new-to-us brands. We tried to taste multiple flavors of a given brand when possible and made notes on taste, texture, and nutritional content for each bar.

What the grocery cart of a protein bar taste tester looks like (can you tell we were testing prebiotic sodas too?)

Alaina Chou

Other protein bars we like

Most protein bars resemble a large eraser made up of thick, uniform paste. Gluten-free Kind Protein Bars, on the other hand, have actual texture and crunch. They’re quite similar to the original Kind bars in taste and pearance—they’re packed full of almonds and peanuts, but they have double the amount of protein and keep you full longer thanks to 5 grams of fiber from chicory roots. The main protein supplement here is soy protein isolate, so if you have any soy sensitivities, these should be avoided.

The Perfect Bar Dark Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter

Perfect Bar

Dark Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Protein Bar

According to contributor Nicki Campo in her 2021 review, the Perfect Bar completely lives up to its name. Made by Perfect Snacks, it vaguely resembles a chewy candy bar and also kind of tastes like one. With a powdered blend of 20 superfoods that include things like tomato and carrot, the bar keeps things healthy with lots of vitamins and minerals that’s balanced with an addictively sweet taste reminiscent of a Reese’s peanut butter cup courtesy of some freshly ground nut butter—which Campo also calls one of the brand’s secrets to perfect texture.

Think’s High Protein bars come in 13 flavors and have an impressive 15 or 20 grams of protein depending on which one you choose—plus they’re pretty easy to find out in the wild. These ranked in the middle of the pack in our taste test—not terrible, but they have a soy-protein-forward aftertaste we didn’t love. They’re a perfectly edible option should you come across them at a gas station or grocery store.

Misfits is similar to Barebells in that their bars read like high-protein candy bars. The flavors we tried were pretty tasty, but we ultimately liked Barebells flavor, texture, and protein content more and would opt for one over a Misfits bar if given the choice.

Mush

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Bar

You may know Mush from their single-serving overnight oats, available in flavors like Blueberry, ple Cinnamon, and Vanilla Bean in grocery stores next to the yogurt. The brand now has a line of protein bars with a similarly simple, whole-foods-focused ingredient list made up primarily of rolled oats. They’re bound with coconut oil, honey, and dates—no artificial sweeteners in sight. The protein comes from a milk protein concentrate and clocks in at a very solid 15 grams. We thoroughly enjoyed the taste and texture of these, though it is worth noting that like the brand’s other products, they need to be refrigerated. They come in three flavors: peanut butter chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, and mle cinnamon.

I was intrigued by these whey-based bars because of their incredibly short (3–5) ingredient list. They’re essentially whey protein isolate bound together by nuts and honey, and while that may sound gross, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of these bars. That said, I wouldn’t necessarily reach for them over any of the top picks on this list—I found the flavor a bit flat and thought these could’ve benefitted from a dash of sea salt.

The best way I can describe Pure Protein bars is that they taste like a quintessential protein bar—you know, a chewy brick made up of protein and miscellaneous processed ingredients that’s relatively tasty (if very unnatural). I didn’t mind the flavor of these, but they were outperformed by the bars that made our top picks.

Food

One Night at the Most Interesting Dinner Party in the World

More hors d’oeuvres are stationed on two large tables on the far side of the room. The first, anchored by an ice sculpture, is flanked by freshly shucked oysters topped with buttery, orange uni on one side and a server doling out caviar bumps on the other. In their gowns and bowties, guests giddily slurp mounds of glinting caviar off the back of their hand.

The other table garners more of a crowd, as it features a cornucopia of less traditional gala fare: African blue tilia, silk worm pupae served on a slice of cucumber, meal worms lain across each other in a delicate X, chubby grubs on a skewer, shiny cave cockroaches, two types of larvae, mopani worms, and, the grand finale, a spiny roast iguana. The crowd swarms the table, peering down at the adventure foods and excitedly asking each other what they’d tried and how it tasted. It isn’t long until the spread is picked clean.

Interesting is the refrain of the evening. Nearly everyone I speak with mentions that a major benefit of their membership is getting to know so many interesting people.

I chat with one such interesting person near the center of the room. My claim to fame was I did the world’s first skydive over Mount Everest, he tells me. Why? Because you can. And because the mountain was there. When I google his name later, I find his website, where he describes himself as an astronaut, an adventurer and explorer, a philanthropist, entrepreneur, global financier, author and private island owner. Equal parts dreamer and financier, it would seem.

The Bold News

The Best Bars in Atlanta Right Now

Food

The Best Bars in Atlanta Right Now

Food

37 Summer Desserts Thatll Sweeten Even the Hottest Days

Food

Rhubarb Double Chocolate Loaf Cake