Southern Belle

Southern Belle is chef Joey Ward's New American restaurant at 1043 Ponce de Leon Avenue in Poncey-Highland, two doors from the historic Plaza Theatre, opened in autumn 2019. Ward spent years as executive chef at Gunshow before going out on his own, and has been recognised by the James Beard Foundation; the restaurant is recommended in the MICHELIN Guide. A passageway connects it to Georgia Boy, his tasting-menu counterpart, so the two operate as a single building with two very different ambitions.

Its zero-proof programme is among the most serious in the American South, and the numbers are the argument. The bar has historically kept ten to twelve spirit-free cocktails on at any one time — not a token pair, but a list long enough that a non-drinker can have a different drink every course — and offers a non-alcoholic pairing alongside the wine pairing for the kitchen's tasting fare. Resy called it perhaps the queen of nonalcoholic drinks in the city, which is a fair reading of the effort involved in maintaining a list that size.

The drinks reward the attention. Fugazi builds botanical spirits with a floral aperitivo and elderflower. Secret Siesta runs an aperitif and an agave spirit against grapefruit and habanero, using chilli where a lesser drink would use sugar. Amoreena is amaretto, pineapple and lemon. Purple Rain is the one that gets written about: the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described tannic blueberry and the zing of ginger mingling with pea flower, and the colour turning to an earthy indigo when the lemon juice hits.

That tannic note is the technical point. Tannin gives a drink grip and a dry finish, which is precisely what alcohol contributes to a cocktail and precisely what most zero-proof drinks lack. Building it back in deliberately — through tea, blueberry skins or vinegar — is the difference between a drink that stands up to a plate of food and one that does not. Southern Belle is the Atlanta restaurant that most reliably gets that right.