Decatur’s Greatest Tables
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The Top 5 Decatur Restaurants
Kimball House
Kimball House opened in 2013 at 303 East Howard Avenue inside the meticulously restored 1890s railway depot that once served the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company's Decatur line. The room — about ninety covers across a long central marble-topped raw bar, two side dining rooms with original heart-pine floors, and a fifteen-seat covered patio facing the platform garden — was the project of chefs Bryan Rackley and Miles Macquarrie, both alumni of Atlanta's Holeman & Finch crew and both James Beard semifinalists in their respective categories. The mood is curated Edwardian: brass fixtures, gas-lamp sconces, marble-topped service stations, and a back bar that the Atlanta cocktail community has measured itself against for a decade.
The Deer and the Dove
The Deer and the Dove opened in 2019 at 155 Sycamore Street, one block off the Decatur Square, in a high-ceilinged former hardware-store building whose central architectural feature is the open wood-burning hearth that runs the kitchen's protein programme. The room — about eighty covers across a main dining hall, a small bar room with eight stools facing the hearth, and a back patio that opens in spring — was the project of chef-owner Terry Koval, an Atlanta-trained cook who won the James Beard Foundation Best Chef Southeast medal in 2023 and whose New York Times notice put the kitchen onto the Michelin Inspector radar before the inaugural Atlanta list.
The White Bull
The White Bull opened in 2018 at 123 East Court Square, on the south side of the Decatur Square, in a corner storefront with a long bar room facing the street and a small main dining room behind. The project of chef-owner Pat Pascarella — a New-Jersey-raised cook trained through Atlanta's Italian-American school and a working presence on the Atlanta Magazine and AJC critic lists for a decade — was built around a single working idea: house-milled grain. The mill, set in a back-of-house pasta laboratory behind a glass-front service window, grinds heritage red-fife wheat and rye into flour the morning of service, and the bread and pasta programme runs on the day's grind rather than dry-stock flour.
No. 246
No. 246 opened in 2011 at 129 East Ponce de Leon Avenue, two blocks west of the Decatur Square, as Ford Fry's first restaurant outside Atlanta city limits. The name references the original 1900s plat number of the land beneath the corner building. The room — about a hundred and forty covers across a long bar room facing East Ponce, a main dining hall arranged in deep banquettes, a small wood-fired pizza counter at the back, and a private mezzanine dining suite — was designed by the Atlanta firm Square Feet Studio in the warm-modern-trattoria mode that Fry's group has been refining since the original JCT Kitchen on Westside. Chef Drew Belline has run the kitchen since the opening year.
Leon's Full Service
Leon's Full Service opened in 2010 at 131 East Ponce de Leon Avenue, next door to No. 246, inside the converted body of a 1920s Standard Oil service station that gives the restaurant its name and its working architecture. The room — about eighty covers across a main dining hall with the original service-station's roll-up garage doors opened in warm weather, a front patio that runs onto the sidewalk, and a covered back patio with picnic-style tables — was the project of Atlanta restaurateurs Lisa Hood, Crystal Sullivan, and Ron Eyester. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has carried Leon's on its Top 50 list every year since 2012.