Belle Bar, Chef Joey Ward’s newest concept at his Poncey-Highland address, opens this summer on the recently weatherproofed Southern Belle patio, with seating for up to 100 guests and no reservation required. Getting a table at Georgia Boy, the Michelin Guide-recommended tasting menu at the same location, requires booking exactly 28 days out at noon, the moment slots open for each service.
His team has fitted the patio with a 30-foot metal roof and roll-up fabric walls, turning a previously seasonal outdoor space into a year-round venue. The build-out creates the most accessible entry point yet at one of Atlanta’s most acclaimed restaurant buildings, one designed for the neighbor who wants a seat at this kitchen without planning four weeks ahead.
A Covered Patio Built to Stay Open
The transformation centers on the roof. A 30-foot-tall metal structure fitted with skylights was installed overhead, keeping the space daylit and sheltered from Atlanta’s weather swings throughout the year. Fabric walls hang at the perimeter and roll up on warm days to let the breeze through, making the venue functional across shoulder seasons rather than just at the peak of summer. That year-round operational window is significant for a concept that depends on walk-up traffic rather than advance reservations to fill seats.
Below the canopy, the design builds a garden-in-the-city atmosphere. Concrete floors are painted dark green to suggest grass, then layered with colorful rugs. Artificial turf sits beneath communal picnic tables, and faux ivy, azaleas, and hanging plant baskets fill the perimeter alongside string lights strung through the canopy overhead. The combined effect reads as a backyard garden transposed to a covered urban patio.
- 100 guests: maximum capacity of the redesigned patio space
- 30 feet: height of the new metal roof, fitted with skylights for ambient daylight
- 3 concepts: now operating from a single Ponce de Leon kitchen
- 0 reservations: the bar is entirely first-come, first-serve
A large drink rail runs along one edge, built for the standing-room atmosphere a walk-in bar depends on. Combined, the covered structure, the garden-style interior, and the communal seating format push the patio from weather-dependent overflow into a venue with its own year-round draw.
Small Plates, Skewers, and One Caviar Option
The food list is built for sharing across a patio table rather than composed courses. Portions lean toward hand-held and dippable formats, with proteins in skewer and burger form and oysters anchoring a raw bar element at the top of the menu.
- Oysters on the half shell
- House-made chicharrónes
- Char siu chicken skewers
- The popular A-Town burger
- French onion dip with an optional caviar bump
- Bistro fries with garlic, parsley, and truffle aioli
Desserts follow the same made-with-intention register: a strawberry tart with cardamom streusel, ube cheesecake paired with magnolia sorbet, and chocolate cream pie topped with bruleed bananas. The ube cheesecake reflects a continuing interest in multicultural flavor combinations, a thread that runs through all three concepts sharing this address.
The optional caviar bump on the French onion dip is the single nod to the kitchen’s fine-dining pedigree. It sits on the same list as bistro fries and chicken skewers, available to any walk-in without a tasting-menu spend or a reservation to qualify. The pairing manages to feel playful rather than pretentious, which fits the patio’s broader register.
The A-Town burger has built a consistent following at the main dining room. Moving it onto a no-reservation menu makes it available on impulse, arguably for the first time, and for many in the neighborhood, that casual accessibility is the actual draw rather than any individual item on the list.
Eight Cocktails and a Capri Sun Riff
The drink program centers on eight seasonal cocktails, with at least two featuring spirits from ASW Distillery, Atlanta’s craft bourbon and whiskey producer. The distillery’s Resurgens Rye already appears as a cocktail ingredient in the Southern Belle dining room, and ASW has collected more than 10 Double Gold Medals at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition since 2018. The existing relationship makes the partnership a natural extension rather than a new arrangement for the kitchen.
There will be a riff on a Capri Sun, a couple beers, and patio-pounder wines for easy drinking.
Ward described the bar program in those terms, setting a deliberately unpretentious register for a walk-in patio sharing a building with a Michelin-recommended tasting menu. The Capri Sun reference signals nostalgia and ease over sophistication. Beer and what he calls ‘patio-pounder wines’ keep the list short and decisions fast, calibrated for guests who want to settle in without working through a cocktail menu to get there.
Jazz on Wednesdays, Throwbacks on Thursdays
The entertainment calendar runs across three recurring night formats, each targeting a different kind of guest and a different reason to show up.
- Wednesdays, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: a live jazz band performs on the patio
- Thursdays: DJs spin throwback hits with a lean toward 1990s music
- Yacht Rock nights: thematic DJ evenings scheduled on a recurring basis through the season
The Wednesday jazz slot functions as a mid-week destination anchor. An early 7 p.m. start hits the after-work window, giving the neighborhood a reason to stop in on a night when bars without live programming rely on foot traffic alone. Two hours of jazz alongside the drink rail is a softer commitment than a dinner reservation and a more specific draw than a standard Tuesday happy hour.
Yacht Rock nights add the kind of repeating specialty programming that converts first-time visitors into regulars. Guests who come once for the genre-specific DJ set know when to return, giving the walk-in format a calendar anchor it cannot generate from spontaneous arrivals alone. The Thursday throwback sets follow a similar logic, positioning the patio as a warm-up option for the weekend without pushing into the late-night territory where Atlanta’s club circuit dominates.
Ward’s Three Concepts from One Kitchen
Belle Bar completes a trifecta at the Plaza on Ponce address where Southern Belle’s critically acclaimed New Southern dining room opened in November 2019. Georgia Boy arrived within days of the flagship, connected through a bookshelf passage that swings open into a private dining room for the tasting-menu experience. The new patio bar now takes the outdoor space, rounding out all three parts of the building.
| Concept | Format | Reservation Policy | Capacity | Signature Element |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southern Belle | Shareable New Southern dishes | Recommended | 45 seats indoors | Seasonally sourced multicultural menu, salon interior |
| Georgia Boy | Multi-course blind tasting menu | Required, 28 days in advance | 8 guests per seating | Michelin Guide recommendation, bookshelf entrance |
| Belle Bar | Small bites and cocktails | None, first-come | Up to 100 guests | Covered garden patio, live music three nights |
The three-tier structure gives the kitchen three distinct audiences without requiring a second location. The two dining-room concepts draw the Atlanta diner who plans; the patio bar draws whoever arrives that evening and finds an open seat.
A Georgia native who spent six years as executive chef at Gunshow, the Glenwood Park restaurant operated by Atlanta chef Kevin Gillespie, Ward is a James Beard-nominated chef. His tasting-menu concept holds a Michelin Guide recommendation, and the flagship dining room was named as a tribute to the strong-willed Southern women in his life, including his wife Emily, a co-owner of the restaurant. All three concepts share a single kitchen at 1043 Ponce de Leon Avenue NE, two doors from the historic Plaza Theater.
The patio concept joins the address without a reservation system to fill seats in advance. Whether it builds a consistent neighborhood crowd or draws mainly from interest generated by the dining-room reputation depends on whether Atlanta’s walk-in culture extends to a Poncey-Highland block more accustomed to booked dinners than spontaneous drop-ins.
