Goodbye, Eats: Longtime customers have a final meal at Atlanta institution
In a city constantly changing, Eats stayed the same.
For 32 years, the restaurant on Ponce de Leon Avenue served affordable comfort food.
It was no frills, come are you are, customers said, with heaping plates of food served on red cafeteria trays.
But Saturday, the restaurant cooked up its last batch of jerk chicken and Southern-style vegetables. A line snaked out the door, curving along the sidewalk, with people waiting more than an hour for one last meal.
Owner Bob Hatcher on Oct. 3 announced he would close Eats after more than three decades in business. Over the past two weeks, he said he’s been overwhelmed by an influx of customers forming lines out the door and stopping by for selfies. Staff was sent on runs for more food and supplies.
“It’s been chaos,” Hatcher, 73, said Saturday, donning a shirt with the street name Ponce de Leon. “But I am just totally humbled by the love I’m getting. I mean, if too much love was fatal, I’d be dead by now.”
Longtime customers came out Saturday to say goodbye to the counter-service restaurant, memorable for its walls covered in license plates and windows peering onto Ponce.
Scott Sanders, an entertainment attorney who lives in Virginia-Highland, said he’s eaten at Eats nearly every week since it opened in 1993.
“It’s just been an institution, the very best baked chicken you’ve ever eaten in your life,” said Sanders, a fan of the lemon pepper flavor. He said Eats would attract everyone from college students to construction workers and police officers.
“It’s an iconic place that’s going to be missed,” he said. “This really was a restaurant for the people — just healthy, good food at a reasonable price.”
Troy McKinney of Decatur was devastated. He’s come to Eats since 1996, and on Saturday, he recollected birthday and Father’s Day meals spent there.
“Ever since they announced the closing, I’ve come here every day,” McKinney said. “I usually come two or three times a week, anyway. It’s just sad.”
McKinney, who’d order the jerk chicken, rice and corn on the cob, lamented the changes along Ponce, which has in recent years lost other longtime establishments, such as breakfast spot Java Jive.
“It’s taking a vibe away from the whole area,” McKinney said.
Ponce, long known as a corridor steeped in subculture, has become more polished in the decades since Eats opened.
The Atlanta Beltline remade a former rail line into the Eastside Trail, spurring a wave of development in the area — such as the transformation of a hulking, former Sears warehouse into Ponce City Market.
Little by little, much of the grittiness has been scrubbed away. Ponce has become one of the city’s most expensive office markets and a target for expanding restaurants and retailers.
“It’s just changed,” said Hatcher, who had opened Eats in a former swingers club with then-partner Charlie Kerns (who still owns The Local down the street). “When we opened, there were still prostitutes working this corner. I’d see them fixing their hair in the reflection in the window.”
Now, there’s a Pottery Barn across the street.
“Atlanta is just becoming bougie,” said Peter Garbanzo, who more than a decade ago would frequent Eats as a student at the former Southern Polytechnic State University in Marietta.
“We would come down and hang out in Atlanta all the time,” Garbanzo said. “This was the cheapest place to eat.”
He could get an order of the ziti pasta, and “that would feed me for two or three days,” he said.
David Jones of Dunwoody also got acquainted with Eats as a student at Georgia Tech. It was the early 1990s and “the number of calories per dollar” mattered, he said.
“Even after we graduated college, we used to come back here like once or twice a year, just for old times’ sake,” Jones said. “It’s a tradition.”
Hatcher said he decided to close Eats because it was no longer profitable. Construction in the area made the restaurant harder to access because of traffic lane closures, he said.
The COVID-19 pandemic also took its toll. More people worked at home, and Eats lost some of its lunch crowd, Hatcher said.
“For whatever reason, it just got so slow,” Hatcher said. “We were losing money.”
Since announcing Eats would shutter, Hatcher said he’s been overwhelmed with the outpouring from the community. He said he will miss the regulars who have become his friends over 30-plus years.
One family, who years ago gave Hatcher a picture they took in Washington, wearing Eats-themed shirts, came and asked for it back, he said.
“I hadn’t seen them in decades. I look up at the line, and there they are,” he said. “They came from Maryland just to come here one more time.”
Other people, Hatcher said, have tried to talk him out of closing. He plans to sell the property, which he has owned since the late 1990s.
“It is bittersweet,” he said. “But I realize it’s kind of like a funeral. A lot of these people who are coming don’t live around here anymore. It’s just they remember it fondly and they want to come back.”
Sanders, the Virginia-Highland resident, said he’s seen the long lines since Hatcher announced the closing.
“It shows how much love the city has for this,” he said. “It’s going to leave a hole.”
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