Breakfast at Barney’s: As Good As Edible Gold
In 2022, Money Magazine crowned Atlanta one of America’s best places to live and work, drawing particular attention to her diversity, thriving middle class, and reputation for being a great please for startup businesses — all characteristics of this city that I both love and loath. Mostly the latter because this Atlanta metro area has always seemed plagued with blind ambition and entrepreneurial experimentation willing to compromise quality to keep up with rapid changing and population growth.
So the other day, when my husband texted me a picture of a plate of eggs, salmon croquets, and various culinary crowd-pleasers with the caption, “…you have to try this place. Breakfast at Barney’s. It’s different,” my indifference toward another breakfast place raving about their versions of, oh, shrimp ‘grits or homemade biscuits clouded my willingness to give it a chance. I’m not one to subject myself to more-of-the-same.
But I did. And I can say with full confidence that I am better for it.
“This place” in my husband’s text was Breakfast at Barney’s (BAB). A contemporary, art deco diner welcoming a diverse clientele (from construction workers to business professionals). It sits on the cusp of the Edgewood and Grant Park neighborhoods in an area where rich hippies could certainly afford to splurge on fine dining, but prefer burger dives and taco Tuesdays to white tablecloths. It’s one intersection shy impressive wealth, and one wrong turn away from crippling housing insecurity — which could explain the armed security guard-slash-doorman who greeted me at the golden entryway upon arrival. I wasn’t sure whether to be horrified or impressed, a conclusion I would come to as my visit progressed…
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A server who isn’t mine (with corn rows and champagne flutes dangling from her fingers) checks in with me on her way to somewhere in the restaurant.
“How does everything taste?”
She finds me relaxed against the back of a blue-velvet chair sucking down a virgin watermelon mojito packed with ice and mint leaves.
My first ever mocktail.
“Really good,” I answer. She gives me a nod, then disappears into a cleverly hidden corridor behind the bar.
I get back to bopping my head, internally singing along at the top of my lungs to Jill Scott crooning from the speakers, Is it the waaaay, you loooooove, me bay-baaaay…
Her throwback jam transports me back to my dorm room at Hampton, filling my girls in on everything that went down when I snuck into the boys’ dorm to see “J,” a wide receiver with the intellectual capacity of toaster, but very skilled expressing himself physically. “The Way,” by Jill Scott had been playing in his room the night I snuck in — and in all of our rooms any time we were in our feelings about love. Black love, and understanding our people.
This is what Breakfast at Barney’s is. A cocoon of nostalgia for reminiscing and catching up with friends, snuggled up to contemporary art deco decor, good food, and all the music millennial elders jammed to coming of age in the ’90s. An experience specific to Atlanta’s given its thriving black population, and history.
“Has anyone ever tried the golden pancake tower?” I ask Ty as she clears away my empty plate. She’s got a ponytail poof in her hair. Her edges are slicked down to form waves currently framing her intrigued expression.
“Oh yeah. People get that all the time,” she delivers with great pride.
“They do?” I ask, squinting toward the menu I kept at the table to download their Spotify playlist. She continues on about their party room and how the thousand-dollar menu item, the “Mansa Musa Tower,” promises a bottle of Ace of Spades champagne (Yes, that Ace of Spades. The one they spray on scantily clad women in rap videos, or serve you at strip clubs with sparklers shooting their loads at the tops of bottles to VIP tables making it rain atop lap dancers). This Mansa Musa feast is filled with fried lobster, and pancakes topped with edible gold flake. A serving large enough to feed up to twelve people, according to Ty.
Breakfast at Barney’s isn’t just a restaurant. It’s an experiment in black joy. Calls itself a daytime social club even though no such membership or club actually exists there. It wants you to feel good — to feel seen. BAB exposes black joy, puts blackness on display beyond slavery and an existence that often time seems too defined by the civil rights era, struggle, and suffering.
Breakfast at Barney’s successfully embraces who we are when the world isn’t looking. Whether showing back-to-back reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on the flat screens at the bar, or offering valet parking for 5-bucks because they want luxury to be affordable, or proudly informing diners that their playlist is curated daily by the owner and can be downloaded on Spotify via QR code on the menu.
I can’t say any of the extravagance it assumes we require is necessary for a quick breakfast before the day ensues. But it’s obvious that they want everyone who walks in to feel welcomed at the highest levels — a comforting notion in this age that seems to reward self-promotion and giving zero f**ks about good hospitality.
