AJC: Best family-friendly brunch in metro Atlanta
Ration & Dram is all chic minimalism: tawny leather stools, mottled concrete floors, butcher block tabletops and sunny alternative standards like the Shins on the Pandora. But, if you’re looking, you’ll see signs of youth. A stashed booster seat. Bathroom door signage welcoming man, woman and/or child. Mason jars equipped with purple plastic sippie tops.
Quietly slurping away on these one Saturday morning were the very young sons of Dave and Mellonie Rollo, who live in Edgewood and, as Dave put it, “are not Chuck E. Cheese people.”
“We come here all the time,” he said, just before his very tall, very dark beer arrived. “The food is great.”
As an afterthought, he pointed to the tin box at his 5-year-old’s elbow. “And they do have crayons.”
Ration & Dram also has a kids menu, but one gets the sense that the Rationers only created it so they could give dishes cheeky names like the Skull & Crossbones. (It’s eggs, bacon and cheddar on toast.)
Like their parents, kids can imbibe “by the glass” or “by the bottle.” The choices include freshly blended fruit-and-veggie juice and Blenheim ginger ale.
Most refreshingly, for those who can’t stand the sight of another chicken finger, the kid fare — like the fluffy buttermilk biscuit with light, herb-scented sausage sawmill gravy — is also on the grown-up menu, with only a few variations.
The kids yogurt parfait, for instance, features spiced apples, while the grown-ups get strawberries, sorghum and candied pecans. The steak and egg skillet comes without chimichurri for those who can’t yet pronounce chimichurri. And only younguns are offered French toast, though the tidy little triangles are minimally sweetened and so deliciously custardy that the adults are bound to steal some bites.
Ration and Dram, 130 Arizona Ave., Atlanta. 678-974-8380, rationanddram.com.
Brunch: 11 a. m.–4 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays.
