And here we are on our last full day in Atlanta, on Easter Sunday yea boi. I was afraid that things might be closed today but fortunately it is not a statutory holiday for the city or the state which is great. With that said, this day, much like yesterday is another bonus sight seeing day so it’s fairly lax with no real goals other than to eat and see things. Let’s see how today went.

We start our day walking pass a nearby church on Sunday, after Easter service no less. Interesting I suppose that is to say the least with everyone dressed in their Sunday’s Best. Hmm.

Our destination today is Ponce City Market, which is a kind of refurbished old sears industry building converted to have shops and food stuff. On our way there we pass by Mary Macs Tea Room, which was originally part of our places that we wanted to eat at for their fried chicken, considered one of the best in Atlanta. Unfortunately, earlier this month they had a leak in their roof and it collapsed in, shutting down operations for the time being. While they said they will fix and repair the old historic building and restaurant, the timing is unfortunate as we won’t be able to visit.

Another pit stop on our longer than usual walk is this Krispy Kreme on the main road. Haven’t had this shit in ages so let’s see what they got.

Inside we see remnants of volleyball families and groups coming to this place right after church, interesting. According to the white sign on the back; this particular Krispy Kreme has existed since 1965 and has been a staple of the Atlanta community for decades but burned down twice in it’s history, most recently in 2021 but because of it’s significance and love by the community it was rebuilt again in 2023, just last year in partnership with Shaq, yea the basketball player; he owns this particular Krispy Kreme apparently now. Wow.

The selection of fresh made doughnuts, far more selection and types than what they offered in Canada and failed more or less. It kind of boggles my mind that they launched in Canada and only really sold just the original glazed type. They might have been far more successful if they had this spread.

Krispy Kreme doughnuts are super sweet, regardless of what type you have and you can only eat so much I suppose. Aside from this combo which includes a small coffee and two doughnuts, we also brought their version of doughnut holes in a cup, kind of like timbits I guess. Not bad.

While the walk to our destination is largely empty with nothing of value to be seen, nor any walk-able sort of retail or food stores, there is occasionally some nice wall art from time to time like this one. Noice.

After a longer than normal walk to our destination and a minor side quest to a petsmart store as requested, we arrive at the back entrance to Ponce City market.

The building itself has something like 7 or 8 floors but only the first 2 and the top roof have been refurbished into food shops and other stores. One being this sushi Japanese food place. They also have some old relics and artifacts around too for good measure.

The time right now is just past noon so prime time for lunch, although it appears empty now, within the next half hour it got fairly busy which is good to see that people actual visit and eat at this place.

A model of the entire building shows how big it really is in scale. As mentioned, this was once a sears publishing building for industry I think for their catalogue back in the day, I think.

After a quick scan of the two levels of the market, the bulk of the food places that are successful are ethnic in flavor such as Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Cuban, while they also serve more traditional American fare like burgers, pizza and of course fried chicken.

A view from the second level shows the main construct of the building, looks nice.

Our first taste of today is once again some fried chicken. I wanted a small sampling of some other fried chicken as opposed to what we had yesterday at Gus, so I got a couple of pieces to try out. It was very different than Gus’s still very good but Gus’s is far better. This chicken style is kind of like a much better KFC in terms of flavor and texture. Good shit, but Gus is still better.

My sister got for her first food item got from the same place a biscuit and fried chicken sandwich. She says it was pretty good.

I read online that this Indian place called Botiwalla is the best restaurant as Ponce city market so I decided to give it a try.

I got their lamb boti kaboob wrap, shit’s pretty good although a bit expensive for what it was at like $14 ish. Still very good, considering this is supposed to be Indian street food. I can see this getting popular elsewhere if they ever decide to make it a franchise/chain. I also got a ginger slush drink from them that had vodka in it, it was a bit too much for me to be honest and I got quite tipsy for the next hour or so, my mistake, dannng.

My sister got a Mexican coke because she says it tastes different from regular coke. I had some, it does a bit but I am not sure for sure what makes it different. She says it’s more cinnamon or spice flavor but I am not sure since I was mildly drunk at the time.

Along with the mexican coke we shared some Tacos from the same place, one was charcoal grilled chicken and the other was pork el pastor. While both were good, the chicken was better. Charcoal makes every meat takes better.

On the second floor there was more artisan artsy novelty shops and stores such as this. Not a lot but still interesting nevertheless.

One such store sold basically mystery gacha boxes for vintage old shit of a somewhat random nature.

Basically just pick one of these cards and buy it, the women will go into the boxes and pull out your one of a kind trinket or antique from the numbered boxes. Each are priced differently based off the item of course and range from like $20-$150 for example.

My sister couldn’t resist the gacha nature of this gimmick and wanted to buy one but wasn’t sure which one. With my suggestion I said to get the Iron House card, and as expected, the item was an iron horse. Yep, no false advertising here, noice.

There was also a booth with some Asian guy drawing some nice dragon paintings and artwork, looks pretty rad and osaka bling like really. Cool.

He also sold items like this too, which is pretty jokes.

After walking into some other stairs we ended up in an open area where people just chilled and walked. The sign up here was nice.

Proof of existence. The residents of Atlanta also seem to use these electric scooters quite alot too, which is interesting hmm.

Within the open space there was also a large Kroger supermarket, which was kind of odd but at the same time, makes total sense. It’s a market after all, might as well sell real groceries to people as well. Noice.

There was alot more places that I did not share at Ponce City Market but we decided to be special and pay $15 per person to gain access to ride the special elevator to the top of the building. What we found there was nothing but bootleg carnival games, a mini putting course, two bar/restaurants and a large metal slide that wasn’t a water slide. Disappointing. I kind of can’t believe they were charging people $15 per person just to access this shit in which you have to pay more money to be able to do anything to begin with.

What surprised me was that there was people paying for this and going to eat here. Sure maybe for a special event or occasion but I certainly wouldn’t have paid that price if I just wanted to see what’s here. The view is decent but still not worth the price of admission.

After the scam of an elevator ride to the top of the building, we decided to head out to the front of the building. Night signage and shit. We walked all the way here so we were pretty tired and decided to use Uber to go back to the hotel. Good choice I would say.

After resting for about an hour or so at the hotel we headed out to walk to our final meal of our trip, this nice Korean BBQ place called Park 27 in upper midtown.

Despite being Easter, it was still open, although not busy at all, which is perfect for us. The decor of this place was pretty good too. I could tell the workers/owners were also real Korean too, good shit.

They had a wide selection of a la carte meats you can pick, even Japanese Wagyu and other combo sets but in the end, we got one of two all you can eat options, yea boi. Of course we picked all you can eat.

They asked us to choose the first three meats off the ayce menu, which this being beef brisket, sliced pork belly and beef bulgogi. Wow, pretty nice arrangement and order amount.

They gave you the option if you wanted them to cook your food for you or if you can do it yourself, being who we are, we cooked our own meat. The selection of side dishes are quite large, they just give it to you without asking which is nice. They also have 4 different dipping sauces for the meat which is very different than what we are used too but they were delcious because they changed up the flavor profile of all the meats depending on the sauces. From left to right, miso paste, spicy gochujang sweet mix, green herb sauce, roasted garlic and sesame oil dip. Good shit but the best sauces was definitely the green and garlic sesame oil dip, so good.

After we had our first round we ordered the next three meats, boston pork steak, chicken bulogi and spicy squid. As per real Korean measures, they were not cut for us, but they gave us scissors to do so to our liking later, noice.

The spicy squid dish was already cooked for us because yea, probably not suitable to cook this on our own, nice. Too much filler shit tho like mushrooms and onion. Not bad.

This is the state our table was in when we ordered our last 3 meats, which was a mirror of the first round, except with pork bulgogi. The pork bulgogi turns out to to be best one yet and the beef and pork just as good. There was a couple of items that we didn’t’ order like pork jowl but overall we were stuffed and just barely managed to finish all of our meats. Good shit. Per person, for the ayce course we picked it was $48 per person USD, which is kind of expensive but I think worth it. Very good and a fitting last dinner in Atlanta.

On the walk back to our hotel, feeling stuffed and heavy with meat and such we see the lights turn on the streets, heh, too bad there is hardly anyone walking around town at this hour, considering it’s Easter and all. Nice view of that building however tho.

With that said, we had a pretty chill last day of shopping and mild exploration at Ponce City Market which I think was overall worth the visit, minus the trip to the roof, which was totally not worth it. We’ll be back in Toronto in no time and I can probably deliver my final thoughts on this trip and of Atalanta in general tomorrow in the travel day retrospect I suppose. Let’s see how things go, noice.