The term ‘sports bar’ has devolved in perception to raise images of dank, under-designed bars that serve piss beer. Sure, many sports bars are drink-able; meaning I’d be willing to drink there if it means I can watch the game. But I don’t enjoy it.
However, in a push to bring the sports bar concept into the modern-age of architecture and amenities, Jeffrey Beers International— acclaimed for designing iconic gathering places in cities around the world— has been enlisted by The Cordish Companies to design a 30,000-square-foot super sports bar at SunTrust Park in Atlanta, Georgia.
Dubbed, Live! At The Battery, this sprawling sports bar concept housed in the ballpark of the Atlanta Braves includes a two-level tavern called Sports & Social, a restaurant curated by award-winning chef Todd English, and a cowboy-cool bar/lounge called PBR Atlanta that includes a huge dance floor, mechanical bull, and balcony firepit lounge area.
If you just got snooty at the mention of a mechanical bull, you’re better off going to a bougie cocktail bar and watching the game at home.
It’s safe to say, Live! At The Battery is nothing like the sports bars of the past. Instead, it’s a melding of the best, most exciting elements of what a sports bar experience should offer, given room to breathe in a massive space that is dripping with entertainment.
From the outside, this sports bar complex appears more like a mall for beer-and-steak-loving sports fans. Inside, it’s a mecca of food and entertainment, where you and your buddies can catch the Broncos-Cowboys game on a 40-foot diagonal high-definition screen in Sports & Social (brush up on your fantasy football trash talk here), then take a break from your seated shlump to play in-house games like ping pong, air hockey, foosball, and shufflepuck. Expansive garage-style doors on the side of Sports & Social open out to a spacious patio that lets in the fresh air and sunlight.
Then, after you’ve schooled everyone in foosball (GOAAAAL!), grab a table at Todd English Tavern, where the stunning open kitchen gives view to the badass wood-fired grill where you can watch chains that raise and lower meats into the fire. Yeah, meats and fire!
The influence for the menu comes from English spending his youth in Atlanta, and is defined as Southern Heritage with international influences. Other than the Heritage Pork Belly and Maple-Glazed Spoonbread for starters, we’re drooling for the classic Cast Iron Flank Steak. (When’s the last time you had a good steak? Exactly.)
Nope, not time to call it a night yet.
After dinner, shuffle over to PBR Atlanta— A Coors Banquet Bar— to relax on the patio with an aperitif brew or, if you’re feeling rowdy, line dancing and bull riding.
Apart from all the food and entertainment options being in one central location, what we dig so much about the massive sports bar complex that is Live! At The Battery is its seamless blending of rustic man-cave with clean sophisticated cocktail lounge.
It’s hard to believe until you see… and taste… and play, since it ain’t nothing like the sports bars you’ve been to in the past. Those sports bars are in 2017 while this one’s living in 2037.
