Rice, Beans and Offers of Green: Eclectic 'Eats' Restaurant

Driving through Midtown this week around lunchtime, noticing a familiar business on Ponce in the shadow of buildings, old and new: The venerable, eclectic Eats, a restaurant serving comfort food headlined by their much loved “Jerk Chicken.”

Eats is the creation of the now semi-retired Bob Hatcher. At 74, he has turned over the daily operation to others, including his son, Stephen.

“When my dad began this business in 1993, I don’t think he could have imagined we would still be here in 2025. But we are.”

32 years ago, when Eats first opened, Ponce was a chaotic mix of small business and hard-scrabble lives. Finding a lunch or dinner option was vexing and options were limited. With his restaurant concept, influenced by Tortillas (friend Charles Kerns), Mr. Hatcher offered vegetables cooked without animal fats in tandem with favorites like meatloaf, chicken alfredo, and spaghetti. Really good food for a fair price.

On this mid-September afternoon lunch rush, men in ties are sitting in booths. In front of me, a gentleman wears expensive loafers while Barry Manilow wafts through the audio speakers. 

Change remains a concurrent theme in Midtown. 

Eats was always a place frequented by many of us who worked nights in the 1990s, when the Midtown dining options were fast food, Piccadilly or Morrison’s. The only Eats concern was finding a parking spot to ensure personal safety. 

It’s hard to explain the environment Eats provided years ago, artists, photographers, writers worked here. Ponce was chock full o’ characters. Gentrification of the Old Fourth Ward seemed as far away as an Atlanta professional sports championship. 

The area had a very unique culture of people and attitude. Totally unrecognizable from modern Midtown Atlanta, before the Olympics, when most everything seemed in some sort of decay.

The restaurant walls are covered with old framed photographs of faces long gone from the neighborhood; bohemian Ponce in 2025 is but a distant memory.

“We have a very loyal base of clients, those who have been with us for years,” offered the younger Hatcher. “Bob knew how to run the place; he knew what he was doing.”

Eats always felt like a Grateful Dead concert: a whiff of cannabis on the guy standing in front to order, Birkenstocks, tee shirts, Braves hats. But like the neighborhood, change has been begrudgingly embraced. Today less Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, more Chris Martin and Coldplay, “it’s definitely different around here today,” laughed Stephen. “It’s not what it used to be.”

Little around this old stucco Eats building is what it used to be. No one could have imagined the Old Fourth Ward would become one of the hottest real estate ZIP codes in the country.

Fancy hotels, upscale restaurants serving $25 cocktails, high-rise buildings, exorbitant parking rates, a new rising community lifted by the Beltline. But the Hatchers are still serving rice and black beans.

For how long?

“We get that question and (real estate) offers all the time,” said Stephen, “Dad bought the building and property in 1998.”

I asked if he thought the family would be rubbing their popular Jerk Chicken 25 years from today, he said, “I would be surprised with the way things are going. Bob (dad) has said over and over, 'We will get rid of it when someone offers stupid money,' and that money hasn’t arrived yet.”

The phone rings a lot at Eats, those wanting to pick up food, and those seeking to buy the place.

“Yeah, we see and hear from those wanting this land, asking for the owner, the property is something much wanted.”

For now, the cornbread bakes, the greens and black-eyed peas soak, and Eats serves its many patrons. But like the famous Ponce ball park that used to occupy the area across the street, Eats is destined for hall of fame Atlanta memories and the wrecking ball, but not just yet. 

“Mr. Hullinger, your lunch is $10.72.”