REVIEW: Old Lady Gang

On a recent trip to Atlanta, we must admit … one of the things we were most excited to do was try the Old Lady Gang restaurant. If you are a fan of singer/songwriter Kandi Burruss-Tucker (Xscape, Real Housewives of Atlanta), then you know the restaurant business was something she and her husband Todd wanted to jump into. Kandi got her family involved – her Mama Joyce and Aunts Bertha and Nora make up the “Old Lady Gang.”

The restaurant is described as a southern eatery and the menu consists of down home Southern recipes, some of which are family recipes. It’s located on Peters Street in the thriving Castleberry Hill neighborhood of Atlanta, a historic arts district. Popular bars and beautiful murals are plentiful in the area.

There’s street parking available near the restaurant. We chose to park a few blocks away and walk. We went on a Thursday night and had a reservation for two. Reservations are highly recommended as we hear the place can get pretty packed, so wait times can be long. However we didn’t experience any waiting and were seated right away. The restaurant has a cozy set-up. You’ll likely be seated very closely to other diners. But it wasn’t a problem for us. TVs were located right above the bar so we caught the first game of the NBA finals while we ate.

Now that we’ve described the restaurant and its concept, we know you’re anxious to know if the food lived up to the hype. Well keep reading.

First things first, the drinks!

We had high hopes. Our orders were Southern Charm (had some sort of berry-flavored vodka) and the Sneaky Georgia Peach (with peach vodka). The drinks were presented nicely. The Sneaky Georgia Peach even had a cinnamon/sugar dipped rim. The drinks were actually pretty tasty. The problem with that is that they tasted more like juice, rather than a cocktail. The jury is still out on whether or not there was any alcohol in the drinks.

On to the food …

Literally every plate we saw go by our table consisted of the same entree: Aunt Bertha’s fried chicken with greens and mac and cheese. So we already knew we had to order that. Clearly it was their specialty.

The entree comes with dark meat, but you can substitute white meat for a $2 upcharge. The fried chicken was delicious – not overcooked or undercooked. What was impressive was that it was seasoned well without being too salty. A lot of times restaurants serve their fried chicken with a side of high blood pressure. The greens were very good – seasoned with turkey meat and like the chicken, also wasn’t too salty. We added hot sauce for a little extra kick. Now the mac and cheese – possibly one of the most subjective side dishes in history. This mac and cheese was good, a bit creamy. It wasn’t the best we had, but very good nonetheless. No salt or pepper was added. It’s not as heavy as some mac and cheese. Perhaps there weren’t as many different kinds of cheeses involved in this recipe. It was simple and it satisfied us. Oh and this entree comes with the cutest miniature cornbread muffin. It was sweet and just enough bread to go with this meal.

Of course we made room for dessert (okay we got it to go).

Old Lady Gang makes it easy. There are only two dessert options: peach cobbler bread pudding and bananas foster banana pudding. Val opted for the peach cobbler bread pudding. Interesting because Val is a fan of peach cobbler but not so much bread pudding. However, this was a good dessert – the bread was sweet and soaking in peach juices. Now there were maybe two peaches in the entire serving so maybe they can work on getting more peaches involved, but the flavor was good, it was moist and juicy and a decent value for $7.

So our take on Old Lady Gang – nice restaurant with a friendly waitstaff and good food. If you’re in Atlanta, it’s definitely worth a visit (we hear Kandi and Todd are there sometimes taking pictures with guests). We just suggest requesting an extra shot in your drink 😉