Inside downtown Atlanta’s new food hall

38-year time from southern fried chicken to Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Latin cuisine. You can eat your way around the world without ever having to leave downtown Atlanta. That sounds really good right now. Ten unique food concepts now open for business inside CTR Foodworks, the food hall located inside the reimagined former CNN Center. So hope Good Day's Paul Miller can put on his stretchy pants this morning because he's going to be eating around the world. What's for breakfast, Paul? I didn't. It's the problem. There's a little bit of a stretch to these, a little bit. The flannel is not stretchy, and that was a huge mistake. Because I got quite a breakfast. Look, both of you remember this building well. We've all spent time at the former CNN Center. But boy, does it look different down here now that CTR Foodworks has taken over. This is now collectively known as the center. And there are big plans for this property. But the food hall is amazing. And, Robert, I am so happy to see you again, my friend. Good morning. Hey, Paul. How are you now? I'm better now that I'm here. And we got food cooking. We got good food, too. Tell me what's going on back here. What is CTR? CTR Foodworks. CTR Foodworks is our new food hall that we just created in conjunction with the CP Group. We had a vision for this building, and it was delightful working for them. And that's not always the case with developers and real estate people. Oh, well, that's good to hear. It was a good experience. And now an even better experience for customers. You've got 10 unique concepts, plus this insane bar. Tell me about the bar in the middle here. Well, the bar was created because they were originally designed with a small amount of We have 270 foot ceiling here and a couple of hundred thousand square feet. So like I said, CP was willing to take suggestions and I designed a bigger bar here. We thought that we could make it bigger and still keep intimacy, which is always a problem in a big room. So we created this bar. It's the largest bar in Atlanta. It's about 3,000 square feet. Oh, yeah, you're doing, like, track laps when you're walking around the thing. Yeah, well, I want them to work up a thirst. I love that. There you go. And then if you work up a hunger, you've got these unique concepts. You did a really good job of making sure nothing really overlapped. There's a lot of different kinds of cuisine, right? Yeah, this way it allows people to come down here and... You know, feast on different concepts, right? We have fresh seafood, lobster rolls, Southern Bell, which is a great chicken sandwich, and Rivalry Beef, which we created with Joey Ward. And that's a kind of tug-of-war between Chicago Italian beef and Philadelphia chicken. Oh, you're going to get some rivalries fired up. Well, we're going to see you again soon, Robert. I'm going to leave you here because Chef Joey Ward is standing by with Southern Bell Chicken Company. First of all, Joey, it's great to see you, man. How are you? Great, great. Good to be here. Yeah, okay, well, let's talk about this. So you've got two different concepts here. What is Southern Bell Chicken Company? So Southern Bell Chicken Co., Our tagline is Southern Fried World Travels. So we take great southern chicken. We're using Springer Mountain chicken from here in Georgia. Georgia-grown, no antibiotics, all healthy, happy chickens. And then we fry it up southern style, nice and crispy. We specialize in sandwiches. Our sandwiches are double meat, so you get double white, double dark, which are thighs, boneless thighs, or you can do a mix. Yeah. And then we put them on a locally baked artisan bun, and then we take it on a trip around the world. You get to choose a destination. Yeah, I mean, look at this menu up here. This is so cool. You've got the Shanghai chili crisps, the Mexican tortas. So you're really bringing in that global cuisine. Exactly. It's a fusion for everything here, and it's all told through the medium of fried chicken, which everybody loves here in the South. Yeah, this is very cool. I'm a Georgia boy myself, as you know. Well, we know you are. Yeah, so now let's walk next door. So again, you've got Southern Bell Chicken Co., and I'll be back to eat in just a moment. What is rivalry beef? What is the rivalry? So the rivalry is Philly versus Chicago. Right, so we're doing traditional Philly cheesesteaks. Did my research extensively here, eating cheesesteaks. Wait, why didn't you take me with you on your research? If only what I'd known. And then we went to Chicago, and we're doing Chicago Italian beef. It's made popular in that show, The Bear, people like it. Oh, yeah, this is a perfect time for this concept. What is this right here? So this is my personal favorite on the menu here. This is our hot giardiniera Italian beef. So this is the Chicago-style beef. We make our own roast beef in-house. We make our own au jus. And then we import the giardiniera from Chicago. It's the same ones that they use at the big shops there. And then we spice it up a little bit with our own special ingredients as well. Okay, when you say spice it up a little bit, what am I in for here? Like scale of 1 to 10, where are we looking at? I would say probably about a 7. Ooh, a 7. 7.5 maybe. All right, I'm down for the challenge. All right, let's try it out. Definitely an elbows out fight. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Oh, man. Okay, it is spicy, but that spice is perfect. It is so flavorful. That is really good, man. Thanks so much. Yeah, breakfast of champions. Absolutely. It's not too spicy for me. But you know who absolutely hates spicy food? Come on, Tim. Take a bite. Take a bite, Tim Whaley. Come on. Get the mouth on fire. Come on, Tim. We're going to have more from CTR Foodworks coming up. But, Buck, look. I was off all last week. You were? I've turned the page. Okay? I'm a new man. I'm going to help you out. Right? I know you didn't even notice I was off. I was off last week. So I want to give you a little tip right here. Patty and Frank's. That's burgers and hot dogs, my friend. Burgers and hot dogs. And I think a partner in that, am I right, Robert, was Andrew Zimmern? Andrew Zimmern is my partner in that concept. In this one right here. So Buck Lanford, our anchor, of course, loves to try out new burgers. What do you think? Does he need to come try this out? Oh, absolutely. We have great burgers, great hot dogs, along with Mexican, with Mimi Taqueria. Oh, yeah, and you've got, like, ice cream around it, Morelli's. Morelli's, yeah. He's a second installment he's doing with us. And we have Szechuan Chinese food. You've literally got everything, everything you could want here. Well, let's get it all going, man. So you have just enough for me to have one breakfast here trying all this food, right? Yeah, you go two weeks. You got it. You got it. So again, try out CTR Foodworks. We have more at the bar coming up. But Buck, there you go. There's your tip. Patty and Frank's. Well, I appreciate the tip. If you watch Burgers with Buck, you'll know we featured Patty and Frank's over at West Side Works probably two years ago. Oh, boy. And you're right. It is delicious and fantastic. We'll probably go check them out down there as well. I've actually never watched an episode of Burgers. I purposely take my bathroom breaks during those moments. Oh, man. Yeah. I'm going to call that TMI. I'm going to call that TMI. But no, Patty and Frank's is great. It looks like a good time down there. All right. Thanks, Paul. Make Tim eat that sandwich. CTR Foodworks is located at 190 Marietta Street Northwest. That's in downtown Atlanta. Regular hours there, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Wednesdays, and 11 to 10 on Thursdays through Saturdays, although hours at individual kitchens may vary. Good to know. All right, 845.