1920 Tavern

The Restaurant

1920 Tavern occupies a corner Canton Street property at 948 Canton, set back from the sidewalk by a slate-paved patio and a wood-and-iron canopy that signals the speakeasy concept before a guest crosses the threshold. The interior — about eighty covers across a main dining room, a long marble-topped bar, a small private dining space in the back, and a covered patio overlooking the Canton-block streetscape — was rebuilt in the 1920s tradition: walls lined with antique mirrors and small framed Prohibition-era prints, crystal-globe lighting, warm wood wainscoting, deep leather banquettes, and pressed-tin ceiling tiles. The room is the kind of design statement Roswell rarely makes in this register, and the bar program lives up to it.

The kitchen runs a globally inflected New American menu whose center of gravity is the Southern-Mediterranean axis. Signature plates have included the scallop tacos with mango salsa, a hand-cut Maine lobster-and-shrimp ravioli, an upscale shrimp-and-grits with andouille and house-made tomato gravy, a wood-roasted bone-in pork chop with peach mostarda, and a Wagyu burger that has the loud Sunday-football following the restaurant is built to host. The wood-fired pizza oven anchors the lunch service. The brunch menu — the city's most ambitious — is the local Sunday-morning institution for any group bigger than four.

The bar program is the operational anchor. The bourbon shelf runs to about a hundred and forty bottles with proper depth in Kentucky single-barrel pulls and an interesting Japanese-whisky shelf. The cocktail menu, written by a head bartender who has trained in both Atlanta and Charleston, runs the Prohibition classics — Old Fashioned, Sazerac, Vieux Carré, Aviation — alongside a rotating set of house compositions that follow the seasonal garden. Service is competent and warm rather than ceremonial, which is the right register for the format. For a Roswell celebration of any kind that benefits from a private design, this is the room.