SUN - THURS
11:30AM - 8:30pm
FRI & SAT
11:30am - 9:00pm
OR UNTIL THE MEAT IS GONE!
PLEASE CHECK INSTAGRAM FOR ANY CHANGES TO OUR HOURS DUE TO SPECIAL EVENTS, ETC.
Atlanta Magazine, November 2023
LARGE dining ROOM + PATIO
game room with shufflepuck, foosball & darts
private dining room available
Scroll down to the Event Inquiry Form below to start a conversation about hosting your next event, large or small, at Wood’s Chapel!
EVERYDAY MENU — click to enlarge!
“Burgers with Buck is no stranger to Atlanta’s vibrant Summerhill community and this week they paid a visit to Wood’s Chapel BBQ for a really great burger and a history lesson as well.”
BEVERAGE MENU
CATERING & FAMILY MEALS
Events
We look forward to hosting your rehearsal dinners, wedding receptions, bat and bar mitzvahs, anniversary parties, business dinners, football tailgates, and holiday parties. If you would like to hold your event at the restaurant please fill out an event inquiry form below!
About
Named for one of the first churches to serve the Summerhill community immediately following the Civil War, Wood's Chapel BBQ uses traditional wood-fired pits to prepare an extensive barbecue menu including whole hog, prime brisket, salmon, and turkey.
Barbecue is primal. It is meat; it is fire; it is smoke.
Barbecue is community. It is food of gatherings and celebrations. You don’t cook it for four, you cook it for 100. It is church suppers and political rallies. It is not just food, it is an event.
Barbecue is America. It has touched and been touched by indigenous peoples, Spanish explorers, European settlers, enslaved Africans and free people of color, and all of their descendants. It moved from the Caribbean to the Colonial south, then west and north. Along the way, it adapted to what the land provided and who settled the land. It traces our messy history, from the valleys to the mountaintops. It is food of the people, whether their means are modest or great. It has caused and continues to cause debate between regions, between states, within states, within towns, within families. It divides and it unites.
Summerhill was established in 1865, just after the Civil War, and was settled largely by the formerly enslaved and Jewish immigrants. Within a year, a church sprung up to serve the new community: Wood’s Chapel. The adjacent Washington-Rawson area became one of the finest early residential neighborhoods in Atlanta and was early home to enduring Atlanta institutions including The Temple (the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation) and the original Piedmont Hospital (then the Piedmont Sanitarium). But advent of the streetcar and the automobile began to lure the more affluent residents away from the city center to newer “suburbs” such as Inman Park, Ansley Park, and Druid Hills. Nevertheless, the area remained a vibrant working class neighborhood with busy commercial corridors. Dominance of the automobile, however, eventually led to construction of the interstate highway system and to mixed use areas becoming disfavored among city planners. Race and economics made the area a target for aggressive “urban renewal.” Residents were forced out and the land cleared for interstates, a stadium, and parking lots. The vibrant fabric of these neighborhoods was torn.
Following the Braves’ departure from Turner Field after the 2016 season, a development team consisting of Carter, Oakwood Development and Healey Weatherholtz Properties is redeveloping the 72-acre site with Georgia State University as the anchor. Part of the project will turn 35 acres into a mixed-use area including offices, multifamily apartments, student apartments, and neighborhood restaurant and retail.
This is a proud area with a rich history that has taken a lot of hits, but refuses to stay down. The redevelopment will help reconnect these neighborhoods and add to the building energy in the area. Wood’s Chapel BBQ is excited to bring new commercial life back to this part of Georgia Avenue and looks forward to being a contributing part of this historic community.
Todd Ginsberg, Shelley Sweet and Jennifer and Ben Johnson opened Wood’s Chapel BBQ in June 2019. The four also are partners in The General Muir, TGM Bread, Fred’s Meat & Bread, and Yalla — collectively “Rye Restaurants.” (Sweet and the Johnsons also are partners in West Egg Café).
For a beautiful, interactive, informative, sensitive, and thought provoking digital history of Summerhill and Georgia Avenue please visit Streetscape Palimpsest: A History of Georgia Avenue (narrative and design by Marni Davis, Associate Professor, Georgia State University; interviews and photographs by Richard Laupus, documentarian and longtime Peoplestown resident).
Contact
404.522.3000
Wood’s Chapel BBQ
85 Georgia Ave SE
Atlanta, GA 30312
PARKING
“For a one-week period in early August, I became obsessed with a restaurant in a way that would have been disconcerting if it hadn’t been so delicious. It started on a Monday and ended on a Monday: five visits; tons of barbecue; and some of the best side dishes and cornbread I’ve had. Anywhere. Ever.
The binge ended without an intervention, and with a conclusion about which I am clear-eyed and dead serious: Wood’s Chapel BBQ — from the team behind West Egg Cafe, the General Muir, Yalla! and others — is a well-nigh perfect restaurant.
I don’t mean that every morsel of barbecue that comes from its smokehouse is perfect; some of it is imperfect. I mean that Wood’s Chapel, in design and spirit, is a thoughtful, diligently researched expression of what a modern barbecue restaurant in downtown Atlanta should be in 2019.”
“Todd Ginsberg and partners from the General Muir, the deli deluxe that started at Emory Point, opened this place in 2019 and quickly made it one of Atlanta’s top barbecue destinations. Named for a church that used to be in the neighborhood, Wood’s Chapel is housed in a 1930s storefront that’s part of the Summerhill redevelopment that began after the Braves left Turner Field. The restaurant serves a wider variety of meats than most—including one of my favorites, smoked salmon—all cooked in offset smokers in a detached smokehouse out back. The patio area, with its picnic tables and cornhole game, is one of Atlanta’s most pleasant barbecue restaurant playgrounds.”
PRESS
THE CITY’S BEST BBQ [ATLANTA MAGAZINE] - NOV 2023
BEST NEW ‘CUE: WOOD’S CHAPEL BBQ (ATLANTA MAGAZINE, BEST OF ATLANTA 2019) - DEC 2019
REVIEW: WOOD’S CHAPEL BBQ BRINGS TOP-NOTCH BARBECUE TO SUMMERHILL (ATLANTA MAGAZINE) - NOV 2019
REVIEW: WOOD’S CHAPEL REVEALS HEART, SOUL OF MODERN BARBECUE (AJC) - AUG 22, 2019
TAKE A FOOD TOUR OF ATLANTA’S SUMMERHILL NEIGHBORHOOD (AJC) - SEPT 26, 2019
THE VERDICT ON 3 NEW ATLANTA RESTAURANTS: WOOD’S CHAPEL BBQ, SCEPTRE BREWING ARTS, THE DEER AND THE DOVE (ATLANTA MAGAZINE) - SEPT 9, 2019
FIRST LOOK: FIND SMOKED MEAT AND MORE AT WOOD’S CHAPEL BBQ IN SUMMERHILL (AJC) - JUN 24, 2019
FIRST LOOK AT WOOD’S CHAPEL BBQ: 'FOOD IS ONE THING THAT BRINGS ALL WALKS OF LIFE TOGETHER' (ATLANTA BUSINESS CHRONICLE) - JUN 20, 2019
PEEK INSIDE WOOD’S CHAPEL, BRINGING BARBECUE AND CHESS PIE TO SUMMERHILL TODAY (EATER) - JUN 19, 2019
AJC DINING GUIDE, THE HEART OF BARBECUE: MEET THESE 26 SMOKING METRO ATLANTA PITMASTERS - APR 26, 2019
WOOD’S CHAPEL BBQ WILL BRING CUE-BANO SANDWICHES AND CHEERWINE WHISKEY SLUSHIES TO SUMMERHILL THIS SPRING - MAR 27, 2019
GARDEN & GUN, THE SOUTHERN AGENDA: DEC 2018/JAN 2019
REHABBED SUMMERHILL BUILDINGS TURNED OVER TO FUTURE TENANTS; OPENINGS IN SIGHT - OCT 4, 2018
BARBECUE BECKONS: ATLANTA FINE-DINING CHEFS ADDING PITMASTER TO RESUME - MAY 2, 2018
THE MOST ANTICIPATED ATLANTA RESTAURANTS OF 2018 - JAN 24, 2018
THE GENERAL MUIR TEAM IS OPENING A BARBECUE RESTAURANT - JAN 16, 2018
THE TEAM BEHIND GENERAL MUIR BRINGING BARBECUE TO SUMMERHILL -JAN 16, 2018
40 PHOTOS: INSIDE SUMMERHILL’S HISTORIC COMMERCIAL STRIP AS REDEVELOPMENT BEGINS - OCT 25, 2017
HOW ATLANTA’S SUMMERHILL, IN SHADOW OF TURNER FIELD, COULD BE DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT IN A YEAR - MAY 16, 2017
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