Eating out is a largely self-serving exercise: You pick a place, order what pleases, imbibe a bit, soak up time with a dining companion, and go on your merry way. Instead, Cafe Momentum Atlanta, which opened downtown in March, puts investing in Atlanta’s youth at the forefront of dining out, while also delivering a memorable meal.
The Atlanta outpost is the nonprofit organization’s third, following ones in Dallas and Pittsburgh. Founded in 2015 by Dallas-based chef Chad Houser, its mission is to transform the lives of teens in the juvenile justice system with life skills, employment opportunities, and education. I visited the Dallas location several years ago and eagerly anticipated the opening in my hometown.
The cafe’s motto, emblazoned in big letters on the dining room wall, is “Eat. Drink. Change Lives.” As I found over a couple of visits this spring, eating at Cafe Momentum is not entirely altruistic. As it happens, the food is top-notch, with James Beard Award–nominated chef Josh Lee (co-owner of Soul: Food & Culture in Krog Street Market with chef Todd Richards) leading the kitchen.
Here’s how it works: Young people (ages 15-19) who are exiting the juvenile justice system are hired as paid interns. On staff, they learn the ropes of serving tables and work all of the stations in the kitchen while receiving education, financial literacy training, and mental health counseling through the attached community services center.
The environment is upscale but not showy, with a dining room flanked by a bustling open kitchen and set with blond wood tables and channel-back booths in camel-hued leather. The Philip Shutze–designed 200 Peachtree Street building was built in 1927 (some Atlantans will remember when it was Macy’s before becoming the Southern Exchange Ballrooms), but this 110-seat space is thoroughly modern, as is the food itself.
The deviled egg “experience” comes with egg halves surrounded by mounds of pimento cheese, pickled onions, trout roe, and smoked, pulled venison brisket. It’s a choose-your-own adventure opportunity to see what flavor combinations you like best (for me, it was a little of everything piled on top). For something heartier, the Cheshire Farm smoked pork belly is a study in contrasts. Salty pork plays beautifully with sweet-tart green-apple puree and dehydrated strawberries.
A word to the wise: Don’t sleep on the cabbage wedge as an alternative to a more pedestrian salad. The cruciferous veggie is steamed until it’s tender, pan-seared for just the right amount of caramelization, and then roasted. It comes topped with velvety onion cream, charred red pepper, and salty-crisp pork lardons. It’s big enough to share, but you may not want to. The flavors are nuanced enough to turn an avowed cabbage-hater like me into a fan.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Brined, smoked fried chicken is a signature across Momentum locations, and this one hits the spot. Juicy meat is coated in a thick seasoned crust, and silky mashed potatoes and tangy braised greens offer textural counterpoints. A fluffy biscuit sits atop the whole presentation for a feat of culinary architecture (the small retail area at the front sells biscuit mix if you want seconds to make at home).
The brown butter–poached sea bass is a beauty in a pool of dashi broth, served with a seared pearl onion and wilted spinach. The flavors are delicate and floral, a light menu addition among heavier entrees. Similarly complex, the spring pea risotto comes studded with caramelized local mushrooms and herbs, infused with cashew cream, and topped with curly pea shoots and umami-rich shaved black truffles. It tastes like spring on a plate, though I might have liked a slightly creamier texture with a smidge more liquid.
For me, the real surprise favorite was simply called a “dry-aged sirloin” on the menu. It’s so much more than that. Georgia-raised American Wagyu steak is crowned with creamy thyme-rosemary compound butter and paired with tender, crisp potato pave (I dare you to count the multitude of paper-thin layers). With a texture that renders a knife almost unnecessary, this sirloin would stand tall next to any local steakhouse’s version.
Pastry chef Antonée Pryce’s work stands out in a version of strawberry shortcake. A generous portion of grilled pound cake is topped with Prosecco-macerated strawberries and fluffy whipped cream. Another winner? The chocolate cake with a blood orange glaze has just the right amount of bitterness to balance the sweetness.
Photograph by Ben Rollins
Here, the beverage program is streamlined by design. Because the interns are underage, the restaurant has a dedicated bartender with three rotating specialty cocktails, five beers, and a handful of wines by the bottle, which are offered at close to retail prices. For example, a bottle of the Hess Shirtail Creek Chardonnay is $22, a bargain by Atlanta restaurant standards.
The downtown location is tricky. The $12 valet can be hit or miss (on one rainy evening, it took 20 minutes to retrieve our car), and the area is often congested with pedestrians. But the spot is less about the guests’ convenience than it is about access for the team of interns, almost all of whom use public transportation to get to work.
You might need to remind a server of something, but any service slipups are easily eclipsed by the eager-to-please attitude of the staff. If you invite conversation, you may even get to hear a bit about someone’s story. On one visit, our server, Reggie, told us what a difference Cafe Momentum has made for him. “For the first time in my life, I have hope,” he said.
Bottom line: The opportunity to be a small part of those kinds of stories alone is worth the visit.
This article appears in our August 2025 issue.
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