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OUR Food and Drink ISSUE O C TO B E R 2 02 6

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LIFESTYLE LETTER

Gather Around: Food, Fall, and Friends Food in Cherokee County is not a trend. It is a love language. Nobody ever sat down at a kitchen table in North Georgia and said, "I need some food that challenges my palate." They said pass the biscuits. There is something that happens when you walk into a place and the smell hits you before the door even closes all the way. It could be the smoky warmth coming out of a backyard on a Saturday afternoon, or the coffee from Bizarre Coffee on a Tuesday morning when you are not quite sure how you got up. October in North Georgia does not ease in quietly. It arrives with a crispness in the morning air that makes you want to do something about it. Put something in the oven. Drive up to Ellijay for the Apple Festival. Find a pumpkin patch with the kids before the weekend is gone. Pull on a Bulldogs shirt and figure out where you are watching the game. That is the thing about Canton. The food here is not just good. It is specific to a place and a people. October cooking has something specific about it. It is slower. The soups come back out. Someone somewhere in Cherokee County is making cornbread in a cast iron skillet right now, and the whole house smells like a memory. Southern food in the fall is not a cuisine. It is a feeling you get in your chest when you walk through a door and the warmth hits you. This issue, we celebrate food the way North Georgia has always understood it: as the thing that gets people in the same room. Comfort food, family food, Sunday food, Tuesday food, after-the-game food, I-don't-want-to-cook food. All of it matters. All of it tells the story of who we are in this corner of Georgia. Because here, a meal is never just a meal. It is a neighbor pulling up a chair. It is a grandmother's recipe that nobody wrote down but everybody remembers. It is a first date and a last bite of something so good it makes the whole table go quiet for just a second. Feed people. Gather them in. That has always been what this community does best. This is Your City. This is Your Lifestyle.

October 2026 PUBLISHER

Chicka Elloy | chicka.elloy@citylifestyle.com M AN AG I N G E D I TO R

Jennifer Elloy | jennifer.elloy@citylifestyle.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Jude Pratt, Stewart McGill, Tim May C O N T R I B U T I N G P H OTO G R AP H E R S

Naomi Hopkins Photography, Caleb Jones

Corporate Team CEO Steven Schowengerdt President Matthew Perry CRO Jamie Pentz CoS Janeane Thompson AD DESIGNER Mary Albers LAYOUT DESIGNER Jamie Housh QUALITY CONTROL SPECIALIST Brandy Thomas

C H I C K A E L L O Y, P U B L I S H E R @CANTONCITYLIFESTYLE Learn how to start your own publication at citylifestyle.com//franchise. Proverbs 3:5-6 Canton City Lifestyle® is published monthly by Lifestyle Publications LLC. It is distributed via the US Postal Service to some of the Canton area’s most affluent neighborhoods. Articles and advertisements do not necessarily reflect Lifestyle Publications’ opinions.

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OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

inside the issue OC TOB E R 2 02 6 | FOOD & D R I N K

30 Featured

26 30

Print Prestige Meets Digital Power.

WHY CHOOSE BETWEEN PRESTIGE AND PLACEMENT?

Departments

Daymakers, Miracle Workers

Sabrina and Mike Kaylor built Cherokee County’s most recognizable brand on a question.

The Only Way is Up From a Mexican table on Main to a shaded deck in Ball Ground, the Benitez Team keeps chasing a feeling.

Lifestyle Letter

City Scene

Business Monthly

Local Limelight FOOD + BEVERAGE

Must See FOOD + BEVERAGE

Inspired By LIFE + CULTURE

Trend Setter FOOD + BEVERAGE

How To LIFE + CULTURE

Worth The Drive

One day of eating, from a Canton lunch to dessert

On the Cover The Fall selection is here and it is a Daymaker! Locations in Canton, Woodstock, Roswell. Photography: Bizarre Coffee

With City Lifestyle’s co-branded print + digital packages, your business captures attention wherever our community is looking. Build unmatched local credibility on the page, and drive immediate action online. Ready to double your local reach? Contact your local publisher by scanning below.

P R IVAT E P RA CTICE OPE N IN CA NTON

M E E T DR . ANDY KRAGOR

OCTOBER 2026

city scene WHERE NEIGHBORS CAN SEE AND BE SEEN

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1: Discover award-winning wines and the end of a rainbow from Frogtown Cellars, Dahlonega. 2: Serv International providing meals across Cherokee County and the Globe 3: The Basket Shack on Marietta Highway may be Canton’s hidden gem for breakfast 4: The Jones Family receives the 2026 Cherokee Historic Site Award! 5: Head over to Union Hill, and you will find these in a fridge 6: October Skies at Cherokee High 7: Pastor Chuck Ramsay is growing leaders who are leading this community

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OCTOBER 2026

business monthly A R O U N D U P O F N E W S F R O M LO C A L B U S I N E S S E S

Center Cut Catering for the Holidays Since 2005, Doug and the Center Cut team have been the go-to for events across Cherokee County and the greater Atlanta area. From weddings in BridgeMill to school celebrations at the Bluffs Cherokee County Conference Center, they bring innovative menus, beautiful food stations, and service that keeps clients coming back. American, Asian, plated dinners, full bar programs. Whatever the occasion, they handle it all beautifully. CenterCutCatering.com

Taj Mahal Grill (formerly Avatar Indian Cuisine) Canton's favorite Indian kitchen has a new name and a seasoned team behind it. The owners of the beloved Kennesaw institution Taj Mahal Grill have brought their North and South Indian mastery to Marietta Highway, carrying forward the recipes and the reputation that made them a North Atlanta staple. Tandoori classics, rich curries, and a lunch buffet worth rearranging your Tuesday for. Same great flavors. Fresh energy and our favorite Mango juice. Call 404.547.1292

Yoon Sushi It is not often that a Cherokee County restaurant lands on a national best-of list, but Yoon Sushi earned a spot on USA Today's 10 Best Sushi Restaurants in Atlanta and has been packing tables at Prominence Point ever since. A local family-run operation with a menu that goes well beyond rolls: hibachi, ramen, bento boxes, fine dining. Fresh fish, serious craft, zero attitude. If you have not been, you are overdue. YoonSushi.com

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WINE WITHOUT The Attitude Nick Caruso asks two questions before handing you anything. What are you eating, and who is it for? He trained through the Court of Master Sommeliers, though you would never guess it from the conversation, and that is exactly the point. That tone runs through the entire shop, from the front door to the back wall. Christina and Nick stock Suds and Bottles almost entirely from small family wineries, most of them farming organically or biodynamically, none reaching for the 76 additives the FDA still allows. What surprises people is how approachable

the shelves are. Most of the room is priced at thirty dollars or under, so bringing home something lovely never has to wait for a special occasion. Fall is when the good bottles start arriving. Napa winemaker Rob Sinskey visits on October 29 for a meet-and-greet. On November 14, Stock the Cellar returns free with more than forty wines, benefiting Theodora Dance Conservatory. Everything on the next page is something Christina or Nick would hand you across the bar themselves.

Christina and Nick Caruso keep Canton in small-farm bottles, good conversation, and wine worth giving. ARTICLE BY TIM MAY | PHOTOGRAPHY BY SUDS AND BOTTLES

LOCA L LIM E LIGH T | FO OD + BE VE RAGE

OBSIDIAN WINE CO. VOLCANIC ESTATE CABERNET SAUVIGNON full-bodied, structured red wine grown in the volcanic soils of the Red Hills Lake County AVA in California $35

DUCA DI SALAPARUTA LAVICO ETNA BIANCO a crisp, mineral-driven white wine made from 100% Carricante grapes grown on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily $34

SOHM & KRACHER GRUNER VELTINER LION a crisp, dry, and mineral-driven Austrian white wine $29

KOKOMO WINES CABERNET SAUVIGNON SONOMA COUNTY a full-bodied red wine produced in Healdsburg, California. Designed to be powerful yet balanced with supportive tannins $42

YOUR WINE PERMISSION SLIP Chill your red. Drink rosé in December. Love moscato unapologetically. Skip the expensive bottle. Choose wine because the label made you laugh. Pair champagne with potato chips. Wine is meant to be enjoyed, not passed like a test. Suds & Bottles Rules of Wine • Drink what you like • Price doesn't equal quality • You don't need to know the lingo • Try something you've never heard of • Never apologize for liking sweet wine • Rosé has no season • And when in doubt, Ask or visit SudsAndBottles.com

ROBERT SINSKEY VINEYARDS VIN GRIS OF PINOT NOIR an organically and biodynamically farmed dry rosé wine made from Pinot Noir grapes grown in the Carneros region of California $42

CONDADO DE ORIZA GRAN RESERVA TEMPRANILLO a full-bodied red wine from the Ribera del Duero region of Spain, aged for 24 months in oak barrels $33

DOMAINE SERGE LAPORTE SANCERRE LES BOURSICOTTES a classic, mineral-driven Sauvignon Blanc produced by the family-owned estate in the village of Chavignol, France $33

CHAMPAGNE VINCENT BLIARD LES FONDAMENTAUX PREMIER CRU an organic, non-vintage grower champagne made in Hautvillers, France, by the third-generation sibling team Florence and Antoine Bliard $66

OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

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OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

ARTICLE BY JUDE PRATT | PHOTOGRAPHY BY SABRINA KAYLOR

DAYMAKERS, MIRACLE WORKERS

M UST SE E | FO O D + BEVERAGE

F R O M A F O L D I N G TA B L E AT T H E F A R M E R S M A R K E T T O H I S T O R I C S T O R E F R O N T S , S A B R I N A A N D M I K E K AY L O R B U I LT C H E R O K E E COUNT Y’S MOST RECOGNIZABLE BRAND ON A QUESTION.

There is a stack of college notebooks in Sabrina Kaylor's house filled with coffee shops that never got built, and to understand the one she did build, you have to go back to those pages. She is the woman whose videos your daughter sends you and your motherin-law recognizes on sight, but none of that existed yet. A younger generation found her first. She posts a lot that most owners hide, the hard months, the harder calls, and does not stand down her language for anybody. That is why she is trusted. For Sabrina, coffee started in middle school, after talking her mother into stopping on the way to school she walked into class carrying her cup like an accessory. By senior year, she was showing up late with coffee for her first period teacher, a peace offering accepted on the condition that next time it comes with only two sugars. Her nights belonged to a Dunkin that never closed, where she and her friends sat outside and talked about the lives they were going to have someday. Sabrina studied business in Florida when the notebooks started, she filled them with her plans for a coffee

shop built inside shipping containers keeping them small and customer service forward. This is close to a description of what she owns today. She also met her husband Mike there, graduated in 2015 in marketing and sales, but found nothing exciting about the future spent recruiting or selling payroll. When Mike's family drew them to Georgia she went willingly, and the two of them landed in Kennesaw working in restaurants. In her free time, she painted, almost by accident, because she was bartending and serving others, she had the uneasy feeling that she was working toward helping build other people's businesses and their dreams, not hers. So, Sabrina dug out a bag of hardened acrylics left over from high school, started making things at the dining room table, and fell into it the way people do when they find the thing that bends time. When she and Mike rented a house with a spare room, that became a studio. Her first sale hung in a Marietta coffee shop and sold for a hundred dollars. CONTINUED >

OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

M UST SE E | FO O D + BEVERAGE

“I DIDN’T WANT A NAME THAT WOULD EVER BE STUCK SOMEWHERE. ART CHANGES AND BUSINESS CHANGES, AND I WANTED SOMETHING THAT COULD EBB AND FLOW WITH US.” —SABRINA KAYLOR

From there came the farmers markets, the art markets and Yellow Daisy, with Mike hauling canvases in and out of the car and working at the booth on weekends. Then 2020 shut it all down. Sabrina had already partnered with a roaster, designed a brand, and integrated her artwork into the plan and she wasn't about to

spend her savings on bags and labels while the world was closed. So, she and Mike set up a Facebook Live in their living room instead. Mike called out lot numbers while she painted, and they sold thirty pieces of art in a single evening, more than she had ever managed to sell at one time. The business was registered in June, and when a friend told her the Canton farmers market had reopened without a coffee vendor, Bizarre Coffee showed up including her paintings on the bags. Sabrina and Mike were both working other jobs, pouring cups on weekends, and the farmers market outsold every art market they had ever done. Sabrina designed the brand herself in small quiet hours, the way she still does, pulling the logo from one of her own paintings of an eye, a subject she had returned to for years because the "eyes" had always sold. Bizarre was the word that would not box her in. She had watched other small businesses paint themselves into a corner with a name, and refused to become a Cherokee county coffee company tied to one map. Daymaker came earlier, printed on the first bags before there was a counter, but friends warned her that asking, "How can I make your day?" was too clunky for a register checkout. She kept it, knowing the question assumes its answer. Good Mood Juice came later, arriving on one of those late nights

CONTINUED >

OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

in a flash she knew to trust and both terms carry trademarks now. Bizarre opened first on East Marietta Street in December 2020, in one hundred square feet, employing two people and then three by February. A Canton city councilman walked in that month and bought multiple gift cards from a business barely open, and the community that followed gave them room to grow and learn. Their videos started traveling, and somebody's cousin in New York would send a clip back home, which is how strangers began walking in asking for a drink they had only seen on a screen. They gutted and rebuilt Canton a year and a half after later, opened their own roastery, and followed with their Woodstock

M UST SE E | FO O D + BEVERAGE

location the following December 2023. The Roswell Bizarre opened in February 2025 inside a historic mansion on Alpharetta Highway and Acworth arrives this fall. Those initial three "Daymakers" have become seventy five, and Mike is still beside her daily as a husband, dad and business partner who now helps grow what they bought. Somewhere along the way Sabrina's face became the brand, although she insists it worked before anyone saw her, and today she still reads every message sent to her. Franchising comes up in nearly every conversation about the future, and the answer is always no, for now, because the Kaylor's will not hand the brand to anyone who does not share her values.

THE ITEM SHE NEVER CHANGED When the Kaylors took over the space on East Marietta Street, a small cafe had been feeding regulars there for six months. Sabrina had not planned to run a kitchen at all. She kept one anyway, along with several dishes those customers already loved, because the fastest way to lose a room is to walk in and rearrange it. The Berry Best Smoothie is one of them, still on the board six years later, ordered by people who never knew it came with the building.

OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

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OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

THE ONLY WAY IS UP

Freddy Benitez can tell you the exact moment a restaurant comes alive. It happens the first night strangers fill the room, staring at the colors on the menus and amazed by the unique choices in the buildout and decor. Glasses clink against each other. Somebody laughs too loud at a table in the corner. The noise settles into something that sounds like a place people want to be. "We have the idea and the vision, but the feeling comes once the people are inside," he says. That feeling has followed him from Dos Margaritas, where the family started, to La Cantina on Main, and now fifteen minutes north to Ball Ground, where Northbound Tavern has already found its regulars and La Cantina Off Main opens this fall. Ask why he keeps building, and he answers fast. He's addicted to the process. The story starts with his father. Ramon Benitez had partners

I NSP IR E D BY | L I FE + C ULT U RE

ARTICLE BY CANTON CITY LIFESTYLE | PHOTOGRAPHY BY FREDDY BENITEZ

FROM A MEXICAN TABLE ON MAIN TO A SHADED DECK IN BALL GROUND, THE BENITEZ TEAM KEEPS CHASING A FEELING.

once, and he got tired of hearing that things had to be done a certain way because that was how they had always been done. Combination plates. Familiar menus. Choices that worked fine and surprised nobody. "I was tired of people not being forward-thinking," Ramon says. "We can do anything we want. We don't have to be mainstream." Dos Margaritas came out of that decision, and it is still the first place pointed to when anyone asks where all this began. Freddy brings it up twice, unprompted, making sure it doesn't get lost behind the newer names. "Dos is where my father and I were able to express our creativity," he says. "I always make sure I don't leave out Dos." Dos also taught them the limits of working inside something that already works. The combination plates are staying. You don't fix what isn't broken. But the more the two of them tinkered, the clearer it got that expressing themselves further meant building something from nothing.

That is where Guillermo Pomares enters, and Freddy is careful about this part. Everyone calls him Memo. The three of them, Ramon, Freddy and Memo, became partners, and La Cantina on Main followed. Historic bones, modernized. A Mexican table with wood everywhere you look, warm in a way photographs never capture. Freddy will tell you the partnership is the reason any of the rest exists. "I'm able to do what I do because everybody else is doing what they do so that I can be happy," he says. He means that literally. Allison Benitez runs administration, human resources and payroll, the unglamorous machinery that keeps four operations breathing. Ana Pomares, Memo's wife, is the designer and artist who brings their vision to reality alongside her husband. Chef Edwin runs the kitchens, now joined by his son, who came from Old Blind Dog in Milton. Freddy gets to walk in, feel the room and chase what is missing, because four other people have already handled what cannot be left to chance. Ask him why he still does this after a lifetime in restaurants, and he goes somewhere unexpected. Not to growth. Not to revenue. "What comes out of my heart on a daily basis is creating," he says. "If I create and it gives somebody else a good feeling, then I, in return, feel good. And the money follows." He is genuinely uninterested in making the conversation about money. On any given day, he walks through a door and someone is smiling, and he knows the smile exists because his team built the conditions for it. That, he says plainly, is the only reason he keeps going. CONTINUED >

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I NSP IR E D BY | L I FE + C ULT U RE

LA CANTINA, TRANSLATED

The rest, in his telling, arrives on its own. Customers turn into friends. Friends start texting reels back and forth at midnight. A restaurant stops being a business and becomes a room where people know each other. Which brings us fifteen minutes north, to Ball Ground. Northbound Tavern sits in a building the town knew for years as a Choate barbecue. The tavern name came from geography and a little bit of comedy. Head up 575 and the tavern is the last stop before the land starts climbing toward the mountains. "My whole life, I've always been heading northbound," Freddy says. "It was a place marker." He laughs about the sequel possibilities. Eastbound. Westbound. Southbound. Somebody in the room brought up Eastbound and Down, and the idea has apparently not gone away. What happened inside the building is less of a joke. For the first time, the family put real money into fresh seafood, and Freddy talks about the first grouper and salmon he tasted there like a man describing a magic trick performed on his own property. Order the seafood. That is basically the whole recommendation. Then there is the club sandwich, which arrives with cranberry in it and tastes, improbably, like Thanksgiving at somebody's grandmother's house. Nobody expects a tavern club to feel that personal. That is roughly the point. The drinks got the same treatment. Memo brought in a glassware representative, and Freddy and Allison sat down and hand-selected every single glass in the building. Every cocktail has a vessel chosen for it specifically, drawn from years of remembering what a drink felt like at this bar or that one. Freddy is sober these days, which somehow makes the care more interesting, not less. La Cantina Off Main in Ball Ground may be the purest example of how he thinks. The team walked the property, built a large deck, and then realized the best thing on the lot had been standing there long before any of them arrived. "You can't pay for what's already been there," he says. "That huge tree shades the whole patio deck." So the deck accommodates the tree. Shade all day, tables tucked underneath it, somebody playing music on a warm evening while Ball Ground goes about its business. When Freddy describes it, he sounds like a man counting down. His actual job now, as he explains it, is to walk into a space and ask what people cannot feel there yet. Then the next building, wherever it turns up, and the same set of questions. What do they have? What are they missing? What could we bring that nobody here has felt before? A lifetime in restaurants later, he is still doing it for the noise in the room. The glasses. The laughing. The particular sound a restaurant makes when it finally becomes somebody's regular place. "That's the only reason I still do it. I consider myself very lucky to be partnered with my father, my sister, and my best friend," he says. Two rooms in Ball Ground this fall. Bring people who talk with their hands.

Ask Freddy what the word means and he goes quiet for a second, because the honest answer is older than any dictionary definition. Cantina means tavern. Not the modern kind, either. Freddy reaches for the image of riders coming into a small town, tying up their horses and walking straight to the one room where everybody else already was. Ball Ground almost certainly had a version of that once, probably within shouting distance of where his own two restaurants now sit. So did downtown Canton, and throughout Cherokee County, and just about every crossroads between here and Atlanta. “Same thing as here in the States,” he says. “They get into Ball Ground, they had a tavern somewhere.” That is why the new place is a tavern rather than a grill, and why the two names a few blocks apart in Ball Ground are really the same name in two languages. La Cantina Off Main. Northbound Tavern. One room, one purpose, a few hundred years of people needing somewhere to sit down together after a long ride.

Worth The Drive One day of eating, from a Canton lunch to dessert ARTICLE BY CANTON CITY LIFESTYLE Here is the thing about a food town. You never eat in it. You drive past the good stuff on the way to the same four places, and then somebody visits and you panic. So this is a whole day, built the way I would actually build it. Lunch close to home, dinner far enough out that the drive counts as part of the date,

and dessert back on North Street where you started. Six stops, none more than ninety minutes from the Etowah. I weighted food first and reputation second, and I checked every one of these across more than one review platform, because a single generous Saturday does not make a restaurant.

DATE #1 | BULLY RUN Canton | The Mill on Etowah B U L LY R U N C A N TO N .C O M | @ B U L LY R U N C A N TO N

Andy and Amber Palermo already had Canton's affection through POPS, their pasta and sandwich shop downtown. In early 2026 they took the old Community Burger space at the Mill on Etowah and turned it into this. Beef ground fresh in-house every morning, certified Angus only, house pickles, a sauce they call the keeper. Gluten-free chicken strips and loaded fries for whoever came along. Andy ran operations for Rocket Farm Restaurants in Atlanta before coming home, and it shows in how the room runs. Look for the building with the dog mural.

DATE #2 | ARZEH GRILL Woodstock | Towne Lake Parkway A R Z E H G R I L L .C O M | @A R Z E H G R I L L

It shares a parking lot with a Shell station. That is almost always the tell. Arzeh has quietly become the highest-rated kitchen in Woodstock, sitting near 4.9 on Google, leading Yelp's local food rankings, and taking Best Mediterranean Restaurant in the Georgia Business Journal's 2025 Best of Georgia awards. The Lebanese cooking is made to order and completely unfussy. Hummus under good oil with whole chickpeas, fried beef kibbeh, shawarma carved off the cone, kafta straight from charcoal. Closed Sundays. Order the mixed grill and split everything on the table.

T R E N D SE T T E R | FO O D + BE VE RAGE

Now you drive. Dinner is where the mileage justifies itself, because you are no longer squeezing a meal in between errands. You are handing over the entire evening, which means the room matters nearly as much as the plate does, and the town around the room matters almost as much as that. These two are the reason this article exists at all. One is a fifty seat space with a Michelin star and a menu you could read through in under a minute. The other is a farmhouse from the 1870s with a working garden out back and fireplaces going all winter long. They sit forty minutes apart in opposite directions, and they represent two entirely different theories of what a good night out is supposed to be. Pick according to the mood, and book both well ahead of time.

DATE #3 | SPRING RESTAURANT Marietta | Dinner Only S P R I N G M A R I E T TA .C O M | @ S P R I N G M A R I E T TA

The first Michelin star ever awarded outside the perimeter went to a room of roughly fifty seats pressed up against an active rail line just off Marietta Square. Chef Brian So closed Spring for renovations last year and reopened quietly in April, running limited service while the room comes back to life. The menu stays short on purpose. Four starters, a handful of entrees, and a wine list Daniel Crawford has spent the better part of a decade sharpening. Order the house sourdough with garlic chive butter, then stop reading and let the kitchen decide the rest.

DATE #4 | MILTON'S CUISINE AND COCKTAILS Milton | Crabapple Historic District M I LTO N S C U I S I N E .C O M | @ M I LTO N S _ C U I S I N E

Twenty years in, Milton's still feels like something you found rather than something you were sold. The restaurant occupies a hundred and fifty year old farmhouse and a 1930s cottage in the Crabapple Historic District, with fireplaces running through winter and a deck that opens April through October. A good share of what reaches the plate comes off Milton's Acre, the working garden behind the building. Executive Chef Kisten Wabsis runs a Southern menu with real range, from goat cheese stuffed fried green tomatoes to short rib pot roast. Get there early and walk the property first. CONTINUED >

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AFTER DARK AND DESSERT Every good night has a second act, and this is where most people give up and go home. Do not. What follows is the part your friends will actually ask you about later, and it arrives in two very different shapes. One is a full hour north into the mountains, where dinner ends and then keeps right on going behind a door most people walk straight past without ever noticing it. The other is eight minutes from your own driveway and open late enough to catch on the way back through town. If you have built the whole day out of this article, you have been in the car since noon, which means the last stop of the night should be an easy one. Park on North Street, walk in, and get something to go in a box.

DATE #5 | THE ROOF AND THE DOOR Ellijay | Dinner, Then Downstairs T H E R O O F E L L I JAY.C O M | @T H E R O O F E L L I JAY

Dinner here comes with a second act built right into the building. The Roof looks out over River Street and downtown Ellijay, serving steaks, mountain trout on jalapeno cheese grits, and bologna sliders that sound like a punchline right up until the moment they land. Underneath it sits The Door, Ellijay's first speakeasy, opened by Matt Bond in October 2024. You give the phrase about seeing a man about a horse and they walk you in past the mirrors. Order the Model T, a vanilla-infused Woodford Old Fashioned finished with cinnamon.

CANTON'S CHOICE DESSERT DATE

LE MACARON FRENCH PASTRIES Canton | 186 North Street L E M AC A R O N - U S .C O M | @ L E M AC A R O N C A N TO N G A

End the day back on North Street. Le Macaron works out of a historic storefront in downtown Canton, and the macarons are the real French kind, naturally gluten-free, made without preservatives, with a thin, crisp shell over a soft, creamy center. Nathan, the owner, will point you to his gelato and Lavazza espresso; try them together in an affogato. But order the Salty Dog first. It is a blue salted caramel macaron made only in Canton, named for the Salty Dog of Canton Denim fame. Choose a six-pack. You will not share it.

T R E N D SE T T E R | FO O D + BE VE RAGE

The Great Taste of Mexico CANTON - HOLLY SPRINGS - CUMMING

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OCTOB ER 2 0 2 6 | C I TYL I FE STYL E . C OM / CA N TO N GA

ARTICLE BY NICOLETTE MARTIN

PU M PK I N PE R F E C T ION Put the carving tools down and check out how you can add some pizzazz to your pumpkins with just a paint brush.

For this design, you’ll need several pumpkins or gourds in various shapes and sizes, some white and metallic acrylic paint, hot glue and some fake creepy crawlers. Paint your “background” pumpkins in metallic colors. For your centerpiece, use white paint to cover the body, metallic paint for the stem and hot glue your creepy crawlers all around.

H OW TO | L I FE + C ULTUR E

the CREEPY crawler

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