Restaurant recommendation: Sway

Downtown Atlanta Restaurant Week starts this weekend, with participating restaurants offering three-course dinners for $25.00 or $35.00 per person.

If you’re considering trying it out, I can recommend a couple of spots that you may have heard about already: Alma Cocina and Peasant Bistro. Both are great.

But in the spirit of helping out an underdog, I want to particularly recommend a place you may not know about. It’s a Southern-inspired restaurant called Sway and it’s inside the Hyatt Regency hotel.

Sway has a special place in my heart: last Thanksgiving I was alone with an illness while my family traveled. I needed a place to go for lunch to get out of the house and be around people (my illness wasn’t contagious, I promise). With only a few hotel restaurants open downtown on the holiday, I gave Sway a shot.

The interior and tableware were pretty, the service was nice, and the food was much better than I expected — chicken and dumplings, one of my favorite Southern comfort foods and perfect for that day.

It’s a really cute place and I hope y’all will give it a shot at some point too. Don’t get scared by its hotel-ness. It could surprise you.