Every arena night starts with the same question: where do we eat first? Arena food means arena prices, arena lines, and eating a chicken tender basket out of a cardboard boat while your seats sit empty. The fix is five minutes away on foot. CTR Food Works, the food hall inside the reimagined former CNN Center at 190 Marietta Street, is one of the closest places to sit down and eat a real meal before anything at State Farm Arena.
Eleven chef-driven kitchens, the largest bar in Georgia, and 500 seats, all a five minute walk from the arena doors. Here is how to use that.
Why a food hall beats a sit-down before the arena
A traditional restaurant is a gamble on a night with a hard start time. You wait for a table, you wait for a server, you wait for the check, and suddenly you are jogging down Marietta Street at 7:25. A food hall removes every one of those waits. Order at the counter, food comes out in minutes, and you leave the moment you are ready instead of the moment your server notices you.
It also solves the group problem. When one friend wants sushi, another wants tacos, and the birthday kid wants pizza, a food hall is the only answer where nobody loses. Everyone orders from a different kitchen and you all sit down at the same table.
What to order when the clock is ticking
A few picks from the lineup, chosen for people with tickets in their pocket:
- The Sparrow fires Szechuan dumplings and wok-fired noodles that hit the table fast and share well, which is exactly what a table of four wants at 6 PM.
- Eggflip × SushiFlip covers the light-and-fast lane: fresh sushi rolls and poke bowls that will not weigh you down through a full night on your feet.
- Mimi Taqueria serves Chef Mimi's modern Mexican street food. Tacos with house-made sauces are the original eat-fast-and-go format.
- Flora D'Italia handles the comfort end with Neapolitan-style pizzas and handmade pastas, and it is the easy call when there are kids in the group.
- Southern Belle Chicken Co. is chef Joey Ward's globally inspired fried chicken. A crispy sandwich before a show beats any chicken tender the concourse will sell you.
- Fuzzy's runs a raw bar with fresh oysters and shrimp cocktail, for the crowd that treats a concert night like an occasion.
That list is not even the whole roster. The full lineup lives on the Food & Drinks page.
The bar is the pregame
The CTR Bar anchors the atrium at the center of the hall, and it is the largest bar in Georgia. Meet there when half your group is coming from work and half from home: it is an easy landmark, there is room for everyone, and cocktails flow while stragglers straggle. On big game nights the energy in the atrium does half the warmup for you.
It works just as well in reverse. After the final buzzer or the encore, the hall is on your walk back through downtown Atlanta, and on Thursday through Saturday nights it pours until 11 PM.
Time it right
The hall's hours, so you can plan an arena night around them:
- Sunday through Wednesday: 11 AM – 9 PM
- Thursday through Saturday: 11 AM – 11 PM
For a 7:30 tipoff, arrive at 5:30, eat at 6, and stroll over at 7. That is a full sit-down meal with time to spare, not a scramble. For concerts, the same schedule works and adds a bonus: you skip the opener-to-headliner gap where arena concession lines are at their worst.
One note for Sunday and midweek events: the hall closes at 9 PM those nights, so make it your before stop rather than your after stop. From Thursday to Saturday, it covers both ends of the night.
Getting there without thinking about it
State Farm Arena and CTR Food Works sit in the same downtown Atlanta cluster, so the logistics are almost embarrassingly simple. The hall is at the corner of Marietta Street and Centennial Olympic Park Drive, a five minute walk from the arena. Best move for drivers: park at The Center Parking Garage, directly across the street from both the hall and the arena. Park once, eat, walk over, and the car is waiting steps away when the night ends. The decks at the Omni and across Centennial Olympic Park work as backups on the biggest nights. Riding MARTA? The CNN Center / GWCC station is two blocks east, and ride-shares drop at the Marietta entrance. Full directions, parking details, and transit notes are on the Visit page.
If your night is at Mercedes-Benz Stadium instead, the same playbook applies with a slightly longer walk: we wrote that one up in the Falcons game day guide.
Hawks games, concerts, and everything else
The arena calendar runs deeper than basketball. Hawks home games carry the winter, but the building fills the rest of the year with tours, family shows, and college basketball. The plan does not change: eat first, walk five minutes, enjoy the event instead of the concession line. On the biggest nights, check our calendar too, since the hall runs its own watch parties and events downtown.
Bringing the whole crew
Five hundred seats means a big group walks in without a reservation and actually finds a table. No group menu negotiations, no splitting one check eleven ways at a sit-down. And if you are hosting something bigger around an arena event, a client night, a birthday, a team outing, the hall books private spaces up to full buyouts. Details are on the Private Events page.
Save room, it is a short walk back
Dessert is the argument for coming back after the show. Morelli's scoops small-batch ice cream from one of Atlanta's most loved parlors, and DessertBox covers the French pastry side with cakes and seasonal specialties. A cone for the walk back to the deck is the correct way to end an arena night.
The short version
The closest thing State Farm Arena has to a built-in dining room is a food hall five minutes away: eleven kitchens, one enormous bar, 500 seats, zero reservations needed. Look up hours and directions, pick your kitchens, and get to your seats on time with a real meal in you. See you before the show.