How to Spend a Perfect 72 Hours Eating Your Way Through Atlanta

Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport may not be the biggest airport in the world, but we’re pretty proud of its status as the busiest, with 105 million travelers passing through in 2023. Sure, some are just en route elsewhere, but if that’s all they’re doing, they’re doing it wrong.

With so many flights routing through ATL, it’s easy enough to plan out a long layover of … say, 72 hours? Which is just enough meals to give you a literal taste of why you should come back for a lengthier play.

Plan to arrive Thursday night and stay through Sunday for a quick weekend getaway (pro tip: we have thoughts on hotels for a perfect home base) to discover why nearly 63,000 people relocated to Atlanta just last year. Between our wealth of green spaces; our historical significance to American civil rights; the diversity of our culinary scene; access to the unexpected, like exceptional seafood; and all of the amenities of a big city with a lower cost of dining out than some other notable hubs, we hold it down in terms of great dining. (If you need more inspo, our Atlanta Hit List is an always-on resource for terrific choices.)

And we’ve planned a perfect three-day jaunt to prove our point.