The Rusty Nail feels like a Texas dive bar-style saloon crossed with the kind of local diner that sells heavy doses of chicken fried steak and biscuits & gravy. And I say that with great confidence as the nightly food specials are featured on a whiteboard hung on a lattice wood partition just inside the front door and Thursday’s offering just happened to be chicken fried steak. The round shape of the building creates some interesting visual anchors inside, where a circular bar sits in the center of one of the interior’s two halves. Built-in booths line the space, both on this “bar side” of the building as well as what looks to be a bit more of a restaurant on the opposite side, it too ringed with booths amid a few low tables.
To maximize the space, The Rusty Nail has hung TVs on the inside of the ringed ceiling above the bar, allowing for pockets of available viewing that would otherwise be impossible with the low-hanging ceiling that creates a bit of a narrow visual pathway for those seated at the bar. Also lining this halo of sorts above the bar is sporadic stained glass, because of course, most of it serving as backdrop to liquor bottles. Christmas lights run the length of not just this space but almost all of The Rusty Nail’s interior, paired with low lighting to create a sense of dive bar coziness.
While sitting at the bar is the clear recommendation here, there are other spaces to explore, including a dart board alcove in back sectioned off with the same wood lattice found out front. In addition to the odds and ends that come with running a dive bar, this dart room is lined with trophies of all shapes and sizes. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of these trophies is that while most dive bars include a handful of random softball trophies from 1985, these are up-to-date dart trophies, in a dart room, the kind of logical display seldom found in an Atlanta dive bar or elsewhere.