Change is in the air at 483 Edgewood Avenue.
Popular Old Fourth Ward cocktail bar the Sound Table, which has remained shuttered since March due to the coronavirus pandemic, will not reopen. Instead, husband-and-wife owners Karl Injex and Muona Essa have turned the space over to another husband-wife duo, Greg Johnson and Noelle Taylor, who will launch eating and drinking establishment Edgewood Dynasty as early as late October.
Injex announced the closure of the Sound Table on the venue’s Facebook page late last week, What Now Atlanta first reported.
But the change has been in the making for some time. “It has been in the works for about a year. COVID pushed us to hand it over sooner,” Injex said.
Johnson and Taylor have been patrons of the Sound Table for the past eight years. “They want to take the mantle as patrons of the place, carry it forward and add their own identity to it," Injex said. “It’s so beautiful the way things worked out," he said, also noting the rapid growth of the neighborhood, including the forthcoming addition of a Slutty Vegan location as well as the next concept from 2 Chainz.
Johnson said he and his wife are planning to make very minimal changes to the Sound Table space and concept.
“(Injex) sold us the business as is,” he said. “We’ll make minor improvements, but the sound system, décor, layout, menu will stay the same.”
Next door, at 485 Edgewood Avenue, the couple plans to open a health and wellness center on the top floor and Cake, A Social Bar dessert bar on the ground floor.
Johnson said they hope to have all businesses operating within the next 30-60 days.
While this marks the end of one track for the Sound Table, it is also the start of the next one for “exploring the possibilities you can do with food, music and culture in general," Injex said.
Injex and Essa plan to take a hiatus through the end of the year, then return in 2021 to move the Sound Table label forward. “Without the stresses and physical constraints, it will free us up to collaborate with clothing and music brands. How that shakes out with event programming and experiences is going to be determined by where the world is at when we come back,” Injex said. “The world is changing so quickly. We want to watch the way things go, and adapt our ideas and be improvisational.”
Injex and Essa opened the Sound Table in the first half of 2010, serving street food from around the world with influences including southeast Asia, central and south America and the Middle East.
Former AJC dining critic John Kessler gave the “firing-on-all-cylinders” Sound Table a two-star review in 2010, citing its “wonderfully curated bar program and well-edited menu with a mix-and-match attitude.”
He also noted its “dual personality” as “both a DJ’s clubbish lair and a dining destination."
Prior to opening the Sound Table, they operated the now-shuttered Midtown club Top Flr.
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