Tavern Off the Green Opens at Cumming City Center With Cajun Menu and Late-Night Hours

Tavern Off the Green is now open at Cumming City Center, bringing a full-service sports bar, a Louisiana-influenced menu and some of the development’s latest operating hours to 400 Vision Drive.

The restaurant began regular service over the weekend after several preview nights with a limited menu. Reservations are active, and the dining room and bar are now operating seven days a week.

Its arrival gives the City Center a restaurant designed specifically around game-day crowds. More than 40 televisions and a large central screen are positioned throughout the space, creating a dedicated place to watch college football, the NFL and other major sporting events.

That emphasis distinguishes Tavern Off the Green from the surrounding restaurants, breweries, wine bars and entertainment businesses that have gradually filled the city-owned development.

The kitchen also goes well beyond the wings-and-burgers formula common to many sports bars.

The full Tavern Off the Green menu leans heavily into Louisiana flavors, with hot crawfish fondue, Creole-style gumbo, red beans and rice, muffuletta sandwiches and po’boys filled with fried shrimp, oysters, crawfish or braised pot roast.

Entrées include Gulf shrimp and andouille sausage served with smoked-Gouda grits, crawfish étouffée pot pie, Cajun Alfredo with blackened chicken and sausage, and blackened redfish covered with crawfish étouffée.

More familiar tavern choices remain available. The restaurant serves chicken wings in buffalo, lemon-pepper and Cajun-rubbed varieties, along with a double smash burger, roasted turkey sandwich, onion rings and salads.

Prices range from $10 for six wings to $31 for a 12-ounce ribeye. Most sandwiches and po’boys cost between $12 and $18, while the principal entrées run from $16 to $25 apart from the steak.

Desserts continue the Southern theme with beignets and bananas Foster bread pudding. A chocolate cake and Barq’s root beer float complete the current selection.

The menu’s specificity may prove important in a development where diners already have numerous choices. Cumming City Center’s restaurant lineup includes Mexican food, Latin tapas, pho, seafood, Italian dishes, steak, pizza, coffee, ice cream, beer and wine.

Tavern Off the Green enters that mix with a clearer nighttime and sports-oriented identity.

The hours reinforce that role. The restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to midnight Sunday through Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

Those closing times make it one of the City Center’s latest-operating businesses and give customers a place to continue an evening after a concert, festival or other public event.

Late-night service has been a relatively limited part of the City Center’s development. The property was designed as an all-day destination, but much of its activity has centered on daytime shopping, dinner and scheduled events at the Lou Sobh Amphitheater.

A restaurant serving food and drinks past midnight could extend that activity, particularly on weekends and during football season.

The timing is favorable. Tavern Off the Green opened as the college and professional football schedules were beginning, giving the restaurant an immediate opportunity to establish game-day routines rather than waiting until the middle of a season.

Its opening also fills one of the remaining prominent restaurant spaces at Cumming City Center.

The restaurant had initially been expected to open in August. By beginning full service in September, it joins the district after most of its neighboring businesses have had time to establish themselves and while the fall events calendar is bringing more visitors to the property.

Cumming City Center now describes its commercial space as fully leased, with Simple Man Distillery among the remaining businesses preparing to open.

That represents a notable change for a development that opened in stages. Early visitors often encountered completed streets, parks and performance spaces surrounded by unfinished or vacant storefronts. The increasing number of operating restaurants and shops is bringing the project closer to the active town-center atmosphere originally envisioned.

Tavern Off the Green adds a large, casual gathering place to that evolution — one built for televised games, group meals and evenings that continue well after dinner.

The restaurant is open daily at 400 Vision Drive in Cumming. Reservations and current hours are available through Tavern Off the Green.