Marietta Square in 2026: What Actually Opened, What Quietly Closed, and What Never Came
August 20, 2026
August 20, 2026
A year ago, if you wanted a table at Piastra, you called ahead. It was the kind of Marietta Square restaurant you saved for a birthday or an anniversary, ten years of white tablecloth reservations behind it. Today the same address sells you a wedge of North Georgia cheese and a bottle of wine on your way home from work, no reservation required. Piastra closed after its final dinner service on New Year's Eve and reopened weeks later as Asher & Rose Modern Grocers, with a grand opening on January 28. The mother-son team behind it, Chef Greg Lipman and Betty Bahl, kept the wine and cocktail program that made the old restaurant a destination, but wrapped it around a working market: fresh produce, regional dairy, a butcher counter for custom cuts of meat and fish, and prepared meals for people who don't have time to cook tonight.
That single swap tells you more about the Square in 2026 than a list of new menus ever could. The block isn't just adding restaurants. It's trading a night out for a daily stop, and that shift shows up in three other places if you know where to look.
Walk down Atlanta Street to 72, diagonally across from Glover Park Brewery, and you'll find Glover Park Kitchen, a full-service restaurant from the same founders, Hank DuPre and Sam Rambo, who opened the brewery on the south side of the Square nearly eight years ago. The kitchen earned a perfect score on its first health inspection on July 28, a good sign for a spot that's designed to run at full capacity: about 90 percent of the seating sits under a covered patio built with heating, fans, air conditioning, and retractable enclosures, plus a 2,200-square-foot turf lawn with a stage and a screen for watch parties.
DuPre and Rambo have talked about the project as an extension of a bet they made when the brewery first opened.
"When we opened this brewery, I was up at night worrying, are they going to come down this way. That question got answered for us. They do come here."
The city built a crosswalk connecting the two properties, and the new restaurant is meant to keep people moving between them rather than treating the south side as a separate errand from the main Square.
A few doors from the old Red Hare Brewing & Distilling space at 29 West Park Square, West Park Sports Club opened on April 20, an upscale sports bar from Fork U Concepts, the group behind Taqueria Tsunami and Stockyard Burgers and Bones. It swapped Red Hare's brewery floor for leather seating and a darker interior, with a menu that leans more polished small plate than typical bar food: crispy rice with tuna, crab rangoon flatbread, bulgogi cheesesteak sliders. Between Glover Park Kitchen and West Park Sports Club, the Square picked up two full-service rooms in a single spring without adding a single new address to the map. Both are reuses of spaces residents already knew.
Marietta Square Market has never been a static lineup. The food hall's dozen-plus stalls, Philly & Wrap, Pita Mediterranean Street Food, PONKO Chicken, Roxy's Burger, rotate on their own schedule, and 2026 has been no exception. El Jalisco opens today, August 17, adding a Mexican counter with margaritas and patio seating to the hall's roster. It's the kind of change a food hall is built for: low overhead per stall means the market can test a new cuisine without betting the whole building on it, which is a different risk profile than the restaurants opening on the Square proper.
A block over on Church Street, Deep Roots Wine Market & Tasting Room officially opened on March 17, giving the Square its first dedicated tasting room and adding a third wine program to a strip that already had Asher & Rose's bottle shop and the Square's existing bar rooms. If you've noticed more people carrying a glass between stops on a Friday night, this is why.
Here's where the story stops being a straight line of openings. The most-watched vacancy on the Square, the empty parcel at 77 North Park Square known locally as the Goldstein Gap, has sat unbuilt since owner Philip Goldstein razed the Cuthbertson building in 2010. Multiple redevelopment proposals fell through over the years, including plans for a brewery and a five-story building. In September 2025, the Marietta Historic Board of Review unanimously approved a new plan: a 4,311-square-foot Ted's Montana Grill, single-story and steel-framed, designed with a second-story fascia to match the historic scale of its neighbors. It would have been Georgia's twelfth Ted's location in a state that already leads the chain's national footprint.
Then the project fell apart. Ted's Montana Grill is no longer moving forward on the Goldstein Gap, and the lot that had cleared its final approval hurdle is back to being an empty lot with a rendering nobody will build. It's a useful check on the idea that everything on the Square trends upward. Some of the most anticipated additions never make it past the drawing board, even after they clear the historic review board.
Not every change came with a construction crew. Spring, the Square's Michelin-starred fine dining room from Chef Brian So, shut down last year for renovations and had largely dropped off the radar. In April, it reopened in a limited capacity, announced with nothing more than a social media post. No ribbon cutting, no press push. If you'd assumed Spring was gone for good, that assumption is now out of date. Chef So also runs a more casual sibling on Church Street, a walk-in-only Korean concept built around dishes like kimchi jjigae and gochujang-glazed pork belly, which means the same chef now covers both ends of the Square's dining range, from a no-reservation weeknight bowl to the top of the tasting menu.
Line up the last eight months and a few things stand out:
None of these moved the needle on their own. Together, they change what a normal Friday looks like. The Marietta Square Art Walk still runs the first Friday of every month from March through December, five to nine in the evening, a self-guided stroll through galleries and restaurants with live music along the way, and it's worth checking the city's own event listings before you plan around it since dates occasionally shift. The Brown Bag Concert Series still fills Glover Park on Thursdays at lunch in May and September. The farmers market still runs Saturday mornings. What's different is what's available to you between those fixed points: a butcher counter instead of a dinner reservation, a sports bar instead of a brewery taproom, a tasting room instead of just a bar tab. The rhythm of the Square hasn't changed. What you can do inside that rhythm has.
If you're already living near the Square, none of this requires a decision from you beyond where to eat on a Thursday. But if you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood's texture because you're thinking about what comes next, whether that's your own next move or helping someone else figure out theirs, this is the kind of detail that doesn't show up in a listing description. Adrianne Grant has spent over two decades watching Metro Atlanta neighborhoods change block by block, and if Marietta's shifts have you curious about what your own home is worth in a market that's still finding its shape, a complimentary home valuation and consultation is the easiest place to start.
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