Dunwoody Village's New Restaurants Are Following Two Very Different Playbooks

Two very different operators are building in Dunwoody at the same time, a few minutes apart from each other. One already runs four restaurants within walking distance of each other in Dunwoody Village and just bought a fifth. The other has never operated a restaurant outside Florida and picked a storefront inside Twelve24, the office tower by the MARTA station, for its very first location outside the state. Neither bet is obviously safer than the other, and together they explain why this stretch of Dunwoody feels different than it did a year ago.

The local guy doubling down

Steak & Grace lasted about ten months. The steakhouse, opened by Barry Mills of Big B's Fish Joint in Chastain Park, closed abruptly on January 22, 2026, after never quite catching on in Dunwoody Village. Within days, DASH Hospitality Group founder David Abes had bought the space. He is turning it into {S}table Comfort Food and Cocktails, a Southern restaurant under chef Camron Woods that opened this past April with a menu built around a cheese-and-charcuterie board called the Southern Lazy Susan, buttermilk fried chicken, and a rotating meat-and-two.

{S}table is not Abes's first restaurant in the Village. It is his fifth. He already operates Bar{n} Booze and Bites, Morty's Meat Supply, Message In a Bottle, and Good Vibes Ice Cream, all within the same small stretch of Dunwoody Village Parkway. When Rough Draft Atlanta asked why he kept building here instead of expanding into higher-profile Atlanta neighborhoods, Abes was direct about it.

"I've been offered spaces in Buckhead and Midtown, but Dunwoody's my home. I just want all of my restaurants to be gathering spots for the community."

The names carry some of that history. {S}table nods to Dunwoody's agrarian past and to Abes's own childhood riding horses at nearby Banister Farm. Morty's, he told the paper, is his version of an old Atlanta favorite: "I would say, that's my ode to Hickory House." He was general manager of the former Horseradish Grill in the 1990s, and {S}table is meant to echo that restaurant's blend of casual and refined more than it echoes any specific Dunwoody institution.

Morty's isn't standing still either. In March 2026, it added a dueling piano venue called the Smokehouse Stage, built into an expanded section of the building and staffed by Atlanta Dueling Pianos, a group founded by Francisco Vidal in partnership with Atlanta Music Agency's Joshua Gray Hamilton. The addition turns a barbecue restaurant into a reservation-driven night out, and it's another sign that Abes is treating his corner of the Village less like a collection of separate restaurants and more like a small entertainment district he happens to own outright.

The out-of-towner skipping two better-known neighborhoods

A few minutes away at Twelve24, the 16-story office tower connected to the Dunwoody MARTA station by a skybridge, a very different kind of bet is forming. Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant closed its ground-floor location there last September after the chain filed for bankruptcy. The space is being taken over by Adega Gaucha Brazilian Steakhouse, a churrasco concept with three existing locations in Orlando, Kissimmee, and Deerfield Beach. Dunwoody will be its fourth restaurant and its first anywhere outside Florida.

That is not a small detail. Co-founder and COO Fabiano Borsato told What Now Atlanta the company gets asked constantly by Florida regulars who live in or pass through Georgia when a location closer to home might open, and that demand finally tipped the decision. Part of the calculation is who already lives nearby.

"Twelve24 gave us a visible spot that works for the kind of restaurant we run. This will be our first location in Georgia and the first outside Florida. That means something to us."

Borsato also pointed to the roughly 120,000 people the Atlanta consular region counts as part of its Brazilian community, with established populations in Marietta, Sandy Springs, and Alpharetta. Dunwoody's location, minutes from all three, is part of why the company sees this as more than a symbolic first step. The restaurant will run about 8,000 square feet with seating for more than 250 guests, and the company hired Aria Group, the design firm behind Cooper's Hawk, STK, and Del Frisco's, to build it out.

Here's where it gets less tidy. Appen Media reported in July 2026 that Adega Gaucha was working toward an opening "by the end of the year." A separate report from that same month, citing Borsato directly, put the target at January 2027. Nobody involved seems to be hiding the shift, but if you're planning a special dinner around this one, treat the timeline as fluid until the restaurant itself starts taking reservations.

What that leaves everyone else building around

DASH and Adega Gaucha are the two biggest, most legible bets, but they're not the only ones. A handful of smaller signings this year point to landlords and independent operators reading the same momentum:

• The Shops of Dunwoody signed four new tenants this summer, expected to open through fall 2026: Beyond Juicery + Eatery, a fast-casual juice and smoothie spot; Jetset Pilates, a reformer-based studio; Tenku Sushi; and Sweat440, a 40-minute group fitness concept.
• Varuni Napoli, the Neapolitan pizza chain that imports its ingredients directly from Naples, is targeting a mid-2026 opening at 120 High Street, with roughly 3,000 square feet inside and a 1,000-square-foot patio.

None of these openings depend on Abes or Adega Gaucha succeeding, which is part of the point. Multiple landlords are leasing to multiple kinds of tenants at the same time, which is a different signal than one operator expanding on his own terms.

Brook Run and Wildcat Park didn't wait for any of this

The restaurant news has been loud, but the parks kept their own calendar. Groovin' on the Green, the city's free summer concert series, returned to the Brook Run Park Amphitheater in June 2026 and runs on second Saturdays through October, skipping July. The amphitheater sits along the Dunwoody Trailway inside 110-acre Brook Run Park, close enough that plenty of people walk or bike over rather than drive. If you missed the earlier dates, the series still has room to run this fall.

If you tried to walk or ride from Pernoshal Park toward Brook Run or Georgetown Park in July 2026, you likely hit a closed section. Trail repairs cut off that connection through July 31, according to Rough Draft Atlanta's local roundup. That work should be finished now, so the usual route back is open again.

Across town at Wildcat Park, the city's Art Commission unveiled Art for All in December 2025, a public sculpture exhibit spread across the park's 12 acres, including Phil Proctor's Tethered Sail and Julia Hill's Flying Fish. It's scheduled to run for up to two years, so there's no rush, but it's worth a stop if you haven't wandered through yet.

None of these park updates required a restaurant group or a national chain to make a decision. They're the quieter half of the same story: a small city investing in its public spaces at the same time private operators are investing in its storefronts.

The bigger picture is that Dunwoody Village isn't being built by one playbook right now. A homegrown operator is consolidating the blocks he already knows, and a national brand is using this exact neighborhood to test whether it can grow beyond its home state at all. Both bets are happening on the same handful of streets, at the same time, for very different reasons.

If you're watching Dunwoody's momentum and wondering what it means for your own plans here, whether that's finding a home near the Village or understanding what a listing in this pocket of the city is really worth right now, Ellen Cook can walk you through it block by block. Request your personalized home valuation or buyer consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.