Two of the biggest players in South Downtown's revival announced new food concepts on the same Monday, from very different playbooks.
The South Downtown ATL team is bringing Smorgasburg, the recurring open-air food festival that has drawn crowds in New York, Los Angeles and Miami, to Atlanta beginning this autumn. Separately, Underground Atlanta owner Lalani Ventures announced its own food hub plans.
The Smorgasburg site
Smorgasburg Atlanta will take over a surface parking lot at 104 Forsyth St., positioned between MARTA's Five Points and Garnett stations and a few blocks southeast of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The lot sits adjacent to the town square section of South Downtown where El Tesoro and other tenants are landing.
Plans call for more than 40 local vendors setting up every Saturday starting in October: food trucks, pop-up tents, live entertainment, artists, kids play areas, and beer, wine and seasonal cocktails. Culinary vendor applications opened with the announcement.
Smorgasburg co-owner and CEO Gaston Becherano said Atlanta stood out immediately as an expansion market, citing a pop-up food scene he described as dynamic and deeply rooted in creativity.
Why a parking lot is the right venue
Using a surface lot for a weekly market is the cheapest possible way to test demand on a block. It requires no construction, no tenant improvements and no long lease, and it produces exactly the thing South Downtown needs most on weekends, which is people.
It also happens to sit between two rail stations, which means the audience does not need to solve parking to get there.
The deadline behind both
Atlanta's World Cup matches begin in less than a year, and food and drink capacity in the blocks around Five Points has been the district's most obvious gap. Between Smorgasburg, Broad Street BBQ, El Tesoro at 171 Mitchell St., Tyde Tate Kitchen and Spiller Park Coffee, the answer is arriving in the space of about twelve months.
Original reporting by Josh Green for Urbanize Atlanta, published June 2025.
