Restaurants may close, buildings may change, and menus may disappear, but apparently it takes a lot more than that to erase the memory of a great bowl of French onion soup.
DiningOut recently asked Atlanta readers on Facebook a simple question: What Atlanta restaurant do you wish would come back? The responses amounted to a culinary trip through the city’s past, with 42 restaurants named across 38 comments. The list stretched from longtime institutions and Buckhead power spots to neighborhood lunch counters and restaurants that disappeared much more recently.
But one name rose above the rest: Pleasant Peasant.
Pleasant Peasant received four mentions, more than any other individual restaurant in the discussion. The longtime Atlanta restaurant had locations Downtown and at Phipps Plaza, and readers remembered both.
For reader Alan Akin, it was the latter—and one particular dish—that still inspires nostalgia.
“Easily move in to any one of the Pleasant Peasant locations, especially Phipps Plaza upstairs,” Akin wrote. “The French onion soup was memorable.”
Another reader, Dottie Lundeen, kept her answer simple: “Pleasant Peasant Downtown.”
Pleasant Peasant wasn’t the only restaurant from the former Peasant Restaurants group readers wanted back. The Country Place at Colony Square finished just behind it with three mentions, while Mick’s and Dailey’s also made appearances.
And once again, it was specific dishes that stuck with people.
“The Country Place at Colony Square offered the ‘low calorie’ rolls that became a must to accompany any meal,” Akin recalled, while another reader immediately remembered the restaurant’s “flower pot” dessert.
The responses weren’t entirely dominated by restaurants from decades past. Agnes and Muriel’s received two mentions, while more recently departed spots like the Federal and Buckhead Diner surfaced alongside older names including Coach & Six, the Lark and Dove, the Red Barn, the Ambassador, Baby Doe’s, and the Highlander.
Nava, the former Buckhead Life Restaurant Group restaurant, also earned a shoutout—and reader Steve Thomas had a very specific request: “Nava, or at least someone can copy their lobster appetizer!”
For Scott Walker, the meal he’d most like to resurrect was decidedly less fancy.
“But if I’m honest, the Atlanta restaurant meal I most often find myself wishing I could eat again was a burrito from Frijolero’s,” he wrote.
Walker also recalled walking from the Hurt Building for lunches at Thelma’s Kitchen Downtown, calling the trek “well worth the walk.”
Other one-time favorites readers called out included Coco Loco’s, Deacon Burton’s, Sweet Tomatoes, the Brickery, the Roman Lilly, the Red Snapper, Mumbo Jumbo, Upper Crust, Roy’s, Panita Thai Kitchen, K Takeout, Ace Bar B Que, El Mexicano, and plenty more.
Not every response was technically about a restaurant that has vanished completely. Paschal’s received two mentions, but readers were specifically nostalgic for its former location on West Hunter Street, now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive—not the restaurant brand itself, which continues to operate elsewhere.
Similarly, one reader missed specific Zesto locations on Ponce, Piedmont, and in Little Five Points, recalling living just a couple of blocks from the Ponce outpost. That specificity ran throughout the responses. People didn’t just remember restaurant names; they remembered the Phipps Plaza location upstairs, a particular intersection in Buckhead, the walk from an office Downtown, and the exact dishes they ordered once they got there.
Maybe that’s why restaurant nostalgia hits differently. Atlanta can always get another steakhouse, neighborhood bar, or place for a good burrito. But recreating your restaurant—the room you remember, the dish you always ordered, and the people you ate it with—is another matter entirely.
