Why McDonough Suddenly Has Two Restaurant Corridors Instead Of One
Drive Jonesboro Road on a weeknight now and you will pass a parking lot that was empty eighteen months ago and is not empty anymore. Keep going to the Square and you will find the same slow Saturday rhythm that has been there for years, except two of the storefronts around it just got bigger. Those are not the same story, even though they are happening at the same time in the same small city.
McDonough is not getting one restaurant boom this year. It is getting two, and they are pulling in opposite directions. One is happening on Jonesboro Road, where outside money and outside names are choosing McDonough over the corridors they usually pick. The other is happening near Macon Street and the Square, where the people who were already here are expanding instead of closing. If you live here, both matter, but for different reasons.
In March 2026, chef Todd Richards opened Que-riosity at 1931 Jonesboro Road, a Southern-inspired barbecue restaurant built around an upscale dining format rather than a counter-service one. Richards is not testing a first idea. He is a self-taught chef and four-time James Beard semifinalist who has spent 25 years in some of the region's best kitchens, and he currently serves as executive chef at the Waldorf Astoria Atlanta Buckhead. That kind of resume usually opens its next project in Buckhead or somewhere along the Beltline. It opened this one in McDonough.
The concept is built around honoring the history of Black pitmasters while sourcing ingredients locally, and Richards has said the goal is to treat barbecue with the same rigor as fine dining. In his own words, "keeping true Southern barbecue traditions alive means giving them the same care and attention you'd see in a fine-dining kitchen." The restaurant runs Thursday through Monday, 3 to 10 p.m., with a cocktail program led by beverage director Ransey Kashlan, which is a different pace and a different price point than most of what has historically sat along that stretch of road.
A month before that, in February 2026, Super Chix signed a lease for a 2,500-square-foot space at 982 Jonesboro Road, Suite 200. The Texas-based fast-casual chain, known for its chicken, hand-cut fries, and frozen custard, was brought in by local franchisee Missy Moon, who already operates several locations across the Atlanta area. Super Chix has not announced an opening date for the McDonough site, but the company's other Georgia locations, in Dunwoody, Peachtree City, Marietta, Kennesaw, and Newnan, tell you something on their own. Franchisees do not pick markets at random. They pick suburbs that already look like the ones performing well, and McDonough just got sorted into that list.
Put those two decisions side by side and you have a fine-dining barbecue room and a national fast-casual chain both choosing the same half-mile of Jonesboro Road within a month of each other. That is not a coincidence of timing. It is two very different kinds of operators independently deciding the corridor is worth the bet.
The story near downtown is not about outside money arriving. It is about local operators getting bigger.
Smoke Friendly BBQ, a family-run barbecue business, is bringing a second location to 59 Macon Street, building on the success of its original restaurant in Covington. That address puts a second serious barbecue program within an easy walk of the Square, right as Que-riosity anchors the other end of the city on Jonesboro Road. Two credible smoke programs operating in the same small city at once is not the norm for a south metro suburb this size.
A short distance away, Leo's Cafe moved into a larger space on John Frank Ward Boulevard, in a building that had previously housed Baby Jane's Home Cooking. On its own, a cafe relocating is a small piece of news. As part of a pattern, it means something else. The independent operators near downtown are trading up in square footage rather than shutting their doors, which is a different signal than a chain deciding to enter a market for the first time. One is expansion by people who already know whether McDonough works. The other is expansion by people betting that it will.
None of this has changed what the Square itself does on a Saturday, and that consistency is worth naming precisely because everything around it is moving. The city's Main Street Market returns to the Square on Saturday, September 26, 2026, the kind of open-air market with local vendors that has anchored downtown for years. It is free, it runs late morning into early afternoon, and it is the closest thing McDonough has to a standing weekly ritual scaled up to a monthly one.
A block or two away, the C.O. Polk Interactive Museum keeps its own quieter rhythm, a 7,000-square-foot building packed with vintage cameras and photography artifacts spanning the medium's first 150 years, with an escape-room-style night game for anyone who wants a reason to come back after dark. In the summer months, the Square adds free concerts and movie nights, the kind of programming that does not need a new restaurant to justify itself. That is the baseline McDonough has run on for a while, and it is not being replaced by what is happening on Jonesboro Road. It is running alongside it.
If you already live here, the practical version of all this is simple. You now have a reason to treat Jonesboro Road and the Square as two separate destinations on the same Saturday instead of picking one.
The honest way to think about McDonough right now is that it is not becoming one thing. It is becoming two things that happen to share a zip code. The Square is holding its shape, doing what it has always done, only with slightly bigger local businesses attached to it. Jonesboro Road is turning into something newer, a corridor that a James Beard semifinalist and a Texas fast-casual chain both decided was worth entering within weeks of each other. Neither version cancels the other out. If anything, having both means the answer to "where should we eat tonight" keeps getting less predictable, in a good way.
If you are weighing a move to McDonough and want a read on what a particular street or corridor actually feels like day to day, that is the kind of local detail True Atlanta Real Estate can walk you through. Schedule your free consultation with Cyndi Williams to talk through the neighborhoods behind the numbers.
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