What New Restaurants on Buford Drive Mean for Mall of Georgia

Drive along Buford Drive in front of Mall of Georgia and you've likely watched the same three storefronts go dark, with new restaurants opening or planned in their place. Not smaller replacements. Not lateral moves. Bigger buildings, bigger menus, bigger price tags, all on the exact same parcels where a Tex-Mex chain, an Italian-American chain, and a Southern comfort chain used to sit.

That's the part worth noticing if you live nearby. This isn't a story about a few new restaurants opening near the mall, which happens every year in Gwinnett County. It's a story about three specific restaurant closures within the same twelve-month window in 2024, and what has opened or is planned in their place telling you something about what this stretch of road can now support.

Three Empty Lots by the End of 2024

The first domino was On The Border at 3206 Buford Drive. The Tex-Mex chain had operated there for more than two decades, having opened in 2001 directly across from the mall. It closed quietly in January 2024, part of a broader unraveling for the brand that would end in a March 2025 bankruptcy filing and, eventually, closures of every remaining company-owned location nationwide by June 2026.

Romano's Macaroni Grill went next. Its location at 3207 Buford Drive, just next door, closed in September 2024. This wasn't a routine closure. It was the chain's last restaurant in Georgia, full stop, ending a run that traced back to founder Philip Romano's original 1988 concept.

Then O'Charley's, at 3217 Buford Drive. The Southern comfort chain has been contracting across the state for years, and by the time a new tenant signed on for the space in early 2026, the building had already sat empty long enough to need a new identity.

Three restaurants, three addresses, one road, one year. That kind of concentrated turnover doesn't happen because a road got less popular. It happens because the format that used to work on that road stopped working, and the new tenants—some open, others still planned or under construction—are testing whether a different format will.

What Has Opened or Is Planned for Each Address

Here's the replacement math, address by address:

Look at what each new tenant actually is. Fogo de Chão is a Brazilian steakhouse built around a prix-fixe churrasco experience, not a quick casual meal. It's the brand's third Georgia location, and it brought roughly 100 local jobs with it, a scale of staffing that a mid-tier Tex-Mex chain restaurant never needed. The company also designed the opening to double as a community gesture, donating 10 percent of its first week of sales to the North Gwinnett Co-Op, which serves food, clothing, and financial assistance to families across Buford, Suwanee, and Sugar Hill.

Porterhouse Grill is the clearest evidence of the trade-up pattern. The chain is building out roughly 7,500 square feet on the old O'Charley's footprint, with seating for about 300 guests, making it the largest location in the Porterhouse Grill chain. That's not a restaurant sized to replace a mid-tier chain restaurant. That's a restaurant sized for a corridor that can now support a much larger dinner crowd on a Friday night.

Portillo's is the wild card, and it's worth being honest about where things stand. As of late July 2026, the Chicago-based chain was still taking bids for the renovation of the old Macaroni Grill building, with no confirmed opening date announced. If you're hoping for a chocolate cake shake on your way home from the mall this fall, temper expectations. This one hasn't broken ground yet.

The One That Didn't Need a Vacant Lot

Not every new name on Buford Drive needed an empty outparcel to work with. Nan Xiang, a Michelin-recommended soup dumpling brand with roots in a small Flushing, New York storefront, slotted directly into in-line retail space inside Mall of Georgia itself. The chain has appeared on the Michelin Guide's recommended list for nine consecutive years running, and the Buford shop marks its first Georgia location. It soft-opened in early July 2026 and held its grand opening celebration on August 3.

That distinction matters. Fogo de Chão, Porterhouse Grill, and eventually Portillo's all needed to demolish or gut a standalone building to make their case for this stretch of road. Nan Xiang didn't. It walked into existing mall square footage and bet that demand for its xiao long bao and pan-fried pork buns would be strong enough on its own, no drive-up parking lot required. Local coverage of the opening has tied it to a wider trend of New York and national Asian dining brands expanding into Atlanta's suburbs, a shift attributed in part to the region's growing Asian population and its dense strip-mall dining culture. Buford landing a nine-year Michelin mention inside a shopping mall food corridor is a real marker of how far that trend has traveled north of the Perimeter.

What This Actually Changes If You Live Nearby

A few practical notes for anyone who eats dinner within a few miles of the mall.

• If you're planning a Fogo de Chão visit for a weekend evening, book ahead. Prix-fixe steakhouse concepts with this kind of build-out draw reservations, not walk-ins, especially in the months right after an opening.
• Don't expect Portillo's soon. Renovation bidding was still open in July 2026, and the company hasn't confirmed a timeline publicly.
• Porterhouse Grill's scale, at 300 seats, means Buford Drive now has real capacity for large group dinners and celebrations that it didn't have when that same address was a standard-format casual chain.
• If you're curious about Nan Xiang, go on a weekday. A grand opening in early August for a nine-year Michelin-recommended name tends to mean weekend lines for a while.

Why the Pattern Matters More Than Any Single Opening

It would be easy to read this as four unrelated headlines: steakhouse opens, hot dog chain builds, chophouse expands, dumpling shop arrives. But look at the addresses again. Three of these are the exact same footprints where mid-tier casual dining closed within months of each other in 2024. The new tenants—one open, one building out, and one still in renovation bidding—aren't more mid-tier casual dining. They point instead to bigger seat counts, higher check averages, and concepts built around an occasion, not a quick weeknight stop.

That's not a coincidence born of chain restaurant fashion. It's what happens when a stretch of retail frontage gets reassessed by the people who lease it, and the answer comes back that the corridor can now carry a heavier rent roll than it used to. For anyone paying attention to how a neighborhood's commercial spine evolves, that's a more useful signal than any single restaurant review, because it tells you what kind of businesses believe this address is worth building around long term.

Buford Drive isn't done changing. Portillo's still has to close out its renovation bidding and build out the space, and a 2024 report on the Macaroni Grill closure noted a former Burger King across the street at Marketplace at Millcreek was vacant at the time too, which suggests the reshuffling on this corridor has reached beyond just these three lots.

Watching a corridor like this trade up, lot by lot, is the kind of local detail that tends to matter well beyond dinner plans. It's the same kind of signal we track at Curated by Candis when we're helping clients understand what a specific stretch of Gwinnett or North Fulton is actually becoming, not just what it looks like today. If you're weighing a move in or around Buford and want a read on how changes like this connect to the broader picture, schedule a private consultation with Candis Rosier and we'll walk through it together.