The buffet of eateries in downtown Decatur is both losing and adding offerings.

At least five restaurants have closed recently, yet already three more have set up shop in a game of dining musical chairs. The city's first steakhouse also is planning to open.

Elissa Eubanks/AJC (ENLARGE)
The owners of Saba plan to bring their Italian restaurant, complete with spaghetti and meatballs, to a second location on Sycamore Street.
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"As soon as those places disappear, the landlords are bombarded," said Neil Dobbs, president of the Decatur Business Association.

Mick's was the first restaurant to take a risk on the gentrifying downtown Decatur 13 years ago. Now that venerable restaurant has closed, with plans for a steakhouse to move into its shuttered space on East Ponce de Leon Avenue, according to Linda Harris, the city's assistant director of economic development.

Two newer entries, Angel and Zocalo, also shut down recently.

A fourth eatery, Viet Chateau, closed after the death of one of the owners. The fifth, Pasta Please, closed late last year but now operates as a catering business.

Saba, an Italian restaurant near Emory University, already plans to open in the former Pasta Please site on Sycamore Street. And Cakes and Ale already has opened in the former Viet Chateau location on West Ponce de Leon Avenue. El Tesoro, a Mexican eatery, opened on Church Street in March.

Two of the owners of Angel plan to re-open that Ponce eatery, though maybe under a different concept.

"I don't think that's anything more than typical," Harris said. "Restaurants have had that kind of turnover in the past."

Decatur officials and business owners are more focused on luring new offices to downtown, said Dobbs of the Decatur Business Association. Courthouse workers and juries don't have enough time for sit-down lunches, but office workers and students, including those from the Art Institute of Atlanta, which recently relocated to Decatur, can linger in eateries and coffeehouses, he said.

"We are holding steady on restaurants," Dobbs said. "What we need are workers to generate the daily foot traffic for those restaurants."