Just seventeen months after making its debut, Superica West Midtown has closed. The trendy Tex-Mex restaurant, located at 930 Howell Mill Road (street level of The Brady apartments), was the sixth in Atlanta from locally based Ford Fry Restaurants. Sources tell ToNeTo Atlanta the restaurant closed "within the past week" with its location already marked "permanently closed" on Google and wiped from the Ford Fry website.
Superica's closure is significant for several reasons, not the least of which is that it marks the first time in Atlanta that Ford Fry has permanently closed a restaurant (before its lease expiration) without plans to re-concept. Fry previously re-concepted two Atlanta locations of The El Felix (Avalon and The Battery Atlanta) into Superica and made a similar move in West Midtown when he opened Little Sparrow and Bar Blanc in place of JCT Kitchen. ToNeTo Atlantaexclusively reported last May on the closure of Buckhead's King+Duke at the completion of its ten-year lease. Fares Kargar plans to open his popular Middle Eastern eatery Delbar in its place.
Worth noting, too, is that Superica was located between several other successful and established Ford Fry restaurants including The Optimist (est. May 2012), Marcel (est. July 2015) and the aforementioned Little Sparrow and Bar Blanc (est. October 2023), which replaced JCT Kitchen, Fry's original, that had opened January 2007.
Following its closure, five locations of Superica remain open in metro Atlanta: Buckhead, Krog Street Market, The Battery Atlanta, Ashford Lane in Dunwoody and Avalon in Alpharetta. There are also six other locations spread between North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Texas. (The Ashford Lane location opened in February 2023, just a few weeks ahead of West Midtown.)
With eleven locations, Superica is Ford Fry's largest multi-unit concept across his thirteen concept restaurant portfolio.
That said, as we mentioned in our May 2024 post regarding Torchy's Tacos imminent (delayed from July to TBD) West Midtown arrival, the West Midtown sub-market has turned from red hot to incredibly challenging, as restaurants vie for market share.
ToNeTo Atlanta exclusively reported this past January on the abrupt closure of Wagamama at Star Metals. The Asian restaurant opened at the new project in June 2022 and closed in January for what it claimed were "technical difficulties," but never reopened.
"There are too darn many restaurants over there," one restaurant industry insider told us in May.
Several other multi-unit operators including Bartaco, Postino, and Culinary Dropout, among others sold on the excitement and growth of the area are now said to be "under pressure" as diners, already in short supply, are further reining in their spending amidst inflation and increases in the cost of dining out.
Are you surprised by the closure of Superica in West Midtown? Have you changed your dining out habits in recent months? Do you think West Midtown has too many restaurants?
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