If you walked the stretch of North Highland Avenue past Virginia Avenue back in June, you saw butcher paper taped over the windows at 1017 North Highland. Farm Burger had closed at the end of December, and the corner sat quiet for months while a new sign went up in pieces. Walk past that same address today and you'll find a fifty-seat dining room with wood tables built by local shops B10 Union and Silt Studio, a bar stocked with low-intervention wine, and a line most weekend nights that spills onto the sidewalk. So. Fox opened July 2.
Half a block away, at the basement space under Otto's Apartment Hotel, a different kind of opening has been promised for two summers running and still hasn't happened. That gap between what opened and what's still delayed is worth understanding, because the reason isn't random. This corner didn't just get new restaurants this year. It got a new landlord, and that ownership change explains more about what's happening on this stretch of North Highland than the menus do.
What Actually Opened
So. Fox comes from Myles Moody and Rachael Pack, the husband-and-wife team behind Kinship Butcher & Sundry next door. Moody and Pack met working the line at Aska, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Brooklyn, and they'd been planning an exit for years before Kinship became their first Atlanta project in 2021. So. Fox was always meant to be the second act: a wine-forward, hyper-seasonal room built for regulars rather than reservations, with two bars so neighbors could stop in for a glass without committing to a full dinner.
The name is a nod to the muscadine grape, sometimes called the southern fox grape, and the space itself used to be a Standard Oil filling station before it became Farm Burger. Farm Burger's exit wasn't framed as a loss. Co-founder George Frangos noted before closing that the restaurant had helped start the Virginia-Highland Farmers Market and had hosted neighborhood events like Winterfest and Porchfest during its run, and he handed the keys to Moody and Pack with the expectation that the next chapter would keep that same neighborhood spirit alive.
By early September, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's dining critic Henri Hollis had made his obligatory month-long wait and filed his review, calling So. Fox one of the most talked-about openings of the summer while praising its understated, unhurried approach to a whole roasted chicken meant for four. That's a fast, clean opening. Announced in January, open by July, reviewed by the paper of record by September.
What's Still Waiting
Some Luck has not moved at that pace. The Talat Market team, chefs Parnass Savang and Rod Lassiter, first announced plans for a Thai bar in the old Highland Ballroom Lounge back in late 2024, with an early summer 2025 target. That date slipped. By this summer, local coverage had the opening pushed to "summer 2026." That date slipped too. The latest reporting, out just this month, now points to an October 2026 opening for the basement space beneath Otto's Apartment Hotel, formerly the Highland Inn.
The space itself explains part of the wait. Some Luck is being built into a room with real history, the same basement bar Lassiter remembers visiting as a kid staying with cousins in Atlanta before he ever lived here. The design keeps the black-and-white checkerboard tile and adds stadium seats salvaged from the old Olympic stadium, alongside dark green walls and walnut accents. That's not a build-out you rush, and the menu, built around Thai bar snacks like papaya salad and boat noodles, is coming from a kitchen that already has a Michelin-recommended sibling restaurant to protect.
So one address on this corridor moved from announcement to open doors in six months. The other has been in progress for close to two years. Reading those two timelines side by side against the ownership news tells you something the restaurant reviews alone don't.
The Landlord Story Underneath Both
In May, Atlanta real estate investment firm 26th Street Partners paid $17.3 million for two segments of Virginia-Highland retail space, according to reporting in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. One segment is the century-old corner building that houses Kinship Butcher & Sundry, Paolo's Gelato, and Pielands Subs & Slice, the same building So. Fox now shares a wall with. The other is the Highland Avenue Market strip at North Highland and Amsterdam avenues, home to San Francisco Coffee Roasting Co., Mali Restaurant, and a U.S. Postal Service branch. Brokers Gene Kansas and Ted Bradford represented longtime owner Scott Stern in the sale.
26th Street Partners isn't a new name to intown Atlanta. The same firm bought the Krog District, including Krog Street Market, for $210 million the previous fall, a deal that reportedly returned the seller more than double what they'd paid for it years earlier. That's a firm with a track record of buying already-successful, already-walkable retail rather than betting on a turnaround. Their arrival on this specific corner, closing the same season So. Fox opened its doors, is not a coincidence of timing so much as a confirmation of it. The corner had already proven itself. The purchase priced that proof in.
Some Luck's building is a different story with a different owner, part of the earlier Highland Inn renovation that also brought in bakery Colette Bread and wine bar Madeira Park. That renovation predates this year's sale and explains why Some Luck's delay isn't tied to the same ownership change that just landed on the Farm Burger corner. Two different investment decisions, on the same half mile of sidewalk, both betting on small, chef-driven rooms instead of another national chain. That's the pattern worth noticing this fall, more than any single opening date.
What This Means If You're Just Trying to Get Dinner
- So. Fox is open now, with a standing bar reserved for walk-ins if you don't want to fight for a reservation.
- Kinship Butcher & Sundry is still running its regular breakfast and lunch counter next door, and the same ownership team is opening a second location at The Beacon in Grant Park this fall, a full-service cafe with an expanded butcher shop and its first seafood program.
- Some Luck is not open yet. If you've been telling out-of-town friends to meet you there, hold off until October.
- The retail strip anchoring both ends of this stretch, coffee shop to gelato counter to sub shop, now answers to the same landlord that runs Krog Street Market, which is worth knowing the next time a storefront changes hands here.
None of this changes what makes Virginia-Highland feel like Virginia-Highland: the walkability, the mix of decades-old tenants and brand-new ones, the way a corner can hold a filling station, a burger joint, and a wine bar across a hundred years without losing its shape. What's changed is who's paying attention to that value, and how much they're willing to pay for it.
We watch corners like this one closely, not because every restaurant opening matters to a home's value, but because they're often the clearest early signal of where investment is flowing before it shows up anywhere else. If you're curious what that kind of attention means for a specific block or a specific home in Virginia-Highland or anywhere else across the Tri-Cities and intown Atlanta, Intown Focus Realty is glad to walk through it with you. Request Your Home Valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
