Encouraged by the steady uptick in new downtown residents, tourists and office workers, restaurateurs are opening new places to eat in Atlanta's city center this year.

A smorgasbord of choices — from local standbys like Waffle House to popular national chains like Legal Sea Foods— will soon be serving food for diners in the heart of Georgia's capital.

LOUIE FAVORITE / AJC (ENLARGE)

Chef Scott Uber (right) in the kitchen of the Maxime Prime restaurant that opened earlier this month in the Glenn Hotel in downtown Atlanta.

DOWNTOWN DINING Restaurant and location: • Mellow Mushroom, TWELVE Centennial Park • Cafe Circa, Sweet Auburn • Maxim Prime, The Glenn Hotel • Stella Neighborhood Trattoria, Oakland Park • Pleasant Bistro, Centennial Olympic Park • Crescent Moon, Renaissance Walk • Legal Sea Foods, Centennial Olympic Park • Tokyo 2020, The Healey Building • Il Mulino, 191 Peachtree Tower • Dogwood, The Reynolds on Peachtree • Waffle House, Underground Atlanta • BLT Steak, W Hotel at Allen Plaza • Phi, Hotel Indigo at the Carnegie • Downtown Morton's getting new look, more room BUSINESS Latest Headlines: Companies reconfigure surplus office space  Georgia banks on brink of collapse? Not quite  Survey: Employees will jet when job market rebounds  One consolation for Atlanta: jobless woes worse elsewhere  Restaurants offering summer freebies  • More business news • Business photo galleries

View a map of the new restaurants

If they do well, restaurant industry leaders say, others could follow. Atlanta's downtown has been underserved and has a lot of room to grow.

"They are catching up with Midtown and Buckhead," said Ron Wolf, executive director of the Georgia Restaurant Association. "There is an increase in demand."

Some already are meeting that demand. Café Circa is serving coffee in Sweet Auburn; Peasant Bistro, across from Centennial Olympic Park, is filling tables for lunch. Stella Neighborhood Trattoria is making dinner available near Oakland Cemetery.

Other coming restaurants include the trendy Crescent Moon franchise, Il Mulino at the 191 building on Peachtree Street and Tokyo 2020 in the Healey Building.

The caveat in this rosy picture is the economy. Americans are tightening their belts in the face of rising gas prices and falling home values. Food prices are going up, which puts further pressure on restaurants, especially since few can pass on the additional costs without making their menus too pricey for some diners.

How each restaurant fares depends on how much its target demographic is hurting, said Harold Shumacher, an Atlanta restaurant broker and head of the Shumacher Group. Visiting oil executives, for example, may not have to make dining trade-offs the same way someone in the hard hit real estate community would.

"The pattern of consuming out of the house is not going to change," because of the economic slowdown, Shumacher said. "It's where you go that will change."

The boom is coming on the heels of renewed interest in downtown Atlanta because of the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coca-Cola, dining industry leaders said. The relocations of businesses like Cousins Properties and the American Cancer Society to downtown also have given more reason to open new eateries.

"If you put all these things together, they are a very active incubator for restaurants," said Tim Mescon, dean of the Coles College of Business at Kennesaw State University. "It's finally time for the restaurant business to catch up."

Industry watchers said the interest in downtown is a second wave of sorts. The area saw a boom around the 1996 Summer Olympics, only to see many of those restaurants disappear after the recession of 2001.

Restaurateurs today have to carefully study the market and make sure the numbers work — especially when considering an area where many of their customers are not local, said Dave Pavesic, a hospitality professor at Georgia State University.

He suspects, for example, that before Legal Sea Foods agreed to build at the new Hilton Garden Inn downtown, the Boston-based chain carefully weighed competition it expects from McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants, just doors down the street at CNN Center.

"It's all strategic planning," he said. "It's nothing that's being planned on a whim."

Untapped potential

The industry knows what it's up against, said Wolf of the Georgia Restaurant Association. Across the city, he's talked to restaurateurs who have reported everything from record business to double-digit dips. He thinks the economic malaise will be short and the new downtown restaurants will survive.

"As long as the economy doesn't slide further, I think they'll be fine," he said.

Maureen Kalmanson, operator of the Peasant Bistro, said she believes that downtown has a lot of potential. The restaurant has been open for about a couple of weeks and business has been strong.

"We're at the ground floor of what's going on down here," she said.

National restaurant giant Jeffrey Chodorow, who is opening Maxim Prime at the Glenn Hotel this weekend, said he was lured to Atlanta because of the strength of its convention, sporting and tourist numbers.

"There is a lot happening in downtown Atlanta," said Chodorow, who added that he wants to bring other concepts to Georgia's capital. "There are lot of offices, a lot of lunch opportunities. Conventions are also big and I think we will appeal a lot to the sports crowd."

Chodorow said he joined forces with the Glenn because he likes independent boutiques that match his restaurants' styles.

"We hope we create the destinations that people want to go to," he said.