One of Marietta Square’s more familiar restaurant addresses is changing hands again. After a decade as Piastra and a brief run as Asher & Rose Modern Grocers, the restaurant has been sold to a new buyer who plans to open a French brasserie called Brasserie Genevieve.
Chef Greg Lipman and his mother, Betty Bahl, opened Piastra at 45 W Park Square in 2015, replacing La Famiglia Ristorante. Piastra spent the next decade as a full-service Italian restaurant with pasta, pizza, seafood, wine, and a familiar dining room facing Glover Park.
Lipman’s culinary background included time at the New England Culinary Institute, restaurants in the Boston area, time cooking alongside a classically trained French chef aboard a yacht, and later positions at Maxim Prime, Alon’s Bakery and Market, and Dal Cuore before opening Piastra.
Piastra closed after its final dinner on December 31, 2025. After the closure, Lipman and Bahl rebuilt the business around a different idea.
Asher & Rose Modern Grocers opened in late January 2026 as a specialty market, café, and bar. The new format changed much of Piastra’s traditional dining room setup into produce, regional cheeses and dairy, pantry goods, prepared foods, baked goods, and a butcher counter offering custom cuts of meat and fish. The café retained some Piastra favorites, including pizzas and pastas, while the bar featured wine, cocktails, and beer.
Asher & Rose’s run was brief. The Plates Restaurant LLC, the company doing business as Asher & Rose Grocers and formerly Piastra, filed a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition on May 7, 2026, in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Georgia.
At the time, Lipman told news outlets that business had been difficult and pointed to sharp growth in the number of food and beverage businesses around the Square. He said the area had grown from roughly 28 food and beverage locations when Piastra arrived in 2015 to about 43 by 2026. That might be an understatement for the recent growth around Marietta Square. We count more than 60 Marietta Square restaurants within walking distance of the Square, and that number does not include fast food chains.
The bankruptcy appears to have forced a sale at below market pricing. Court records show that the bankruptcy judge approved a sale of business assets along with assignment of the lease on August 27, though not a sale of the building at 45 W Park Square.
The buyer plans to replace Asher & Rose with Brasserie Genevieve, bringing a French restaurant concept into one of the Square’s larger dining spaces. At this point, we don’t have much information about a menu, chef, ownership biography, operating hours, or design details.
What we do know is that the new operator will be taking over a large production kitchen, bar, sidewalk patio, and considerable indoor seating. Piastra spent a decade cooking Italian food there. Asher & Rose tried groceries, prepared foods, and café dining for several months. The next operator is bringing recipes from France.
Brasserie Genevieve is expected to open in late 2026 to early 2027.
Dining and Cooking