Morningside Mexican Restaurant and Tequila Bar Closes, But a Seafood Restaurant Replaces It

Mexican restaurant and tequila bar Lazy Llama Cantina, part of Big Table Restaurants, owned by Sean and Becky Yeremyan, closed July 12 after just over a year at the corner of Piedmont Avenue and Monroe Drive in the Morningside neighborhood. The restaurant replaced the group’s decade-old neighborhood tavern Hobnob.

According to Steve Josovitz of the Shumacher Group, “upscale casual” seafood restaurant and bar Octopus is taking over the space.

“Lazy Llama opened right before the pandemic and started out doing really well, but unfortunately we ended up having to close two weeks after opening,” Sean Yeremyan tells Eater of the closure. “The business never came back to the level we thought it should. Eventually we decided this location no longer fit our business model.”

Just one month prior to the pandemic-related dining room shutdowns by the state last March, the Yeremyans announced that the Morningside neighborhood tavern would become Lazy Llama. The rebranded restaurant opened at the end of February 2020.

At the time of Hobnob’s closure there, Yeremyan cited its close proximity to the upcoming Atlantic Station location of Hobnob in Midtown as the reason for transforming the tavern into the questionably named Mexican restaurant and bar.

“We have plans to expand our other brands. We believe that Llama is a great concept and could flourish in the right location; we want to find that location in the near future,” says Yeremyan.

The Yeremyans and Big Table opened a third location of Hobnob in August 2020 at the Halcyon development in southern Forsyth County, followed by steakhouse Cattle Shed Wine and Steak Bar this spring. The fourth (and largest) Hobnob location opened in March at Atlantic Station.

• Hobnob Tavern Revamps After a Decade on Piedmont Into a Mexican Restaurant [EATL]
• Steak and Fish Bowl Cocktails Arrive at Atlantic Station With Hobnob’s March Debut [EATL]