Zeal Kitchen and Bar owner sells restaurant; plans venture in Roswell

Update: We’ll have more later, but a Los Bravos Mexican restaurant will be replacing Zeal.

Lots of restaurant news in East Cobb this week, some good, as we noted Tuesday about the opening of Jason’s Deli, and some not: A little less than five years after opening to some fanfare on Johnson Ferry Road, Zeal Kitchen and Bar will give way to a new restaurant early next year.

East Cobb News contacted owner Scott Sawant, who said “I got an offer earlier this week and I took the offer and sold to another company, which will open another different restaurant [in] Jan. 2019.”

Sawant did not identify the buyer. He said that a failing health inspection earlier this year was a factor in his decision.

Zeal passed a follow-up inspection, but he said in an interview with East Cobb News at the time that overcoming that kind of bad publicity is tougher than a bad review.

“It feels like you failed somebody in a relationship,” Sawant said.

This week, he told us that “we thought we could continue till at least December 31st or even longer.

“After the unfortunate health score in April we tried to recover and recuperate but it was tough.”

He said he is planning other ventures, starting early next year in Roswell, but did not elaborate.

“Now we are emptying the space,” Sawant said of Zeal, which was located in the former Empress of China II space in the Market Plaza Shopping Center, adjacent to Merchant’s Walk.

When we went by, we saw a closed sign and brown paper covering the inside front doors.

Sawant is a Wheeler High School graduate who emphasized his local roots and understanding of the East Cobb dining scene as it was drawing notice from Atlanta food critics.

He opened Zeal in October 2013, two years after Doug Turbush opened Seed at Merchant’s Walk, setting off an upscale dining wave in East Cobb that has had some notable casualties in recent months.

In February, the owners of Muss and Turner’s pulled the plug on their East Cobb restaurant at Woodlawn Square further down Johnson Ferry Road.

Zeal was Sawant’s first restaurant as an owner, after he worked at nearby LaMadeleine and with that chain as a corporate trainer.

The East Cobb restaurant scene also has become more competitive in recent months with the opening nearby of Taqueria Tsunami, Black Swan Tavern, La Novia Taqueria and Stockyard Burgers and Bones.

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