ATLANTA — In 2000, the last time this city hosted the Super Bowl, the St. Louis Rams beat the Tennessee Titans, and Watershed had been frying its famous fried chicken in lard and sweet butter flavored with country ham for only a year.

The new Southern food movement that the restaurant in nearby Decatur helped define had not yet moved North . Brooklynites weren’t worshiping biscuits, and American barbecue had not met kimchi. Only a few cooks or writers outside the South were giving serious thought to the connection between Southern food and that of West Africa.

Even here, in the booming cultural and commercial center of the American South, diners had only begun to embrace a style of cooking that emphasized seasonality and history over carbohydrates and caricatur e. Atlanta’s most popular restaurants were local chains dipped in the glitzy, corporate sheen of the Buckhead neighborhood, and high-end steakhouses like Ruth’s Chris and Morton’s were abundant.

Now, as the city prepares to show off its new $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sunday, when the New England Patriots meet the Los Angeles Rams, Atlanta is a more evolved food town than it was then.