Pandoc tables remind me of the reStructuredText tables, which I used back in the day:
https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/user/rst/quickref.html#...Very powerful, but I found it challenging to remember the syntax since I was only using them intermittently. Still, it could indeed form the basis of a more advanced spreadsheet markup syntax, supporting things like merged cells (which Sheet Markup does not, and probably never will, support).