When Audrey served its last plate of food on Aug. 16, the kitchen broke into applause. Chef Sam Jett took over the Appalachian restaurant from founding chef Sean Brock in 2025, after Southall Farm & Inn assumed operations. For the final service he stood behind the line with current and former employees, and a kitchen staff that normally numbers four had grown to 13.
The Tennessean's report on that night ran under a headline that put two stories side by side. Audrey was closing after five years in East Nashville, and New York's Veselka was opening. The pairing explains the season better than any list of openings. Audrey had its own address at 809 Meridian Street. Veselka arrived without one and took a kitchen inside a bar that was already open. Look at what East Nashville added between July and early October and the same pattern repeats. The new arrivals mostly moved into rooms the neighborhood already knew.
A Pierogi Kitchen Behind a Bar That Never Closed
Veselka has been open in the East Village since 1954. The founder's grandson runs it now, and it was a James Beard Award semifinalist in 2023. East Nashville is its first location outside New York. It doesn't sit at a new storefront. It runs a kitchen inside Lakeside Lounge at 921 Woodland St. The Nashville Scene's food coverage says the deal came about because the two businesses share some people on their leadership teams.
That arrangement shapes the menu. Veselka COO Justin Birchard suggests thinking of the Lakeside pierogi the way you'd think of a boneless chicken wing, as good bar food. The kitchen serves bestsellers like potato and cheese, rotating seasonal flavors and house dipping sauces, including a borscht barbecue sauce made for the bar setting. Chicken schnitzel and borscht are on it too, and Visit Music City's listing adds beef stroganoff, potato latkes, kielbasa and house-made soups.
"They are 'salt of the earth' type food." Justin Birchard, COO of Veselka, to the Nashville Scene
Sharing a room also sets the hours. The Scene reports that Veselka's kitchen is open daily, like the bar. Lakeside Lounge's own site lists bar hours of 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. daily and kitchen hours of 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily. Those are the bar's hours, and the pierogi kitchen keeps them. Published coverage doesn't say whether Veselka is a fixed-term residency or a permanent home, so it's best treated as open-ended for now.
Lost & Found Turns Sharing Into the Plan
At Lakeside, the shared kitchen came out of a relationship between two businesses. Up Gallatin Pike at Lost & Found in Inglewood, sharing is the business model.
The site at 3104 Gallatin Pike opened as an open-air gathering place with patio and rooftop seating. Edible Nashville described it this spring as having pizza, wine, cocktails, shopping and a rotating cast of food trucks. Visit Music City listed it among April 2026 openings. Its own site calls it a neighborhood hangout and small-business incubator, pairing brick-and-mortar concepts with food trucks.
The current lineup on the site:
- Fortunate Sun, a laid-back cocktail spot led by Jamie White, best known for Pearl Diver and Tiger Bar
- Birdie's, a wine bar focused on approachable organic and minimal-intervention bottles, with Italian selections
- Pizza Lolo, formerly a popular food truck, now in a permanent space with an extended menu
- Sarabha's Creamery, house-made Indian-style ice cream
- Chivanada, Colombian empanadas; The Pepper Pott, a family-run Guyanese and Caribbean truck; and Katrin Taqueria, LA-style tacos from Chef Dave and KJ Gutierrez
The lineup changes. In April, Edible Nashville also named QBOP! Korean BBQ and the vintage shop Best Friends, and neither appears on the current concepts list. An incubator is built to turn over, and Pizza Lolo shows how that's supposed to work, since it moved from a truck into a storefront on the same lot.
Sarabha's is this summer's addition. Its first shop is at 400 21st Ave. South, where it makes Indian-style ice cream and kulfi in house. Nashville Guru lists the East Nashville location under July 2026. A family-owned creamery that might not have opened a standalone second shop in Inglewood now sells to a crowd that's already there for wine at Birdie's or a slice from Pizza Lolo.
There are 18 parking spots, and scanning a QR code gets you two free hours.
On Woodland Street, a Pop-Up Gets a Permanent Room
Back on Woodland Street, farther along from Lakeside Lounge, the pattern takes a different form. Girlcrush Social House opened at 1112 Woodland St. It took over the former Van Gogh's Wine Bar space. Twin sisters Emily and Jamie Dryburgh, both music-industry veterans, created it as an LGBTQ+ gathering place with food, drinks, live music and a spacious backyard.
Before it had an address, it existed as a format. The Dryburghs also run Young Music City and the queer-focused GIRLCRUSH pop-up. City Cast Nashville describes the venue as a bar for queer musicians and community events. So a pop-up that used to borrow other people's rooms now has one of its own, and that room had already been a wine bar. Nashville Guru indexes the opening under August 2026, and the venue's site now says "NOW OPEN."
Bar Cala Cala Brings Two Kitchens to McFerrin Avenue
The newest opening on the list fits the pattern too, though here the shared room is a partnership between two operators. Bar Cala Cala, at 930 McFerrin Ave., comes from Ryan Costanza of Present Tense and Joshua Walker of Xiao Bao. Both partners come from restaurants already operating in Nashville.
It soft-opened to the public after 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 2, and Saturday, Oct. 3. OpenTable dinner reservations open Wednesday, Oct. 7. Its site splits the evening into three parts. Snacks run from 4 to 5 p.m., dinner from 5 to 9 p.m., and after 9 p.m. it becomes a bar with disco.
The food is Sicilian-inspired. Nashville Guru's preview lists Sicilian crudo, a spicy tuna carta di musica, arancini with Wagyu beef and Fontina, spaghetti vongole, swordfish Milanese, patatine fritte cooked in beef tallow, Sicilian granita and soft-serve gelato, plus spritzes, Negronis and zero-proof cocktails. The room has a Zellige-tiled bar, banquettes, a disco ball and four vintage Klipschorn speakers. The music moves from Italian disco to city pop and house. A giant clamshell out front is there for photos.
Posted hours are Wednesday and Thursday 4 p.m. to midnight, Friday and Saturday 4 p.m. to 2 a.m., and Sunday 4 p.m. to midnight. It's closed Monday and Tuesday.
The Address That Went Quiet
Audrey closed the other way. It was built as a destination at its own address, and in a 2019 preview Eater described separate downstairs and upstairs dining formats there. The Tennessean covered the closing announcement in late July and the final service in August. The coverage reviewed for this piece names no replacement tenant for 809 Meridian and gives no public plan for the space.
Put this season's East Nashville openings and its best-known closing on a map, and the openings sit in rooms that were already open while the closing leaves a building with no public plan.
Your October Address Book
- Veselka at Lakeside Lounge, 921 Woodland St. The kitchen is open daily, and Lakeside lists kitchen hours of 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.
- Girlcrush Social House, 1112 Woodland St., in the former Van Gogh's Wine Bar space.
- Bar Cala Cala, 930 McFerrin Ave. Open Wednesday through Sunday starting at 4 p.m., with OpenTable reservations opening Oct. 7.
- Sarabha's Creamery at Lost & Found, 3104 Gallatin Pike, with Fortunate Sun, Birdie's, Pizza Lolo and rotating trucks on the same lot. Parking validation covers two free hours.
At Fuller Group, we follow how East Nashville rooms get reused, shared and rebuilt, because a building's next use shapes the block around it. If you're weighing a property near Woodland Street, McFerrin Avenue or Gallatin Pike, or deciding what an existing space could become, we would welcome the chance to talk it through. Arrange a Private Consultation.
