The building at 4410 Murphy Road sat empty for the better part of two years. It had been McCabe Pub for years, a fixture of the kind every neighborhood has one, until the tavern closed in 2024 and the space went quiet. A few blocks over on Charlotte Avenue, the building that once held Smokin Thighs changed hands in 2023 and then sat idle while its new owners worked out what would come next. Two empty storefronts on two different streets, and no reason either one had to move first.
Both eventually did, on their own timelines, run by people who had never worked together.
Chef Robbie Wilson and his wife Emily Perry-Wilson bought into Sylvan Park first, and slowly. They opened a fast-casual spot called SuperNormal in May 2025, then waited nearly a year before opening the more ambitious Lion's Share this April in that same long-vacant McCabe Pub building. Meanwhile on Charlotte Avenue, restaurateur Anthony Sanfilippo, known locally for his ownership stake in Pinewood Social, bought the old Smokin Thighs building back in 2023 and only this spring filed the permits for a new restaurant called Vita 4400. Neither operator had anything to do with the other's plans. Both were willing to let a Sylvan Park property sit for a year or more before committing to the build, and both landed in the same construction season this year.
That patience is the part worth paying attention to if you already live here. A quick opening is a data point. Two unconnected, experienced hospitality groups willing to wait years to get a Sylvan Park build right looks more like conviction than trend-chasing.
One Couple, One Corner, Two Restaurants a Year Apart
Robbie Wilson isn't new to Nashville, he's just been gone a while. He worked in the city's restaurant scene before relocating to California in 2012, where he eventually opened BIRD DOG in Palo Alto and worked at the acclaimed Le Fantastique in San Francisco, earning a James Beard Foundation Awards semifinalist nod for Best Chef: California along the way. He closed BIRD DOG in the fall of 2024 and moved back to Nashville with Perry-Wilson to build something new, under a hospitality group they call 74 and Sunny.
Their first move was SuperNormal, a fast-casual burger and hot dog spot at 105 45th Avenue North that opened on May 13, 2025. It was designed from the start as a low-key gathering spot rather than a destination restaurant. Wilson described the vision plainly when the concept was still on the drawing board: it's just going to be a place to gather, when you're walking your dog, you could go have an ice cream, you can have a beer with your friends.
Lion's Share, the couple's second and more ambitious project, was originally supposed to open around the same time. Construction delays pushed it back nearly a year, and it finally opened this April in the old McCabe Pub building at 4410 Murphy Road, a short walk from SuperNormal. Where SuperNormal is picnic tables and soft serve, Lion's Share is a fine-dining destination built around a hearth-fire menu, aiming to be both a neighborhood spot and somewhere people drive to on purpose.
Same ownership, same stretch of Murphy Road, opposite price points, opened almost a year apart. That gap looks less like a delay and more like a strategy: open the low-risk, low-cost concept first, let it prove the neighborhood supports the traffic, then commit the bigger capital to the ambitious build once you know the answer.
A Few Blocks Away, Charlotte Avenue Is Making Its Own Bet
If the Murphy Road story were the only one, you could chalk it up to one ambitious couple. But Charlotte Avenue tells a parallel story with a completely different cast.
Anthony Sanfilippo, alongside business partner Jake Sudduth, bought the West Nashville building at 4400 Charlotte Avenue for $3 million in October 2023, not long after his company Sorelle Hospitality had acquired the remaining ownership stake in Pinewood Social from Strategic Hospitality. That same year, in mid-September, the pair also paid $2 million for the adjacent lot at 4406 Charlotte, a property that had once been a single-truck fire station. That fire hall building has since been demolished.
As of this spring, a permit has been filed for interior work on the Charlotte Avenue building, and the project has a name: Vita 4400. Details on the menu, the design, and the opening date haven't been made public yet. What is public is the location: the building sits between M.L. Rose Craft Beer and Burgers to the west and LeQuire Gallery to the east, right in the thick of Charlotte's existing commercial strip.
Sanfilippo isn't a first-time operator taking a flyer. He's the person behind one of downtown Nashville's most recognizable hospitality brands, and he chose to put real money into a second Sylvan Park property years before construction plans were even public. That's a longer bet than most restaurant openings represent, and it landed on a completely different street than the Wilsons' project, with no connection between the two beyond timing.
What Else Has Opened Along the Way
The two anchor stories aren't the whole picture. Sylvan Park also welcomed Tantísimo in the spring of 2025, a restaurant from Ana Aguilar and Josh Cook, who met working together at Husk Nashville. The two had been building a following for years selling Latin American pastries and breakfast food at farmers markets before finally opening a brick-and-mortar space in the old Vegan Vee location. They describe it as the city's first farm-to-table Latin American restaurant, with 82 seats between the dining room, bar, and a private room, and a patio still in the works. It runs breakfast and lunch service from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and dinner from 5 to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday, with dinner reservations available through Resy.
Add it up and you get four significant restaurant projects moving through Sylvan Park in roughly a two-year stretch, from spring 2025 through spring 2026, a pace of investment that's unusual for a neighborhood this size.
The Old Guard Isn't Going Anywhere
Here's what makes this moment different from a typical restaurant cycle: every one of these new operators chose to move into a building that already had a history, rather than clearing a lot and starting over. Lion's Share took over McCabe Pub's old shell. Tantísimo moved into Vegan Vee's former space. Vita 4400 is renovating the building that used to house Smokin Thighs. Nobody is tearing down Sylvan Park to build something new. They're renovating in place, the same way a lot of the neighborhood's housing stock has been handled for years.
And the businesses that have anchored Murphy Road for decades aren't going anywhere either. Bobbie's Dairy Dip, the walk-up soft-serve stand that's been a fixture since 1951, is still there. So is Edley's Bar-B-Que, Caffe Nonna's intimate Italian dining room, and Miel, the farm-to-table restaurant that's quietly built a loyal following over more than 17 years. Inside the Sylvan Supply complex, Punk Wok and Radish Kitchen keep drawing the lunch crowd. The Richland Park Farmers Market still runs on Saturdays at the north end of the neighborhood, the same spot that also holds the public library and a playground.
New investment is landing on top of an existing neighborhood fabric, not replacing it. That's a meaningfully different story than the one you'd tell about a neighborhood in the middle of a full commercial turnover.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
Practically, a few things follow from all this. Weekend reservations at the newer sit-down spots, especially Lion's Share and Tantísimo, both of which lean on reservation platforms rather than walk-ins, are worth booking ahead for. If you've been meaning to try either one, weeknights are still your best bet for a table without much notice.
Construction and permitting activity on Charlotte Avenue is likely to continue for a while as Vita 4400 moves from permit to build-out, so expect some added noise and parking shuffle near 4400 Charlotte in the coming months.
None of this is disconnected from the neighborhood's civic rhythm either. The Sylvan Park Neighborhood Association keeps its own calendar running alongside all of this: a monthly meeting on September 14, 2026, at the McCabe Park Community Center, a Richland Creek cleanup day with the Harpeth River Conservancy on October 17, 2026, and a street tree planting event on November 7, 2026. The same neighborhood that's attracting serious restaurant investment is still the one showing up to plant trees and pick up litter along its creek.
Two operators, two streets, one shared read on a neighborhood that's been quietly building momentum for a while. If you live here, you already knew Sylvan Park felt different than it did a few years ago. Now you know why.
If you're curious what any of this means for property values or timing along Murphy Road and Charlotte Avenue, Stephanie Lowe tracks these shifts closely as part of her work across Nashville's west side neighborhoods. Schedule a consultation to talk through what's happening in Sylvan Park and what it might mean for you.
