Clint Gray called the block a food desert when he opened Slim & Husky's at the corner of Buchanan and 10th Avenue in 2017. Nine years later, that same corner anchors a stretch of North Nashville that's picking up two new businesses this fall, a barbecue joint and a sports bar, on a street that just had its first curfew written into the zoning code.
Two new businesses are about to open on the same two blocks that already hold a fifty-year-old fish house and a bagel counter that fires its oven at four in the morning. At the same time, Metro Council wrote that curfew into the zoning code for this exact stretch of pavement. Both things are true. Neither cancels the other out. If you live near Buchanan and 10th, this fall looks like more storefronts filling in and a harder stop on how late any of them can run.
Two New Doors, Same Two Blocks
The most concrete arrival is The Pulled Pit, a barbecue spot from pitmaster Shon Harmon set to open at 1408 Buchanan St this fall, according to a running list of Nashville restaurant openings kept by Visit Music City. Harmon has been building a following around the city with a food truck for years. A brick and mortar address means he's not chasing a parking spot anymore, and the corridor gets a barbecue option to sit alongside Ed's Fish House, the fifty-year-old institution a few doors down that has outlasted most of what's opened around it.
The second is The Locker Room, a sports bar built around game day food, also landing on Buchanan Street this fall per the same tracking list. A sports bar is a different animal from a barbecue counter. It lives and dies on late kickoffs, primetime games, and the kind of crowd noise that spills onto a sidewalk after a big play. That detail matters more than it sounds like it should, and we'll get to why in a minute.
Both openings sit inside a corridor that has been filling in steadily for years, not overnight. Gray's oblong pizzas took off after 2017, and the block filled in slowly around that first corner, adding a taco counter, a bagel shop, and a soul food kitchen in the years since.
What's Already Working the Block
Anyone walking Buchanan on a Saturday morning is choosing between more than one place before they've gone a block. Tío Fun Mexican Munchies serves tacos and frozen margaritas from a spot at 1008 Buchanan St, in a building the Slim & Husky's team also owns. All Or Nothing Bagels moved into a permanent storefront on Buchanan after a landlord dispute pushed the business out of its previous space, and the shop has built a reputation as one of only two wood-fired sourdough bagel operations in the country, according to City Cast Nashville's neighborhood coverage. Owner Kathleen Sharpe starts the bread oven around four in the morning, and the twenty-minute line that forms most mornings is the proof.
A short walk covers the rest of what makes the block feel lived in rather than staged for visitors:
- QC Kitchen Cafe, a soul food kitchen that relocated to Buchanan after its founder passed away
- Crossroads Cat Cafe, which pairs coffee and adoptable cats with a campus that provides housing, grooming training, and job placement for young people rebuilding their lives
- The Loading Dock Cafe, now occupying a storefront that started out as a boutique clothing shop from former Titans cornerback Kristian Fulton
- Elephant Gallery, the Buchanan Arts Center, and Nashville Jazz Workshop, three arts spaces within a few blocks of each other that host shows, pottery classes, and jazz instruction open to people who've never picked up an instrument
None of this reads like a district trying to become the next 12South or Hillsboro Village. It reads like a neighborhood main street that got its first wave of investment in 2017 and has been adding to it in small increments ever since.
The Curfew Nobody Expected to Need Explaining
Here's the part that changes how the fall openings actually play out. In March 2026, Metro Council passed a Commercial Compatibility Overlay covering Buchanan Street between I-65 and 24th Avenue North, according to reporting from WSMV. The overlay bans new loan services and beer and cigarette markets from opening in the district, adds stricter review for future auto shops and car washes, and sets a hard operating limit for new bars, restaurants, and nightclubs: no business opening after the ordinance takes effect can operate past midnight, and any amplified outdoor music has to stop by 9 p.m.
District 21 Councilmember Brandon Taylor sponsored the overlay after what he described as residents coming to him "begging, pleading" for something to change about disruptive late-night businesses on the strip. The bill had a rocky path. The Metro Planning Commission deferred it in January after a packed public hearing, brought it back in late February, and Council gave it final approval on March 17. Not everyone welcomed it. QC Kitchen Cafe owner Clifford Parrish argued at the January hearing that the restrictions would cost jobs and hurt businesses that don't have a backup plan. Taylor's own framing, reported by the Nashville Scene, was blunt: "Gentrification is very real in Nashville, and we are working with the last frontier in North Nashville."
Whatever side of that debate a given resident lands on, the practical effect on the ground is straightforward. Any restaurant, bar, or nightclub that opens on this stretch of Buchanan from here forward inherits a midnight close and a 9 p.m. cutoff on amplified music, full stop.
What That Means for a Sports Bar Opening This Fall
This is where the two new openings and the new ordinance actually collide. The Pulled Pit is a food-first concept. A midnight close and a quiet patio after 9 p.m. barely register against a barbecue counter's normal hours. The Locker Room is a different story. A sports bar built around game day traffic wants late Sunday afternoon into evening, Monday Night Football, and the kind of crowd energy that carries outside. Under the new overlay, that energy has a hard stop written into the zoning code rather than left to the owner's judgment or a noise complaint.
That's the actual news buried under the two openings. Buchanan Street isn't just adding doors this fall. It's adding doors that operate under a different, tighter set of hours than a comparable bar would face in a district without this overlay. A resident who orders a last round at 11:45 on a game night is going to notice that difference well before they read about it in a council agenda.
The Block Keeps Its Own Time
Gray's food desert line from 2017 already reads like ancient history against what's filling in on this corner now. What's harder to see from a single Saturday walk is that the neighborhood just wrote its own clock into law, one that will shape every business that opens here from this point forward, including the barbecue counter and the sports bar arriving this fall. The morning rhythm around All Or Nothing's oven and the afternoon pace at Crossroads Cat Cafe aren't touched by any of this. The evening rhythm, for anything new, now runs on a schedule the rest of Nashville's entertainment corridors don't have to follow.
That's the kind of detail that only shows up when you're paying attention to one specific block over time, which is exactly how New South Commercial approaches every corner of the Nashville market it covers. If you own space along a corridor like this one, or you're trying to understand how a zoning change reshapes what a storefront is actually worth to run a business in, that's a conversation worth having before the next lease gets signed.
