Start the McCabe Loop at the trailhead behind the community center on a Saturday morning and the landmarks haven't moved. The golf course is still there. So is the eighteen-foot metal wing of the Aileron Sculpture, planted as a nod to the site's old life as an airfield. Herons still show up along the creek crossings if you're quiet enough. What's different is what waits for you when you finish the loop. Eighteen months ago, that walk ended in a parking lot. Now it ends at a half-dozen storefronts that either didn't exist or didn't serve food back then.
Sylvan Park adding restaurants isn't news. Neighborhoods add restaurants constantly. What's actually worth knowing, if you're the one walking this loop every week, is the order they arrived in, because it runs backward from what anyone would have guessed.
The Restaurant Everyone Was Waiting For Showed Up Last
The plan, as it was pitched, had a clear hierarchy. Lion's Share would be the destination, a fine-dining anchor going into the long-shuttered McCabe Pub building on Murphy Road. Right next door, a second concept called SuperNormal would be the casual companion, a burger-and-soft-serve spot with a dog-friendly turf lawn built on the old overflow parking lot, somewhere to grab a quick bite before or after the flagship next door opened.
Construction on Lion's Share ran long. SuperNormal didn't wait around for it. It opened on May 13, 2025, at 105 45th Avenue North, and for the next eleven months it was the only thing open on that stretch, building its own regulars on griddled burgers, a mochi-style waffle cone stuffed with buttercream soft serve, and a lawn that fills up with dog walkers on warm evenings. Lion's Share didn't open until April 11, 2026, inside the building longtime residents still call the McCabe's space, the one that sat empty after the tavern closed in 2024. Chef Robbie Wilson, who owns the restaurant with his wife Emily Perry-Wilson, told WSMV after opening that the neighborhood's response felt different from other parts of town: "It's been really supportive in the Sylvan Park community."
The sidekick beat the star to market by almost a year. If you'd only heard about this project when it was announced, you'd assume the fine-dining anchor came first and the casual spot filled in around it. The opposite happened, and it means SuperNormal isn't really a companion restaurant anymore. It's the place that was already running when Lion's Share showed up.
The Actual First Mover Wasn't Either of Them
Both of those restaurants were beaten to the neighborhood by someone who'd been selling food there for years without a building. Ana Aguilar and Josh Cook had been cooking together since they met at Husk Nashville, and after the pandemic they started serving Latin American pastries and breakfast plates under the name Tantito Pastelito at the Richland Park Farmers Market. On April 29, 2025, they soft-launched a brick-and-mortar version, renamed Tantísimo, in the old Vegan Vee spot at 306 46th Avenue North. That's two weeks before SuperNormal opened and almost a full year before Lion's Share.
Nashville Scene's coverage noted that Aguilar and Cook describe their approach as a Spanglish take on Latin American cuisine, and Aguilar has said she feels more connected to a community in Nashville than anywhere she's lived. So the actual sequence, in order, looks like this:
- April 2025: Tantísimo soft-launches at 306 46th Avenue North, after two years of building a following at the farmers market.
- May 2025: SuperNormal opens at 105 45th Avenue North, built as a companion to a restaurant that wouldn't exist for another eleven months.
- April 2026: Lion's Share finally opens at 4410 Murphy Road, the anchor everyone had been waiting on since the plan was first announced.
- May 2026: The Sylvan Park Boarding House opens on Elkins Avenue, sharing a courtyard with Tantísimo.
- Still pending: Vita 4400 at 4400 Charlotte Avenue, permit filed, opening date not yet public.
Read in order, it's the home-grown vendor who got there first, then the imported concept meant to be a side note, then the destination everyone had circled on a calendar. Two Ten Jack, an izakaya serving spicy crab noodles, has since taken over a space that had been an Otaku Ramen outpost, the same ramen concept that spent close to twelve years across town in East Nashville, adding one more entry to a list that keeps growing without following the order anyone expected.
A Restaurant Relationship Turned Into an Inn
The most unexpected addition doesn't serve food at all. The Sylvan Park Boarding House opened May 12, 2026, at 4511 Elkins Avenue, an eight-suite inn built inside a converted 1910 house. It shares a back courtyard with Tantísimo, and owner Erin Tolbert, who lives in the neighborhood herself, built the property around that relationship on purpose. A restaurant that started as a pastry stand at a Saturday farmers market is now the reason people are booking a room two blocks off Murphy Road instead of driving home. Sylvan Park hasn't had overnight lodging tied to a specific restaurant before this year.
What's Still Filling In
Not everything on this stretch has caught up yet. At 4400 Charlotte Avenue, in a building that most recently housed Smokin Thighs and before that a brake shop called Wilkie's Safety Lane, a permit has been filed for a restaurant called Vita 4400. Nashville Post's reporting ties the project to Anthony Sanfilippo and Jake Sudduth, whose Sorelle Hospitality also holds a stake in Pinewood Social. The lot sits between two neighborhood fixtures, M.L. Rose Craft Beer and Burgers to the west and LeQuire Gallery to the east, which means whatever opens there inherits a corner that's already generating foot traffic on both sides. As of the spring 2026 permit filing, no opening date had been announced.
That's the one piece of this cluster that's still a promise rather than a place you can walk into. Everything else on this list, you can.
What the Loop Actually Looks Like Now
None of this replaced what was already here, which matters if you've lived near the loop for a while and don't want your regular spots crowded out by novelty. Park Cafe and Star Bagel are still where they've always been, with Star Bagel still pulling a line out the door most Saturday mornings. M.L. Rose is still pouring beer next to what will eventually be Vita 4400. Sylvan Supply still houses Punk Wok and Red Perch under one roof. Miel, the neighborhood's farm-to-table staple, has been serving French-ish plates and a patio full of herbs for well over fifteen years and shows no sign of that changing.
What's new sits alongside all of that rather than instead of it, and the Richland Creek Greenway still runs the same paved loop it always has around McCabe Park, reachable through the same three spurs locals have used for years: one behind Nashville Community College, one behind the shopping center with the Target and Trader Joe's, and one off White Bridge Road. A weekend now looks like this if you want it to: park at the McCabe Trailhead, walk or run the loop, grab a burger and soft serve from SuperNormal's turf lawn, and come back that evening for a table at Lion's Share or Tantísimo. If you're hosting someone from out of town, they don't have to leave after dinner anymore.
That full circuit, food and lodging both, inside a half-mile of the same trailhead, wasn't possible eighteen months ago. It came together in an order nobody planned, with the smallest player getting there first and the most anticipated one showing up almost a year behind schedule. For a neighborhood that's been circling the same loop for two decades, that's a fairly significant change to have happened quietly.
If you're curious about anything else moving on this side of town, from what's opening next to what a specific stretch of Charlotte Avenue might mean for the neighborhood down the road, Jackie Roth Karr has been watching Nashville long enough to notice the pattern before it's finished. Let's Connect.
