Two days apart in late August, two barbecue restaurants opened their doors in Smyrna. One sits on a stretch of pavement that broke ground only two years ago, next to a Wawa and a Jonathan's Grille, in a development built on top of a decommissioned Air Force base. The other sits inside a building that started life as an Italian restaurant, on a street that has been the center of town since the 1880s, run by a couple who grew up nearby and lost a brother before they ever got to open it.
Neither restaurant is competing with the other for the same table. They're proof that Smyrna is currently running two completely different growth stories at once, and knowing which one you're standing in changes what you should expect to see open next.
The barbecue that arrived two days apart
City Barbeque opened its doors on August 24 at 110 W. Sam Ridley Parkway, inside a brand-new commercial pocket called Sewart's Landing. The chain, which has smoked meat on site since 1999, marked the opening with a "Rib'n & Ribbon Cutting" alongside the Rutherford County Chamber and handed out gift bags to the first 50 guests through the door. The location has a patio and a drive-thru, and sits directly beside Wawa and Jonathan's Grille.
A few miles away, Beane Brothers BBQ has been quietly serving Texas-style brisket and pulled pork out of 114 Front Street, in the middle of Smyrna's historic Depot District. Rooster and Lori Beane took a 15-year lease on the space, formerly home to La Tavola, and built out the 2,600-square-foot interior with barn wood to make it feel like a Texas dive bar. Rooster named the restaurant for his late brother Judge, with whom he'd once planned to open a place called Beane Brothers before Judge passed away. Reviews on Yelp and DoorDash through August describe fall-off-the-bone ribs and a warm welcome from a staff that treats regulars like family.
Two smokers, one town, and almost nothing else in common. That's the story worth paying attention to.
One corner of Smyrna used to be an Air Force base
Sewart's Landing is not an ordinary strip mall build-out. The 44-acre, roughly $400 million project sits at the corner of Sam Ridley Parkway and Highway 41, on land the town has owned for decades, on the former site of Sewart Air Force Base. Equitable Property Company broke ground in 2024 after years of planning with the Town of Smyrna, and the master plan calls for close to 280,000 square feet of retail, up to 400,000 square feet of office and medical space, two boutique hotels totaling 240 rooms, and 12 acres of green space that will include a public amphitheater and a walking trail ringing the whole property.
Sprouts Farmers Market is set to anchor the retail portion later this year, and confirmed tenants already include Starbucks, Wawa, Jonathan's Grille, Keke's Breakfast Café, Hand & Stone, Scissors & Scotch, and now City Barbeque. The development is also planning a full-scale P-51 aircraft replica to honor the site's Air Force history, a detail that tells you the developers know exactly what land they're building on.
City Barbeque isn't a standalone opening. It's the first wave of restaurant tenants filling in a project that's been years in the making, and more will follow as Sprouts and the rest of Phase I come online.
The Depot District never stopped adding, either
Front Street's growth looks nothing like Sewart's Landing, and that's the point. Smyrna's Depot District has been the town's commercial center since the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad ran through in the mid-1800s, and it became an official historic district in 2003 with a mandate to preserve the look of its buildings rather than replace them. Town Manager David Santucci has described it as the place where you can get a haircut, do your taxes, get ice cream, and eat dinner, all within a two-block walk.
Beane Brothers is the newest addition, but it's joining a lineup that's grown steadily over the past couple of years. The Print Shop Restaurant, a bar and grill inside a former printing press building at 1 North Lowry Street, opened under Caleb Spearing of Syndicate & Co. as his first location outside a major metro area, chosen specifically for the Depot District's character. The British Shoppe opened at 122 Front Street, Smyrna's first British food store, run by Chris and Amanda Carson after Chris moved from East London to marry a Smyrna native. There's also a farmers market on the depot grounds, run as an extension of Carpe Artista and Carpe Café.
The town's own Depot District BBQ Festival, held this year on August 8, is a useful measure of how much foot traffic that corner already pulls without any new construction. Smyrna Parks and Recreation has run the free event on Front Street for close to a decade, and it started small, with just three or four barbecue vendors the first year. It's grown every year since, to the point where organizers have said they'll need to find more room for it going forward.
What the two corridors actually look like side by side
| Depot District (Front Street) | Sewart's Landing (Sam Ridley Pkwy & Hwy 41) | |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | 1880s railroad depot, historic district since 2003 | Former Sewart Air Force Base, groundbreaking in 2024 |
| New barbecue | Beane Brothers BBQ, hometown owners, 114 Front St. | City Barbeque, regional chain, 110 W. Sam Ridley Pkwy |
| Character | Walkable storefronts, small footprints, family-run | New construction, drive-thrus, big-box anchors |
| What's still coming | Ongoing additions as small businesses find space | Sprouts Farmers Market anchor, amphitheater, hotels |
Where the new curry fits into all of this
The third opening of the month doesn't sit neatly in either column, which is its own kind of interesting. Curry Up Now opened its first Tennessee location on August 22 at 2160 Rock Springs Road, in the corridor between the two barbecue spots. The California-founded chain is locally owned and operated by the Patel family, who have called Smyrna home for more than 20 years, and the location comes with an attached cocktail bar called Mortar & Pestle serving craft cocktails, Tennessee drafts, and whiskey flights.
The menu item worth knowing about is the Nash & Three, a dish built specifically for this location and served nowhere else in the chain. It takes the format of Tennessee's traditional meat-and-three and runs it through an Indian lens: two tandoori-charred chicken chops with masala mac, peri-peri corn, saag paneer, and naan. It's the kind of menu decision that only makes sense if the owners actually live here and understood what a meat-and-three means to the people ordering it.
What this means for a weekend in Smyrna
If you're trying to decide where to eat this month, the honest answer is that it depends on what kind of evening you want. Front Street gives you a walkable stretch where you can grab barbecue at Beane Brothers, wander into The British Shoppe for something you can't find anywhere else in town, and catch the farmers market if your timing lines up. Sam Ridley Parkway and Rock Springs Road give you the newer build, with a patio at City Barbeque, a cocktail at Mortar & Pestle, and more retail arriving as Sewart's Landing fills out over the next year or two.
Neither corridor is trying to be the other. That's what makes this month's openings worth noticing instead of just noting. Smyrna is growing in two directions at once, on two different timelines, and the restaurants that just opened are the clearest signal yet of which kind of growth is happening where.
If you're already living here, that's simply useful to know next time you're deciding where to go on a Friday night. And if you know someone who's thinking about a move to Smyrna and wants a sense of what the town actually feels like block by block, The Ville Real Estate Co. is always glad to talk through it.
