Tennessee is losing one of its most important neighborhood restaurants this month.
Margot Café & Bar, the acclaimed East Nashville restaurant from chef Margot McCormack, closed on June 5, 2026, after exactly 25 years in business. The goodbye comes during a difficult stretch for Tennessee dining, as restaurant closures continue to hit familiar names across the state.
For longtime Nashville diners, Margot was never just another nice restaurant. It helped define East Nashville’s modern dining identity before the neighborhood became one of the city’s hottest places to eat.
The restaurant opened on June 5, 2001, at 1017 Woodland Street in Five Points, in the shell of a 70-year-old former Fluty’s service station that McCormack and her team converted into a neighborhood bistro. Over the years, Margot became known for daily-changing seasonal menus, French and Italian influences, warm hospitality and the kind of neighborhood energy that made it feel both special and personal. McCormack is a four-time James Beard Foundation Best Chef Southeast nominee.
McCormack announced the closing in November 2025, giving customers more than six months to say goodbye. That long farewell made the final days feel less like a surprise and more like a community sendoff. The restaurant went out on its 25th anniversary, a fitting but emotional ending for a place that helped shape the city’s food culture.
In her closing letter, McCormack didn’t sugarcoat the difficulty of the past few years. “We survived the rigors of opening a restaurant, 9/11, the 2008 recession, a tornado, COVID and the explosive growth of Nashville and the resulting influx of new restaurants,” she wrote. “The last five years have been harder than the first 20 put together. I am that much older and wiser and ready for a new chapter.”
The Woodland Street building, which McCormack purchased for $730,000 in April 2015, is being listed for sale. The closing also follows McCormack’s 2020 decision not to reopen her nearby Marche Artisan Foods, which was damaged in that year’s tornado.
Margot’s closing is not just about losing a menu. It is about losing a restaurant that helped prove East Nashville could support serious, chef-driven dining without losing its local character.
In the years since Margot opened, Nashville has changed dramatically. The city has grown, rents have climbed, tourism has exploded and once-quiet neighborhoods have become national destinations. Margot survived a lot of that change, but its closing still feels like a reminder that even beloved restaurants eventually reach the end of their run.
For regulars, the memories are likely tied to more than one dish. They are tied to birthdays, anniversaries, dinners with friends and the feeling of sitting in a restaurant that knew exactly what it was.
New restaurants will keep opening in Nashville. East Nashville will remain one of the city’s busiest dining neighborhoods.
But Margot’s final service marked the end of something that cannot be easily replaced: a restaurant that helped make the neighborhood what it became.
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