Well, that didn’t take very long. Only a couple months after opening their first Nashville outpost in Capitol View, Central BBQ has already announced that a second location of the Memphis-based smoked meat emporium will be opening in the former home of Sportsman’s Grille in the Village. This is a surprising development, and not just because of the quick expansion plans.
After Vanderbilt University purchased the property at 1601 21st Ave. South back in 2018, it was assumed that the university would probably want to develop it for their own purposes, most likely some sort of extension to their hospital campus. However, the Central BBQ manager I spoke with revealed that the restaurant had signed a fairly long-term lease for the building and that Vandy was planning to put some money into giving the former Sportsman’s some much needed TLC.
Plans are to open the newest Central BBQ sometime in early 2021 in a space that will be three times larger than their Capitol View restaurant. The ground floor will house the main dining room with the former pool hall upstairs reserved for private dining options and possibly overflow seating during busy periods.
I’m not gonna lie: I really miss the Sportsman’s. During the ’90s, I spent so much time there that I decided it would have been more convenient for me to have my mail forwarded there — on an ygiven day, I was never sure if I'd make it home but I was pretty sure I’d make it to the Grille. It was the place to see local celebrities letting their hair down, from John Prine sitting quietly at the end of the bar to a pre-Nicole Keith Urban canoodling in a corner booth with supermodel Niki Taylor to both Black Keys hanging out at different times and chatting with regulars who had no idea who they were (OK, maybe that was just me). Frequent flyers had their own designated bar stools and were known by descriptive nicknames like “Spaghetti Dave,” “Negative Steve” and “Bald Head Ed” (not to be confused with “Burned-Up Ed”). I never discovered if they had a nickname for me, but I suspect they did and it probably involved Jägermeister or Rumple Minze.
One night when nobody in the bar would fess up to or rat out whoever got sick in the men’s room, a friend and I dragged out the mop bucket and swabbed the deck ourselves, because the only bartender on duty was too busy to do it and we didn’t want to take him away from pouring strong drinks into pint glasses. Patrons took it upon themselves to decorate the upstairs bar for holidays until it became too much of a hassle to take down all the lights. So they just left them up all year.
All this is to say that I’m happy that Central BBQ will soon be within knee-walking distance of my house, but they’ve got some history to preserve and keep up with. I’m confident that they’ll do it justice!
