Southern Land Company opened Lupo Notte, its first full-service restaurant, on September 16 inside the Vertis Green Hills mixed-use community in Nashville — marking a deliberate push by the real estate developer into the full-service dining segment after years of operating private club food-and-beverage at Westhaven Golf Club in Franklin, Tennessee.
The 3,100-square-foot unit seats approximately 110 guests indoors across a conservatory bar, an eight-seat open-kitchen Chef's Counter, and a main dining room, with an additional 20 covers on two outdoor patios. The restaurant is currently open for dinner only — 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday — with lunch service and online ordering targeted for later this fall.
Menu & Culinary Team
Executive Chef Owen Lane, most recently Executive Sous Chef at Nashville's Pastis and previously with East Nashville's Audrey and June, leads the kitchen. Lane, a Tennessee native with nearly 30 years in the industry, developed the menu alongside Senior Director of Culinary Paul Sale and Westhaven Golf Club Executive Chef and Food and Beverage Director Manlio Melloni. The program centers on shareable plates — including wagyu-and-veal Lupo Meatballs — house-made pasta such as sweet corn Agnolotti, and 12-inch Neapolitan-style pizzas built on 48-hour fermented dough and finished in a three-deck oven. Locally sourced ingredients run through the menu alongside daily specials and protein-forward entrees. The beverage program pairs Italian-inspired craft cocktails with an international wine list weighted toward Italian varietals.
General Manager David Rehrmann, whose résumé includes New York City's A Voce and Nashville's Modern Italian and Zuzu, oversees operations. "Lupo Notte's curated menu and beverage program brings a fresh, elevated dining experience to Green Hills and Nashville," Rehrmann said, noting the emphasis on locally sourced ingredients, intentional design, and service standards as differentiators in a competitive dining market.
Placemaking as Foodservice Strategy
For Southern Land Company, Lupo Notte is less a standalone restaurant play than an amenity-driven placemaking strategy — the same logic that has shaped mixed-use hospitality across the industry as multifamily developers race to differentiate their assets. The company's $5 billion development pipeline spans nine states, and embedding a marquee dining concept inside Vertis Green Hills gives the property a street-level anchor that pools and fitness centers cannot replicate.
The Nashville full-service dining market has absorbed significant new supply over the past three years, with upscale Italian concepts — from independent operators to regional groups — competing for the affluent Green Hills and Brentwood trade area. Lupo Notte's 110-seat indoor capacity and evening-only daypart positions it squarely in the polished-casual to fine-casual tier, where average checks and beverage attach rates drive unit economics more than throughput volume.
Designed by Southern Land's in-house team in collaboration with Nashville-based HASTINGS Architecture, the space draws on European bistro references — custom murals, quartz bar tops, a glass-walled conservatory entrance — intended to support both special-occasion and repeat neighborhood traffic. Whether Southern Land pursues additional restaurant concepts within its broader portfolio remains to be seen, but the infrastructure investment in culinary leadership suggests the company is building institutional hospitality capability, not a one-off activation.
For operators and foodservice real estate professionals tracking mixed-use dining development and full-service restaurant openings, the Lupo Notte launch illustrates how real estate capital is increasingly willing to own and operate the food-and-beverage layer rather than lease it to third parties.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
