Char Steakhouse to Open at Canteen on Carothers in Early 2026
Char, the Nashville steakhouse known for its nightly piano music, elevated comfort food, and the kind of award-winning wine list that pulls in older diners who've been doing this for decades, is opening a Franklin location at Canteen on Carothers in early 2026. The new restaurant will occupy 6,500 square feet inside the mixed-use development, create approximately 50 new jobs, and seat more than 200 guests across its dining room and outdoor patio.
For Franklin's higher-end dining scene, which has been gradually maturing toward something competitive with the best of Nashville, this is one of the more consequential openings of the year.
What's actually opening
Char in Franklin will be the brand's fifth location overall and the second in the greater Nashville area. The restaurant is part of 4Top Hospitality group, which Franklin diners already know from Etch, the Nashville-born modern American restaurant that opened at the Factory at Franklin last year. The new Char will be 4Top Hospitality's 16th restaurant across the company's portfolio.
The specifics the brand has shared:
- 6,500-square-foot space inside Canteen on Carothers
- Seating for more than 200 guests
- Large outdoor patio
- Private dining room
- Live piano music every night
- Jazz trio during Sunday brunch
- Extensive wine list described by the brand as award-winning
- Approximately 50 new jobs across front and back of house
- Opening planned for early 2026
The Char brand position is "upscale steakhouse with elevated comfort food," not a Capital Grille / Ruth's Chris formal-steakhouse approach, but closer to a higher-end neighborhood restaurant where you'd take parents visiting from out of town or a couple celebrating an anniversary. The piano-and-wine atmosphere is part of the brand identity rather than an afterthought.
Where Canteen on Carothers fits in Franklin
Canteen on Carothers is a mixed-use development by Stockbridge Capital Group, leased by Foundry Commercial, anchoring the Carothers Parkway corridor between the Cool Springs Galleria and the East McEwen Drive interchange. The development has been steadily filling with the kind of tenants Franklin's pre-2020 dining scene didn't have: chef-driven independent restaurants, walkable retail, and a level of architectural design that signals what the developer is trying to position the corridor as.
For relocators trying to orient themselves: Carothers Parkway is the road that connects the heart of Cool Springs to the McEwen interchange on I-65. The corridor has absorbed most of Franklin's new high-end commercial development over the past five years and is the area where you'll find the densest concentration of new restaurants opening through 2026: Char at Canteen, Truce in spring 2026 in Cool Springs, Hawkers and Culinary Dropout at McEwen Northside, and the apartments going up at the EMBREY Aureum project.
The pattern is the same one playing out across walkable Franklin: developments are no longer being built as standalone retail boxes. They're being built as small districts where dining, retail, residential, and office tenants are designed to feed each other's foot traffic.
What this means if you're moving to Franklin
The practical takeaway for relocators: Franklin's "you have to drive into Nashville for nice dining" problem has been quietly solved over the past few years, and Char's opening is one of the data points that proves it.
A representative weekend can now be assembled entirely in Franklin: brunch at Truce or Etch, an afternoon at downtown Franklin's Main Street or the Factory at Franklin, dinner at Char or one of the existing Cool Springs anchors, drinks at Hawkers or Blue Sushi at McEwen Northside. The drive into Nashville becomes optional rather than required.
For families moving from major metro areas, particularly the California, New York, and DC relocators who often arrive expecting Franklin to be a culinary downgrade from what they're leaving, this kind of incremental opening is exactly what shifts the perception. It doesn't replace the breadth of a Bay Area or Manhattan food scene, but it does mean that the depth of options at the upscale end of the market is finally where it needs to be for a city of Franklin's size and household-income profile.
The 4Top Hospitality track record
Worth knowing about 4Top Hospitality specifically because they're now operating two Franklin restaurants and likely to add more: the group has built a reputation in Nashville for restaurants that are reliably above-average rather than experimental. Etch in Nashville, which opened in 2012, became a fixture of the city's downtown dining scene before the Factory at Franklin location followed.
Char itself opened in 2017 in Nashville and has expanded steadily since. The brand has avoided the boom-bust cycle that affects a lot of restaurant groups trying to scale: the locations that have opened have stayed open, which in the restaurant business is genuinely meaningful.
For Franklin diners, the implication is that Char is likely to operate the way Etch operates: consistently, with a predictable level of service and food quality, rather than as a destination that's brilliant the first three months and uneven by month nine.
What we're tracking
A few open questions as the opening approaches:
The specific opening date in early 2026 has not been confirmed.
Reservations policy and pricing positioning aren't public yet.
Hiring for the approximately 50 positions has not been announced.
The interior buildout at Canteen is still in progress. The exterior of the development has been visible for months.
We'll update this story when the opening date is set.
Source: ICYMI: Upscale Steakhouse Char Announces Franklin Expansion -- Williamson Source, May 18, 2025.
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