Hawkers Asian Street Food Coming to McEwen Northside in Early 2026
The pan-Asian restaurant best known as a craft cocktail and shareable-plates favorite in East Nashville is heading south. Hawkers Asian Street Food has confirmed it will open its second Tennessee location at McEwen Northside in Franklin in early 2026, anchoring the ground floor of the district's newest building alongside Culinary Dropout.
For Franklin's dining scene, this is another data point in a years-long pattern: Nashville's stronger restaurant brands are no longer waiting for a Franklin location to be the back-of-the-roadmap nice-to-have. They're treating McEwen Northside and the surrounding Cool Springs corridor as a first-choice market on its own merits.
What's actually opening
Hawkers will join Culinary Dropout on the ground floor of the newest building in the McEwen Northside expansion, a $125 million, 300,000-square-foot addition to a district that has spent the last two years quietly stacking the kind of tenant mix you'd expect in Brentwood or downtown Nashville.
The Hawkers menu is built around shareable Asian small plates and street food: Korean twice-fried wings, five-spice green beans, and roti canai served with a curry dipping sauce are among the items the brand has built its reputation on. Beverage program is craft cocktails and sake. The original Tennessee location, at 626 Main Street in East Nashville, opened in 2020 and has become one of the more reliably busy spots in that part of town.
"We're incredibly excited about the momentum surrounding the newest block in the district," said Mark Traylor, who oversees the McEwen Northside development. "We've already welcomed office tenants to the upper floors, with more on the way; and soon, the ground level will be home to these beloved restaurants, further establishing McEwen Northside as a place where memories are made, especially over a great meal."
A specific opening date has not been published. The brand has only confirmed early 2026.
The McEwen Northside context
If you're new to Franklin and trying to make sense of where things actually are, McEwen Northside sits just east of I-65 near the East McEwen Drive interchange, on the north side of McEwen Drive. It's part of the broader Cool Springs commercial area but operates more like a small walkable district than a strip-mall corridor.
The recent expansion has brought in a tenant mix that signals where the developer is positioning the district: Vuori, Gorjana, Oak Hall, Warby Parker, Fink's Jewelers and Rolex, Skin Laundry, and Blue Sushi Sake Grill are all open or arriving. The pattern is what you'd describe as "upscale urban casual," the kind of cluster that pulls Nashvillians out to Franklin for an evening, not the other way around.
Hawkers and Culinary Dropout opening alongside each other in the newest building is the most concentrated restaurant pairing the district has announced. Culinary Dropout, the Arizona-based concept from Sam Fox's Fox Restaurant Concepts, was confirmed last year and is similarly positioned as a draw-from-Nashville anchor.
Why this matters if you're moving to Franklin
A pattern worth understanding before you arrive: when relocators look at Franklin's restaurant scene from out of state, they often assume they'll need to drive into Nashville for anything beyond chain dining. That was true ten years ago. It's not true today, and McEwen Northside is one of the places where it's most visibly not true.
Within roughly a one-mile radius of where Hawkers will open, you can now reach a dense cluster of independent and chef-driven restaurants: Etch, Pelato, Blue Sushi, Culinary Dropout, the upcoming Truce, the upcoming Char at Canteen, and the existing restaurants throughout the broader Cool Springs corridor. For a relocating family used to a strong Nashville food scene, the practical implication is that you can build a regular dining rotation in Franklin proper without needing to make the I-65 drive nightly.
For those considering Franklin neighborhoods near this part of the city, that walkable-restaurant access is one of the things shifting Cool Springs from "corporate corridor with shopping" toward "actual neighborhood you'd want to live near." Westhaven, McKays Mill, Berry Farms, and the apartment communities under construction along Carothers Parkway all sit within a short drive of McEwen Northside.
What we'll be watching
A few open questions worth tracking as the opening approaches:
The exact opening date. Early 2026 is a wide window. The restaurant has not announced reservations availability or whether the Franklin location will lean more bar-forward (like East Nashville) or more food-forward.
Parking. McEwen Northside has structured parking but it has been getting tighter as the district matures. The Hawkers/Culinary Dropout opening will pull more weekend evening traffic than the district has handled before.
The broader expansion timeline. The $125M, 300,000-square-foot building Hawkers is anchoring is part of a larger McEwen Northside trajectory. More restaurants and office tenants are still to be announced.
We'll update this story when Hawkers confirms an opening date and hiring details.
Source: Hawkers Asian Street Food Coming to Franklin's McEwen Northside -- Williamson Source, August 25, 2025.
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