A Thirty-One-Year-Old Cookie Recipe Is Moving Into the Old Burger Up Space in 12 South
There is a specific kind of grief that hits a Nashville neighborhood when a restaurant that has been there long enough to become a landmark turns off its lights. In 12 South this summer, that restaurant was Burger Up, which closed for good after more than fifteen years at the corner of 12th Avenue South — long enough that a whole generation of the neighborhood's residents had no memory of the block without it.
Now that corner has a future, and it smells like brown sugar.
Levain Bakery is coming to 2901 12th Avenue South. It will be the New York bakery's first location in Tennessee, and by the founders' own account it took more than four years of looking at Nashville real estate before they found the room they wanted. They have said the decision was immediate once they walked into the space — the kind of thing you can only say about a building after you have rejected a great many others.
The cookie that started a line
If the name does not register, the cookie probably does. Levain was founded in 1995 by Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald on New York's Upper West Side, and what began as a neighborhood bread shop — the name is the French word for the starter that leavens a loaf — became known for something else entirely: an oversized, structurally improbable cookie with a crisp shell and a barely-set molten middle.
The Chocolate Chip Walnut is the one that built the reputation. Oatmeal Raisin and Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip round out the classics. For years, the defining Levain experience was a sidewalk queue on the Upper West Side that formed regardless of weather, which is a strange thing for a bread shop to accomplish and a very New York thing to be famous for.
Thirty-one years on, the company has grown to nineteen locations nationwide. Nashville will be the first in Tennessee.
The Nashville shop will not be cookies alone. Plans call for coffee and tea, pastries, the artisanal breads that were the original business, loaf cakes, sandwiches built on fresh baguettes, and seasonal items that rotate through the year.
Why 12 South makes sense — and why the timing is delicate
12 South is one of the few Nashville neighborhoods where the commerce is genuinely walkable: a mile-ish stretch of storefronts, coffee, boutiques and porches where people park once and stay for two hours. It is also a neighborhood that has spent the last two decades absorbing national attention, which cuts both ways. A national bakery landing in the space a beloved local restaurant just vacated is exactly the kind of substitution that makes longtime residents uneasy.
The company appears to know it. Levain has said it intends to hire locally, build partnerships in the community, and give the proceeds from its opening day to a Nashville nonprofit. The operator who ran the previous restaurant has publicly called the bakery a good addition to the block — which is not nothing, and is the sort of blessing that tends to shorten the grieving period.
One thing that has not been announced: when it opens. No date, no window, no season. Anyone building a weekend around it should wait for the actual news.
The New York-to-Nashville pipeline keeps running
Levain joins a steady procession of New York food institutions planting flags here. Earlier this month we covered Prince St. Pizza bringing its curled-pepperoni Sicilian squares to Fifth + Broadway, also a first Tennessee location. And if a warm cookie is the specific craving, Whitney's Cookies is already part of the revitalized Arcade downtown.
For a wider survey of where to eat while you wait, our roundup of the city's ten best pizza restaurants is a good place to start.
