Char Restaurant Opening in Canteen on Carothers

Nashville-based restaurant group 4Top Hospitality will open its fifth location of its steakhouse concept — Char — in Franklin.

The company just opened its second location of Nashville chef Deb Paquette's Etch in The Factory at Franklin. Char is slated for an opening in late 2025 which will make two openings in just two years in Williamson County for the hospitality company.

The restaurant will be located at the 10-acre Canteen on Carothers mixed-use development which is currently under construction. Brentwood-based TMPartners along with Kiser + Vogrin Design are a part of the project funded by Stockbridge Capital Group. The exact location of the Char Restaurant within the development is not yet public but the 6,5000 square-foot space will be designed by the Nashville office of Matheny Goldmon Architects and Interiors. The company has yet to announce a general contractor for its interior construction.

Similar to the Green Hills location, the restaurant will have a dining room and bar area and will also include a private dining room and patio seating.

Williamson Scene spoke with Doug Hogrefe, a partner at 4Top Hospitality who works on most of the site selections for the company about what went into the decision to open the new location.

"We've been looking in Williamson County for a while for to expand Char and [Canteen] just hit a lot of the of the right buttons for what we were looking for," Hogrefe said.

"The influx of people to Williamson County has created an unmet need for a lot more places to eat, and we're glad to throw our hat in the ring ... We really want to focus on being somewhere for locals. Being on that side of the interstate, it's a lot more accessible for the for the huge amount of homes that are around there."

The Char Restaurant began in 2001 in Jackson, Miss. with locations that have expanded in Alabama and Tennessee as well. While it specializes in steak and seafood the menu features a meat-and-three lunch special during the week and New Orleans-style jazz brunch on the weekends.

"While it is ostensibly a steakhouse, you can go to Char and get a hamburger and a glass of wine and listen to live music at the bar or watch a game or you can use it as a place to have a business dinner," Hogrefe said. "So, we feel that Char checks a lot of boxes ... There's just a lot of different ways to use the restaurant. We just think that [at Canteen on Carothers], especially, that works really well."