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Bar Cala Cala brings Italian island cooking and a hi-fi listening room to McFerrin Avenue

The East Nashville bar and restaurant from Josh Walker of Xiao Bao and Ryan Costanza of Present Tense pairs Sicilian-leaning Italian cooking with natural wine and a serious vinyl setup, and it is now open.

East Nashville has a new room that takes its sound as seriously as its food. Bar Cala Cala opened in October 2026 at 930 McFerrin Ave, in the historic Greenwood neighborhood, serving Italian island cooking and natural wine in a space built around a hi-fi vinyl system.

Who is behind it

The co-founders are Josh Walker and Ryan Costanza. Walker is known for Xiao Bao, and Costanza for Present Tense, the Japanese listening bar and restaurant. Bar Cala Cala reads like a meeting of those two resumes: Walker's feel for a lively dining room, and Costanza's obsession with music played properly, on vinyl, through equipment chosen for the room.

What an evening looks like

The restaurant's own site lays out the rhythm. Snacks run from 4 to 5 p.m., dinner from 5 to 9 p.m., and after 9 the room shifts to bar and disco hours. The menu leans Italian and island: the cooking of Sicily and Sardinia rather than red-sauce standards, with natural wines and cocktails alongside. The team describes the place in four short lines: natural wine, cocktails, Italian food, hi-fi vinyl bar, late night disco. Reservations run through OpenTable, which tells you the dinner hours are already drawing a crowd.

The room

The room is a conversion of a commercial unit in a newer mixed-use development on McFerrin, about 1,600 square feet and a $300,000 renovation, fitted out around the sound system. McFerrin Avenue has been one of East Nashville's busiest food streets for a few years now, and a listening bar with a dinner service is a new register for it: quieter at the table, louder after nine.

A note on the name

Cala is a cove, the small sheltered inlet that dots the coasts of Sicily and Sardinia, and the name fits the concept the team described to the Tennessean's fall preview: Italian island cooking, the food of the big islands rather than the mainland, paired with natural wine. It is a specific corner of Italian food that Nashville has not had much of, served in a room where what is playing matters. That combination, island food and a listening bar, is the whole idea, and it is a coherent one.

Why it matters here

Nashville has no shortage of loud rooms. What it has fewer of is rooms designed for listening, where the record is the point and the food holds up its end. Bar Cala Cala is a bet that East Nashville wants both in the same evening. It opened this month, so the bet is live.

Details and reservations are at barcalacala.com.

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