Indaco Opens March 6 in Nashville’s Germantown, Serving Pasta and Wood-Fired Pizza

Indaco opened March 6, 2026 on the ground floor of Modera Riverview in Nashville’s Germantown, across the street from O-ku, bringing Indigo Road Hospitality Group’s seasonal Italian format to a roughly 120-seat dining room with patio seating and what Indigo Road describes as a big bar. The Charleston-based company, founded by Steve Palmer, is pitching the restaurant as an everyday Italian spot that offers dinner daily and weekend brunch, with a planned happy hour still being finalized.

The menu centers on wood-fired, thin Neapolitan-style pizzas cooked at very high heat and house-made pasta that shifts with the seasons, with an expected average check of about $55 per person. A short list of pizza standards will travel across Indaco locations, but most pastas and seasonal dishes will reflect local sourcing and the chef’s choices, positioning the room for both a quick pizza and beer or a three-course meal with “a serious bottle of wine.”

Palmer, who founded Indigo Road, framed the move into Germantown as nearly a decade in the making, recalling his early read on the neighborhood: “There’s no data,” he said of his first scouting trips, adding, “I just go to neighborhoods, and I can just tell.” Palmer emphasized how Indaco evolved from its first Charleston location in 2013 into a project that resists chainlike standardization: “When you would say Italian, you’d say, ‘Is it northern? Is it southern? Is it red sauce? Is it osso buco?’ This was kind of a new generation of chef that was just like, ‘It’s just Italian.’”

Chef Chris Ayala leads the Nashville kitchen, arriving from Ellington’s at the Fairlane Hotel downtown and trained by Indigo Road culinary director Josh Begley and at other Indaco locations ahead of the opening. Palmer described the operational framework as intentionally loose: “Other than that, Chris can really do what he wants.” Pizza, Palmer said, remains “the most obsessive thing about the menu,” and Indigo Road points to a starter and technique developed over roughly 13 years of iteration.

A preview tasting illustrated Ayala’s seasonal, vegetable-forward approach. One signature item, the doppio ravioli, is a single dumpling with two distinct fillings — a pale half of mushrooms and mascarpone and a red half of sofritto and ricotta, the peppers of the sofritto showing through the dough — finished tableside with abundant shaved truffles and a cashew gremolata to cut the richness.

The bar, run by a beverage director known only as Jordan in early materials, emphasizes low-ABV spritzes built with fortified wines and house-made shrubs alongside an all-Italian wine list and an almost entirely local beer selection with a few Italian pilsners. “At its core, it’s a whimsical, fun cocktail program,” Jordan said, adding, “It’s bright, very Italian-forward, and built with a lot of cross-utilization with the food.” Jordan recommends that guests “start with the pizza cocktail,” calling it “the first impression drink.”

Indaco’s March 6 opening came after a string of delays tied to certificate of occupancy work, most recently a cable tied to the fire alarm system that held up final sign-off and pushed the Nashville launch past its originally planned window. With doors now open, Indigo Road says the Nashville Indaco will lean on the city’s agricultural community and chef Ayala’s autonomy to keep pastas and pizzas changing with the seasons.