Pancho & Lefty’s Cantina, the popular downtown restaurant that offers tacos, tequila and more, is changing locations. The restaurant will soon occupy the space left empty by The Sutler Saloon, after Pancho & Lefty’s owner, Will Newman, no longer felt the restaurant fit in with what lower Broadway was becoming.

“We’re losing that soul of Nashville downtown, which made us unique, which probably attracted all of these people to visit us in the first place,” Newman explains to News Channel 5. “It’s kind of evolved into a caricature of itself that again is just unrecognizable,”

When Pancho & Lefty’s opened in 2017, Nashville was a much different place. It was the summer when the Nashville Predators were in the quest for the Stanley Cup, and morale was at an all-time high, among both locals and tourists.

“There was just this sense of Nashville,” Newman recalls. “It felt like Nashville, and it was safe. It was clean. It was fun, vibrant, full of Nashvillians downtown.”

But since the world shut down due to COVID-19, and then reopened, Newman says a “radical shift has happened,” and one he wants no part of.

“It was evolving into some type of wild beast that was just uncontrollable,” Newman says.

“Not to be able to walk across the street with your kids to a Preds game and see just completely people out of control drunk,” he adds. “In essence, [it’s] a tourist trap that only tourists are going downtown.”

The downward trend went against everything Newman wanted Pancho & Lefty’s to be.

“We did not want to be a honky tonk,” he explains. “We did not want to be a bar. We wanted to be a refuge for Nashvillians coming down to a Preds game or coming down to a concert at the Ryman.”

Once Newman, who also owns the Edley’s Bar-B-Que chain, found out that the Melrose space was available after The Sutler closed, Newman knew he had found Pancho & Lefty’s new home.

“For us, it was a no-brainer because it really fits our strengths,” he says, adding that he wants to “establish regulars, just be a part of this vibrant Nashville community.”

Pancho & Lefty’s new location is expected to open by the end of September. The restaurant’s Sylvan Park location, at 4501 Murphy Road, is still open. Find more information here.