The owners of Murray Hill’s Bold Birds Nashville Hot Chicken are bringing a new restaurant concept to the Village Store building in Ortega.
The spaces formerly housing Simply Sara’s and Fonda’s Hairstyling will be combined to make way for The Oxford Place, a 2,700 square-foot restaurant featuring approximately 120 seats and a full-service bar.
Owner Jerry Brown said his vision for the new restaurant is to create a local bistro dining experience for residents to enjoy. Initial plans include a dinner service, with possible future expansion to include weekend brunch service.
The menu will cater to dietary restrictions and preferences as well.
Brown is anticipating a late spring or early summer launch next year for The Oxford Place as he prepares to begin the city permitting process for the interior demolition and buildout to combine the two spaces.
Nod to history
Completed in 1923, the Village Store building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. It was also known as “the Oxford place,” and the restaurant’s name is a nod to that piece of the building’s history. Brown said The Oxford Place restaurant will take advantage of the building’s “great bones,” high ceilings and tall windows.
“We’ll make it really a welcoming space,” Brown said. “It’ll be a smaller space, so it’ll be fairly intimate and have a comfortable neighborhood feel to it.”
Simply Sara’s was a neighborhood staple for Ortega residents until it closed in 2022, and the restaurant space has been vacant ever since. An Ortega resident himself, Brown said there has been a consistent desire among neighbors to see a new restaurant come in and fill that void.
