You've driven Germantown Parkway a hundred times. You know the chain anchors, the strip malls, the familiar logos. What you may not have clocked is the corridor running beneath that surface: a decade-long accumulation of independent international grocers, halal butchers, Middle Eastern bakeries, and immigrant-owned restaurants that already made this stretch of Cordova the most globally stocked suburban food strip in the Memphis metro. Most residents don't talk about it that way. That's about to change.
A single project — a $7 million conversion of the former Life Church at 1800 N Germantown Pkwy into a 60,000-square-foot international market and food hall — is about to give the existing corridor an anchor it can organize around. When Grand Mart opens, the question won't be whether Cordova has an international food scene. It'll be why it took this long to notice.
What Was Already Here
The Cordova International Farmer's Market at 1150 N Germantown Pkwy has been operating for years and sits comfortably in the top tier of produce variety in Memphis — reviewers consistently note it stocks items that Kroger and Walmart don't carry, with competitive pricing on meat and seafood. It runs seven days a week, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Within a few miles of it: Baladna Mediterranean Supermarket at 1250 N Germantown Pkwy, Alrahmah Bakery and Meat Market at 1070 Macon View Drive, and a stretch of Macon Road that already hosts Habana Club — a Cuban restaurant owned and co-managed by Havana native Roberto Ferie, serving grilled meats, black beans, plantains, and Cuban sandwiches with the stated ambition of being "authentic — it's all Cuban."
None of these are new. What's new is that they're about to have a gravitational center.
The Anchor: A Church Becomes a Food Hall
Tommy Fan and Monica Truong of N&L Holdings paid $9.6 million for the former Life Church building and are putting another $7 million into converting it. The math alone signals conviction. But the people behind the project explain the confidence.
Truong, formerly Monica Pham, comes from a family with deep Memphis food roots — her family owns Viet Hoa Market, one of the city's most established Vietnamese grocery institutions. Fan chose Cordova specifically because of the traffic density on Germantown Parkway and the area's existing international customer base. These are operators who already know this market.
For the food hall, Fan brought in He Chen, a Memphis restaurateur who owns approximately 30 establishments in the area, including Grand Pacific Buffet. The collaboration between a family-owned grocery legacy and a high-volume local restaurant operator isn't an outside developer guessing at what Cordova wants. It's insiders building for a customer they already serve.
The space itself is planned as something Memphis hasn't seen at this scale. Under one 60,000-square-foot roof: distinct market sections organized around Chinatown, Indiatown, and Koreatown, an Asian supermarket with full meat and seafood departments (33,000 square feet of grocery floor alone), an upscale restaurant and bar, an art gallery, an English learning center and music hub, and a South Korea-based bakery, TOUS les JOURS, as a permanent tenant. The food hall is planned to operate from 9 a.m. to 3 a.m. — late-night hours that don't exist anywhere else on this corridor.
The original target was December 2025. As of early 2026, construction is ongoing. No revised opening date has been publicly confirmed.
The Cluster Forming Around It
Grand Mart is the headline, but the operators arriving in its wake are what make the corridor argument stick. Several independent concepts have filed permits or opened within the last six months, concentrated along the same Houston Levee and Macon Road stretch that feeds into Germantown Parkway.
Sweet Eye, a Middle Eastern coffee shop, is already open in Cordova. The menu runs toward the specific: a Dubai chocolate latte, a Baklava latte, a date cardamom latte. It also sells wholesale coffee beans and grounds. It is not a concept designed for a generalist audience — it's designed for a community that already knows what those drinks are.
At 1105 N Houston Levee Road, two separate concepts filed permits within weeks of each other in early 2026. Flaming Pizza received a commercial mechanical permit on February 11 and cleared its food establishment grease trap application on January 20 — standard pre-opening hurdles that typically precede a near-term launch. In Suite 105 of the same building, Yemen Gate Grill — an 1,800-square-foot concept from owner Gamal S. Al-Dhubiea — is installing a menu developed by a chef coming specifically from Chicago. Al-Dhubiea declined to give full details, but the name suggests grilled dishes with Middle Eastern influences, including kebabs.
On Macon Road, Chamo's Bistro and Bar is setting up in the former Stogies Cigar Bar and Lounge space at 8556 Macon Road. Owner Carlos Garcia, who planned a December grand opening, describes it as a Venezuelan burger and bistro concept — "a true Venezuelan experience" offered to a community he wants to welcome. The certificate of occupancy lists an occupant load of 99.
These aren't random arrivals. They're operators making the same calculation Fan made: Cordova's residential density and the existing international customer base along this corridor already justify the bet.
Why This Corridor, and Why Now
Cordova is one of the most densely populated unincorporated communities in Tennessee. Germantown Parkway is, by the town's own description, "one of the busiest retail corridors in the region." That combination — high traffic, high residential density, an existing international grocery infrastructure — is exactly what independent food operators look for when they're evaluating suburban expansion.
The Town of Cordova's social media presence has also emerged as an unexpectedly effective business recruitment tool. When the town publicly posted a call for Portillo's — the Chicago-style hot dog chain — to consider a Cordova location in late 2025, the response from residents who had relocated from other states was immediate. The post specifically noted that "many residents who have moved to Cordova from other states have said they would love to see a Portillo's here, especially those who enjoyed it in their hometowns before relocating." That's a useful data point: Cordova's population includes a significant share of people who carry expectations from food cultures outside Memphis.
Sweet Eye, Yemen Gate Grill, Chamo's, and Grand Mart aren't arriving into a vacuum. They're arriving into a market that the Cordova International Farmer's Market, Baladna, and Alrahmah have been training for years.
What Residents Can Do With This Right Now
The corridor has two modes at the moment: what's open and what's incoming.
Open now: the Cordova International Farmer's Market for produce, seafood, and specialty ingredients; Sweet Eye for Middle Eastern coffee and retail beans; Habana Club on Macon Road for Cuban food. Baladna Mediterranean Supermarket fills gaps that neither Kroger nor the international farmer's market covers, particularly for pantry staples tied to Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking.
Incoming, with varying timelines: Grand Mart at the former Life Church on N Germantown Pkwy (no confirmed revised opening date as of March 2026, but construction is active); Yemen Gate Grill and Flaming Pizza at 1105 N Houston Levee, both with recent permits suggesting near-term openings; Chamo's Bistro and Bar on Macon Road.
The practical upside for residents is that a corridor you already drive through routinely is about to become a meaningful destination — not because a developer made a branding decision about Cordova, but because the people building these businesses live in and serve this community already.
Whether you've been shopping at the international farmer's market for years or you're just now learning what's on the way, this stretch of Cordova rewards attention. If you're also thinking about what a neighborhood like this means for where you live — or where you might want to — Ware Jones has agents who follow Cordova closely and can tell you what the market actually looks like right now. Connect with a Memphis neighborhood expert to start the conversation.
