PennePazze and its sister gelato shop, GelatoPazzo, officially opened on Friday, June 19, 2026, in Nashville’s Germantown neighborhood, next to First Horizon Park. The two spots are connected, so it’s easy to go from pasta to gelato without stepping outside. This is the third Nashville-area location for the family-owned concept founded by Rony Stark, and the first with a cocktail bar and a small Italian market. Nashville Guru stopped by to get a look inside.
The Interior
PennePazze
The dining room is done in deep green and warm wood, with channel-tufted booths, green dome pendants hanging from white-painted beams, a hand-painted mural of an Italian street scene, and an open kitchen where the pasta and pinsa are made in full view. It’s also the first location with a full cocktail bar and a small Italian market, where brass-framed shelves hold wine, olive oil, and PennePazze merchandise.
GelatoPazzo
A pair of hand-painted green saloon doors connects the restaurant to GelatoPazzo, which has its own look, including sage green walls, a cream fluted counter, and green leather stools. The gelato is kept in traditional lidded steel wells rather than an open display case.
The Exterior
PennePazze and GelatoPazzo sit on the ground floor of Starling Germantown, directly across from First Horizon Park. Out front, sage green cafe tables and chairs are set among planters on the patio, where guests can watch walkers pass by on the Cumberland River Greenway. There is also a covered patio at PennePazze with lush greenery and comfortable outdoor seating. Get a photo in front of the mural of a dripping gelato cone before you leave (or while you’re enjoying your own).
The Menu
The food is Italian with a farm-to-table approach and a few southern touches, centered on handmade pasta and Roman-style pinsa. Menu items include carbonara, ravioli de ragu, and pinsas like the Pazza and the Funghi. The cocktail list includes an Old Fashioned made with truffle oil and several Italian spritzes.
At GelatoPazzo, the gelato is made in-house daily with no preservatives or artificial ingredients, and most of the ingredients come directly from Italy. Flavors range from traditional to chef-created combinations.
The Founder
Founder and owner Rony Stark grew up in Italy, learning to make pasta and pizza from scratch in his mother’s kitchen, but he took a long road back to food. He played professional basketball in Israel and studied law before deciding cooking was what he really wanted to do. He moved to the U.S. in 2019 and chose Nashville, where he had a cousin, with the idea that fresh pasta could be an everyday meal instead of a splurge.
The first PennePazze opened at L&L Market in March 2020 and was open all of two days before Covid shut the city down. The restaurant got by on takeout until an influencer’s video went viral and brought lines out the door. A Murfreesboro location followed in 2023, and a Franklin location is in the works. Stark runs the brand with his wife, Shir Nachman Stark, and the kitchen is led by head chef Riccardo Manzella, a Sicilian who Stark met in culinary school in Italy. Everything is made fresh from scratch, with no artificial ingredients, preservatives, or seed oils.
Under Stark’s leadership, PennePazze has grown from a single Nashville restaurant into a multi-location concept, with three locations operating across Middle Tennessee and a fourth currently in development in Franklin. Stark plans to build on this momentum by expanding the PennePazze and GelatoPazzo concepts into markets across the United States.
The Details
For a truly authentic Italian destination in Nashville, PennePazze and GelatoPazzo are the perfect pair to put on your list. The Germantown location currently has 4.8 stars from over 160 reviewers on Google.
- Address: 820 4th Avenue North, Nashville, TN 37219 (map/directions)
- Instagram: @pennepazzeofficial / @gelatopazzoofficial
- Official Website
