Bar Marcel, a new concept from Urban Food Group (Vivace, Civetta), will open in the coming weeks. The restaurant will have a small plates-focused menu that borrows influence from French, Spanish, and Italian cuisines.

“The cuisine will be adventurous,” says Kevin Jennings, co-owner of Urban Food Group with his wife, Stacey. “But for people who like that European café style of dining, this will be a restaurant for them.”

Jennings says he had been looking for a space in SouthPark for a while, and happened to be driving by the now-closed Another Broken Egg Café in the Morrison development when he saw a sign saying the space was available. Jennings says the area was particularly appealing because it’s densely populated, with popular stores and restaurants like Boem, Capitol, and Yafo bringing folks into the shopping center.

The menu will include tapas, charcuterie, and seafood. In the kitchen is chef de cuisine Miguel Cruz, who comes from Sullivan’s Steakhouse, as chef de cuisine. Cruz went to Raleigh to cook for the group, and within five minutes, Jennings says, they were sold on his talent.

The restaurant’s design is open, with high top tables near the bar and booths on a raised platform. The dining room looks out over the restaurant’s patio. The concept is more edgy than most of the restaurants in the Urban Food Group, which will total 10 after Bar Marcel opens.

“We didn’t want to just do a straight up Italian restaurant again,” Jennings says. “This is the kind of restaurant that, if my wife and I were going out to dinner, we would go to a place like this.”

The name is inspired by one of Stacey’s family relatives, a man named Marcel. Marcel was sent from Alsace by the Germans to a concentration camp. He survived the war, and was a beloved and respected part of the family.

“The bar part is just trying to accentuate it’s hip and fun and upscale, as far as the look of the restaurant and all, but it’s also very casual,” Jennings says. “It will be a place in SouthPark where a lot of the folks that live around there, they can come three times a week.”

Jennings says the restaurant’s millwork is currently being finished, then the furniture will be put in. All of the booths and tables are in Charlotte, waiting in a warehouse for the last details to be finished. The kitchen is already complete, and Jennings anticipates opening the doors in the next two or three weeks. —Kristen Wile