Blake Shelton Opens Ole Red in Gatlinburg, Tennessee

Blake Shelton’s Ole Red venue in Gatlinburg, Tennessee is officially open for business. Shelton went to the east Tennessee town to officially open the restaurant’s third location.

“It’s official! [Ole Red] is open for business!” Shelton shared in advance of the grand opening on Tuesday, March 13. “See y’all tonight!”

Shelton’s previous two Ole Red locations are in his hometown of Tishomingo, Oklahoma, and Nashville, Tennessee, the latter which opened in 2018, right before CMA Fest. The Music City location is in a restored building that Shelton couldn’t quite imagine being turned into the restaurant, bar and music venue it is now.

“We immediately came upstairs, and it was just nothing but cubicles. It was just an empty building,” Shelton recalled to PopCulture.com and other media, of the time he and his girlfriend, Gwen Stefani, first set foot in the former abandoned building. “It was empty; it was deserted. And the whole time somebody had their papers and like, ‘This is the floor – it’s going to look like this. It’s going to have this.’

“And they were showing me, and I’m like, ‘OK. Right,’” he continued. “‘And this floor right here won’t even be here because we’re going to take this level’ … it was just these unrealistic things that he was telling me. And, then we went upstairs to the rooftop and he was saying, ‘This is where the rooftop bar is going to be, and we’re actually going to add another part, indoor part. There’ll be indoor, outdoor.’”

Stefani also was hesitant to believe that the building could be transformed as well as it has been.

“Meanwhile, Gwen’s standing there and her heel goes through the roof,” Shelton recalled with a laugh. “And so we’re trying to get her leg back out and it’s like, ‘What the f— is this? And so we left. It was exciting, but at the same time I think part of me thought, this is a monumental task that they’re going to have to take on to get this thing up and running … The team and the workmanship is just overwhelming. It’s beautiful.”

Shelton is also planning on opening another Ole Red in Orlando, Florida, scheduled to be released in the spring of 2020. Find more information about all Ole Red locations by visiting their website.

Photo Credit: Getty Images/Erika Goldring