Columns
By Kay West
Over the past 20 years, Nashville diners have been witness to—and participants in—a fairly remarkable metamorphosis in the local dining scene, as the city has made way for a surge of chef-driven and chef-owned restaurants, an explosion of global cuisines and the arrival of nationally known chains. Not coincidentally, these changes are entirely reflective of Nashville's steady growth from big small town to small big city.
When people went out to eat 20 years ago, they had roughly one option if they wanted to eat creatively prepared food in an offbeat setting: Jody Faison's eponymous bar/restaurant/salon, located in an old house on Belcourt Avenue. But in the late 1980s, the stirrings of something new started to happen: in 1987, F. Scott's introduced contemporary fine dining to conservative Green Hills, and transplanted New Yorker Rick Bolsom launched his local restaurant career with Cakewalk off West End Avenue. Two years later, Marcia and Craig Jervis transformed a century-old building in historic but faded Germantown into the city's first chef-owned restaurant, The Mad Platter. Homegrown front-of-house pro Randy Rayburn—a major player in F. Scott's success—struck out on his own in 1990, transforming a Hillsboro Village bicycle shop into Sunset Grill.
The tenacity of those pioneers led the way for more independents who were willing to test Nashville's increasingly cosmopolitan and experimental palates, and who—priced out of more conventional and highly visible locations—took a chance on urban, transitional neighborhoods: Café 123 in the desolate area north of The Gulch; Sasso in East Nashville; Caffe Nonna in Sylvan Park; The Yellow Porch in Berry Hill. The new millennium has brought us dozens more independently owned restaurants, among them Virago, Mirror, Park Café, Margot Café & Bar, Chapel Bistro, The Acorn and Germantown Café, to name only a few. Concurrent with this has been the development of the Demonbreun Street corridor, the ongoing transformation of The Gulch, a continuing turnover of downtown restaurants, a number of coffeehouses and cafes, and a relentless influx of national chains. But the fun is just getting started. Nashville diners, fasten your seat belts, because the pace is about to pick up again, and by this time next year, you'll need a brand-new program to identify the players.
The Attack of the Killer Chains accelerates, most egregiously with the suburbanization of West End Avenue and the imminent landing in Green Hills of the Cheesecake Factory and its massive, masses-pleasing menu. On the positive side, as consumer demand for imported and gourmet goods rises, more specialized markets will open, such as The Italian Market off Charlotte Pike and the imported cheese and meat shop nearly completed in 12 South.
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|
|
---------------------------Advertisement---------------------------
|
But the most exciting news for inveterate restaurant patrons and hungry foodies is the pending debut of two more chef-owned restaurants, with another strongly rumored. First, with a tentative November start date, will be Radius10. Though owner Jason Brumm is new to Nashville, he is not unknown to the sizable population of Nashvillians who vacation on the Florida Gulf Coast. From April 1999 to September 2002, he was executive chef for Café Thirty-A, the popular Seagrove restaurant within biking distance of Seaside. Most recently, he held the same position at the same village's Fish Out of Water.
True to the nature of most talented chefs, he yearned to have his own place. After checking out some other markets, he decided Nashville still had elbow room for more chef-owned restaurants, and that its growing and financially stable population offered the most potential to support his entrepreneurial venture.
His good friend, Scott Alderson (formerly of 6° and Saffire, now at Layl'a Rul) also gave Music City favorable reviews, so Brumm packed his things and bought a condo downtown. From that vantage point, he liked what he saw in The Gulch and liked even more the plans that architect Manuel Zeitlin helped him translate from vision to blueprint. Radius10, in the building situated behind the former Pie Wagon on 12th, will be approximately 4,500 square feet offering fabulous views of the unfolding Gulch, Union Station and downtown Nashville, both from within the glass-walled dining room and from the patio and bar terrace. The dinner-only restaurant will serve a bold mélange of modern regional American cuisines, executed in a kitchen that will feature an eight-stooled chef's bar where diners will sit three feet from the frenetic activity that defines a busy restaurant.
According to Brumm, though his target audience is a lively crowd of 25- to 50-year-old professionals who enjoy wine and fancy cocktails, Radius10 will be a restaurant with a bar, not a bar with a restaurant. (Apparently, he has inside scoop on the sad demise of 6°, which did a tremendous bar business but moved too few plates out of the kitchen.) Though he is bringing along a couple of his signature items from his Florida tenure—braised Kobe beef short ribs with black truffle grits and sweet onion compote, for example—the bulk of the accessibly priced menu will be brand-new, with bites, discs (pizza), hand-rolled pasta and a few select entrées.
By the end of August, a preview of Radius10 will come to life via www.radius10.com, which will feature photographs and updates on the restaurant as it progresses.
Kim Totzke is a name beloved by many Nashville diners, who have followed her from her arrival here, assisting Daniel Maggipinto at his first restaurant, Dancing Bear; she progressed through Deb Paquette's kitchen at Zola, Bob Bernstein's Bongo Java empire, then on to Katie and Gep Nelson's restaurant group, starting in the kitchen at Yellow Porch, and ultimately overseeing all four of the Nelsons' kitchens: the Porch, Wild Iris, Cross Corners and Flying Horse.
Several months ago in an amiable split, Totzke left those buildings, and on Jan. 1, 2006, her forwarding address will be 2600 Melrose Place, where her yet-to-be-named restaurant will anchor the redevelopment of The Melrose.
"For a long time, I wasn't sure I wanted my own place," Totzke said recently, sitting at the bar of MafiaOza's, co-owned by Mike Dolan, who will invest in her restaurant. "But at some point in your career you realize that if you want your own vision realized, and to continue being stimulated by what you do, you have to go out on your own.
"I had a few opportunities a couple years ago, but they didn't seem quite right. And then my father got sick, and with Katie and Gep's support, I got to spend the last year of his life close to his side. When he died, I knew that the time had come to move forward. I had learned a lot on the business side, but I missed being in the kitchen. Had I opened my own place two years ago, I would have either missed that time with him, or I would have failed."
Soon after she put the word out that she was ready, Totzke got a tip on a possible location on Franklin Pike; she checked it out that day and knew it was right. "I love that spot; it's connected to Green Hills, 12 South, Forest Hills, Brentwood, all of my customers, but it is urban, which is what suits me. And I love [developer] Rick English's plan for it. His architect, Colleen Atwood, has been a longtime customer of mine. Everything about it just feels good." She takes possession of the space on Dec. 31 and plans to be serving lunch and dinner by early spring.
Currently, Totzke is doing some freelance cooking around town but is spending most of her time in her own kitchen, testing dishes and ideas, using her husband, son and close friends as guinea pigs. "I have been on some great eating trips the past few months, and it confirmed to me that Nashville has some incredible chefs. We all take a chance when we go out on our own; it's scary, but I think the more good, chef-owned independents there are here in Nashville, the more Nashville diners pay attention to our kind of restaurant, and that's good for all of us. I think there's room for more."
Apparently, that theory has made its way down I-65 South to Birmingham, where nationally acclaimed chef Fran Stitt masterminds Highlands, Café Botega and Chez Fon Fon; rumor has it that Stitt has his eye on a piece of Gulch real estate. Stay tuned.