Dining
After months of planning, designing, redesigning, constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing—much of it documented for the Canadian-produced reality TV program Opening Soon—Cabana is almost ready for its close-up. And ladies and gentlemen, it’s big. Very, very big.
Located on the shotgun lot of Belcourt Avenue where a succession of restaurants tried—and ultimately failed—to lure the Hillsboro Village drinking and dining crowd, Cabana is the joint venture of three experienced pros who know the ’hood pretty well: Randy Rayburn, owner of Sunset Grill and Midtown Café; Brian Uhl, executive chef overseeing both restaurants’ kitchens for five years; and Craig Clifft, GM and wine director of Sunset for a decade. Uncharacteristically, Rayburn has maintained a low public profile, allowing his two longtime employees to take the lead in the project, which they acknowledge as a terrific opportunity, and an enormous responsibility.
“This is Brian’s and my first independent venture, certainly in a financial sense. The project has changed and grown tremendously since we started,” Clifft says, in one of the understatements of the year.
Negotiations to take over the site began last September. A press release issued in January of this year announced the partnership and their plans for a casual neighborhood bar with a patio out front and possibly another in the back. When Cabana finally opens—hopefully, the second week of October—it will encompass 7,000 square feet, 2,900 of which are the covered and enclosed patio that looms over the rear of the small building. There will be a bar inside and outside, dining areas inside and outside, an interior lounge and, most dramatically, 10 private cabanas—seven inside, three outside.
The owners’ plans for the soon-to-open Cabana have changed numerous times, but this time, they swear they’re sticking with the present design. Photo: Eric England
What happened to the casual neighborhood bar? “We started dreaming,” Clifft admits with a laugh. “Randy is a big dreamer, and he started it all one day when he asked, ‘What if?’ That led to Brian and me saying, ‘We could do this…’ and ‘We could do that….’ Then we started talking to [architects] Manuel [Zeitlin] and Eric [Scowden], and things really took off from there. We’ve been through about 10 different designs. Just last week, we changed the indoor bar again.”
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For the moment, the interior will offer a variety of seating choices, including the bar, high-top tables, L-shaped sofas and, yes, the cabanas. “The original plans included a private VIP area,” Clifft continues, “but as we were thinking it out, the question became, ‘If you just have one private area, who are you going to give it to? How do you determine that one person?’ The rooftop cabanas at Shout in Atlanta were our inspiration for these.”
Cabana’s cabanas—which comfortably contain 10 to 12—will line one wall, with panels of sheer drapery hung across the front entry for privacy; each will be outfitted with custom furnishings, adjustable lighting, a flat-screen television and controls for personal selection of music, video and games.
Though the interior layout, furnishings and designs have undergone more makeovers than Joan Rivers, it is the back patio that got the full treatment. “There was a little back deck on the building,” Clifft says. “It was enclosed and pretty claustrophobic. We thought we would open it up a little. People love to sit outside, and from the back, the view across Wedgewood to those old homes and green space is very pretty. So we went from a little bigger to a lot bigger to really big. First it was unroofed, then we put the roof back on, enclosed the sides, and added the roll-up garage doors on the Wedgewood side.”
One thing that has remained fairly consistent is the menu, according to Chef Uhl. “Well, as the overall restaurant has changed, I’ve had to tweak the menu some. Originally, it was going to lean heavily toward small plates and sandwiches. Now that has flipped: I’ll have some apps, three salads, four sandwiches, pizzas and about 10 entrées. Conceptually, Randy is calling it “new Southern bistro comfort food,” and that’s about right. It is definitely comfort-based, and I am building the menu from regional foods and local purveyors.”
Some of Uhl’s twists on Southern classics include jumbo lump crab hush puppies, lobster corn dogs (a chunk of lobster tail battered in creamed corn, skewered, then deep-fried), Tennessee Sliders and chicken wing lollipops. Prices range from $5 to a high of $15 for a half-rack of barbecued ribs. Sunset and Midtown sous chefs Chase Ingalls and John Smythe will join Uhl at Cabana.
The burning question, of course, is: if you build it, will they come? And who is they? According to Clifft, “We see our audience as 25 to 50, depending on the time of night. We feel like we have covered so many bases. We don’t want to leave anyone out.”
Uhl concurs, “We see neighborhood professionals coming by for a drink after work from 4 to 6, then a dinner crowd starting around 7. And after 10, the younger, high-energy crowd comes in to drink, have a bite to eat, play games, hear music and party.”
While members of the local restaurant industry have been speculating for months on the prognosis for the ambitious—and, at over $1.5 million and counting, costly—bar/restaurant, the TV show Opening Soon has crafted an entire episode around the project. The award-winning program, broadcast on the Food Network in Canada and Fine Living in the U.S., is a half-hour documentary series that takes viewers behind the scenes of a new restaurant, from the planning stages to opening night. Cabana is the first restaurant out of the big-city loop to be featured, and the spotlight has gotten a lot hotter in recent weeks as the crew have been following Rayburn, Clifft and Uhl through the process, also interviewing local restaurant industry observers (myself included).
“It was fun at first,” Clifft says somewhat wearily. “But as things have become more frantic, it has gotten tougher. They interrupt our rhythm and get in the way, so it becomes frustrating and adds to the stress you naturally would feel with something like this. But in the big picture, we try to remind ourselves that this is good for the restaurant, and good for Nashville.”
Air dates for Opening Soon: Cabana have not yet been determined. Cabana’s Nashville grand opening will be a series of fund-raising parties for three of the trio’s favorite charities: Arts in Nashville, Second Harvest Food Bank and the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital Oncology Program, which successfully treated Clifft’s daughter when she was diagnosed with leukemia. She celebrated her fourth birthday last week. “Cabana is a huge venture for us, a big risk,” Clifft admits. “But you have to keep things in perspective. It’s a restaurant; it’s not a life.”