A Movable Feast

It had the naughty feel of a speakeasy. Well-heeled guests skulked toward an empty building on Second Avenue, carrying bottle-shaped brown bags and exchanging furtive glances, as if to ask, “Am I in the right place?” The probability of a “unique dining experience,” as the invitation promised, unfurling anywhere along the dark block in SoBro seemed slim at best. But an unlikely open door and an equally unexpected blues singer stationed beside it confirmed that the address was, in fact, the momentary location of The Ghetto Gourmet, a peripatetic food rave, on its recent culinary layover in Nashville. Jeremy Townsend, a poet from Oakland, Calif., and his chef brother Joe pioneered the series of underground dinner parties now known in food circles across the country as “The Ghet.” The so-called “wandering supperclub for lovers of fine cookin’, cool art and new friends” launched two years ago on the floor of Jeremy’s apartment, when he gathered a willing group of eaters to test out Joe’s recipes. The bohemian dinner salon caught on and soon crawled out of the basement to venues across the Bay area, toward Chicago, New York and, most recently, Nashville, where Joe, 25, works as the chef for Plumgood Food. The Dec. 29 Nashville event took shape when Jeremy stopped back in his native Middle Tennessee for the holidays. Eric Satz, the investment-banker-turned-Internet-grocer behind Plumgood, opened up the company kitchens for the night and invited a few foodies and friends—and their friends and their friends and so on—’round for a food adventure masterminded by Joe. The cryptic email invitation gave few details, save for the fact that dinner was $50 per person and BYOB. Follow-up messages ultimately revealed the location and a tentative menu. At 7 p.m. sharp, some 50 people convened on the festively occult, faux-stone lobby of the vacant Music City Mix Factory (most recently The Castle) for a decadent five-course meal punctuated by music, writing and modern dance. With Joe and pastry chef Megan Stephens in the kitchen, Jeremy running the show and everybody else along for a delicious ride, The Ghet Nashville kicked off with a salad of mixed greens, bacon, blue cheese and buttermilk dressing, belted by a paper-thin sheet of cucumber. Parsnip bisque followed, a velvety, sweet soup garnished with a cool and tangy tangle of pickled daikon radish, a Parmesan crisp and a drizzle of basil oil. Seated at knee-high tables fashioned from upside-down Plumgood delivery crates, guests drank water from office-style coffee pots, shared their wine glasses and used the same utensil for every course. But the entertainment was anything but makeshift. Singer/songwriter Paige Bainbridge traded fork for guitar, and writer Robert Benson read a hilarious passage about the quotidian but holy process of planning lunch and dinner, an apt subject for a Ghet audience. Mark Holder (formerly of the Black Diamond Heavies), the same musical Cerberus who greeted guests at the door, growled out his punk-ass blues as the kitchen team plated diver scallops with rocket pesto, wild mushrooms and red pepper coulis. The pièce de résistance of the evening was not so much the entrée, a pan-seared filet of beef draped with grilled asparagus and dotted with foie gras hollandaise and rosemary demi glace, as it was the breathlessly athletic improvisational dance by Mary Alice White, who will be taking over host duties for The Ghet in New York. As for the future of The Ghet in Nashville, Satz says, “We’re definitely going to do more, so stay tuned.” To learn about The Ghetto Gourmet and to get on the mailing list, visit TheGhet.com.