Dining
Marché Artisan Foods, the culinary haven of Margot McCormack and business partner Jay Frein, is not just for lunch and breakfast any more. Less than a year old, the gorgeous spin-off of Margot Café has become a landmark in the Five Points neighborhood of East Nashville, where residents start the day with McCormack’s pastries and coffee and West Side auslanders navigate across the Cumberland to tuck into her creative open-face sandwiches, salads and omelets. But until now, the dinner menu has consisted of a single item available for takeout until 7 p.m.
As of last week, Marché now serves an early full-service dinner from 4 to 7, featuring five or six entrées that include pasta, fish and vegetarian options. Debut dinners have offered pan-seared trout with roasted red potatoes and a corn-spinach sauté. Meals range between $11 and $15 and are all available for takeout.
Following in the footsteps of its big-sister restaurant Margot Cafe, which has long been a center for the nascent local Slow Food convivium, Marché will host a summer Slow Food dinner on Tuesday, June 26. The al fresco seafood boil starts at 6:30 p.m. and costs $25 per person excluding tax and tip. Call 227-4668 for reservations.
1000 Main St.
Movable feast
Barbara Eden had her tiny glass bottle, Alisa Martin has a mobile food cart fashioned from a Volkswagen Microbus. The former server at Margot Café has parked her vending mobile in the lot that formerly housed Gardens of Babylon nursery in East Nashville and plans to start serving specialty hot dogs this week.
I Dream of Weenie is a joint venture by Martin, Bret MacFadyen of Art & Invention Gallery and Wayne Goodwin, owner of the bygone Gardens of Babylon. I Dream of Weenie will serve six specialty hot dogs on buns made by Provence. Beef, tofu and turkey dogs will be available. As a mobile vending cart, I Dream of Weenie is prohibited from placing permanent seating on the premises, but Martin says people are free to bring their own picnic blankets and folding chairs. The cart will start by opening for lunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and will possibly expand to late-night hours.
1108 Woodland St.
Irish times
Quinn O’Sullivan, who brought the popular Dan McGuinness Pub to the Music Row Roundabout, is expanding the Irish-themed brand out to Cool Springs. The second Dan McGuinness is slated to open this week.
“It’s a totally different kind of build-out,” says O’Sullivan, a 1996 graduate of Cornell University’s renowned school of hotel management and a former professional soccer player. To create the feeling of an authentic Irish establishment, O’Sullivan scavenged bits of old wood and building materials to erect a 17th century Dublin streetscape inside the strip mall storefront.
Like the flagship store, Dan McGuinness will pour an array of European beers—Guinness, Bass, Harp and Stella Artois among them. Business partner Brad Taylor will man the kitchen, where O’Sullivan says he will expand the emphasis on food beyond the original store. Expect traditional staples of shepherd’s pie and beef and Guinness stew, as well as a selection of lighter fare including salads and wraps. O’Sullivan—whose family hails from Limerick, Ireland, where he often visited cousins, aunts and uncles—hopes to invest the new location with all the qualities of an Irish pub, including traditional Irish music on Friday and Saturday nights.
Open 11 a.m. to 3 a.m. daily. 9200 Caruthers Parkway, Cool Springs
Tiny bubbles
If the offerings at Fat Straw were clues on $25,000 Pyramid, the category would be “trendy foods that migrated from Asia via California.” Promising a terse menu of bubble tea and sushi, Fat Straw is the latest brand to declare itself in the nascent Edgehill Villa complex at the old White Way Cleaners site, where Rosario’s Mexican restaurant is putting the final touches on its inviting corner patio.
Monica Miaou and Scott Chang, who recently touched down from California, hope their roster of bubble teas—black and green teas flavored with fruits and textured with tapioca pearls—will be as big a hit here as they are out west. A quick Google search on the name “Fat Straw” reveals at least two similarly branded concepts—in Texas and Oregon—so named for the oversize straws required to suck up the tapioca pearls. With opening day slated for the first week in July, the affianced Miaou and Chang will offer bubble teas, bubble smoothies and flavored shaved ice (sweet red bean, almond pudding, banana and peach) alongside a simple lunch menu of sushi rolls supplied by fellow Californian and friend Ryan Chen, who opened Fujiyama sushi restaurant in January at 3736 Annex Ave., off Charlotte Pike.
1200 Villa Place
Cottage industry
When estate sale maven Berenice Denton moved her twee shop of antiques and collectibles from Bandywood in Green Hills to the rolling strip malls of Bellevue, she added a tearoom to her retail portfolio. With Rhonda and Craig Sparks, owners of Say Cheese restaurant, manning the kitchen, The Cottage Café serves soups, salads, sandwiches and desserts from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and has plans to begin offering takeout.
162 Belle Forest Circle, 646-2223