Out of the Wilderness
If Wildwood keeps things up, it just might blossom into—gasp!—a chain
by Carrington Fox
The scenic drive toward Wildwood—past grazing horses and the meandering Harpeth River—leads to a surprisingly cosmopolitan dining experience, where beef carpaccio and seared duck dot a menu of local products and global influences, the wine list offers unexpected value, and the green trend of pouring purified water has already filtered down.
Call it a welcome side effect of suburban sprawl, but the encroachment of upscale dining into the rapidly developing countryside reflects a maturing of Nashville’s culinary appetites. Few people have been better poised to observe that shift than Wildwood founder Wachtel. The son of veteran restaurateur Dave Wachtel Jr., Wachtel the Younger got his first glimpses of the dining industry when his dad led the Shoney’s and O’Charley’s chains. Wachtel III later helped develop or expand Logan’s Roadhouse, Uncle Bud’s, Mère Bulles, The Merchants and Santa Fe Cattle Co.
Since his days as a dishwasher at Western Sizzlin, Wachtel has seen Nashville’s appetites expand—and, inevitably, contract. As much as Wildwood represents an expansion of tastes toward more sophisticated flavors and combinations, it is also a response to the backlash among diners who avoid chain restaurants in favor of unique, locally owned places. Armed with the experience of building large chain concepts, and sensitive to the desires of diners to eat locally, Wachtel has set out to create—wait for it—a chain of locally focused restaurants, with Wildwood as the prototype.
The model is straightforward: a compact shotgun of a store with a bar and open kitchen in front and booth seating for about 100. Copper ceiling tiles over the kitchen, dark woods and a black ceiling with a constellation of lights above the tables add warmth to the strip-mall unit, while lever-pull corkscrews affixed to the booths add a no-nonsense utility to the decor. Shelves stocked with spice jars and other ingredients lend transparency to the cuisine, as if to underscore that the chefs are grabbing for some of this and a dash of that rather than accessing prepared foods from a corporate commissary.
A graduate of Culinary Institute of America and former chef at the Space Needle restaurant in Seattle, Crow has crafted a menu that is at once approachable and creative, with items such as pork chop with chestnut spaetzle and roasted Indonesian chicken with peanut sauce promising a fresh twist on comfortable favorites.
A majority of the menu centers around the brick pizza oven from which the restaurant takes its name. For now, a chalkboard of chef’s whims supplements a printed menu, as Crow susses out what products are available locally and what his audience likes.
Let’s hope his audience likes carpaccio, because Wildwood delivers a gorgeous wrap of raw beef stuffed with peppery arugula and drizzled with a creamy Dijon sauce, truffle oil and capers. The buttery meat was thicker than in many preparations, but the flavors were delicate, and the unexpectedly large serving—topped with shaved Parmesan—never became overwhelming.
We also enjoyed the Penn Cove mussels in a rich broth of cream and wine, flavored faintly with fennel and garnished with tangles of finely shredded carrots.
On one of our visits, Crow tested a playful riff on jalapeño poppers, which were actually croquettes of goat cheese, chorizo and serrano chilies dredged in a mixture of potato flakes and flour and deep-fried. Deliciously molten and served with a side of shaved Granny Smith apples and fennel greens, Wildwood’s version of the popper put the standard bar food to shame.
Likewise, Crow’s simple Caesar salad shattered the cliché of the over-dressed bowl of shredded lettuce. A plump half-bulb of crisp romaine—thrown on the grill and served with pancetta, Parmesan and a whisper of dressing—picked up smoky flavor without losing any leafy integrity. The combination of warm and cool was unexpected and delightful.
Duck spring rolls of pulled meat and shredded vegetables served with a plum sauce have earned an early following. Piping hot and crispy on the outside, the spring roll is large enough to share among several people—and a great place to start an evening at Wildwood.
If you’re a nibbler who likes to order a couple of appetizers in lieu of an entrée, think twice before missing out on Crow’s main dinners, built so that each forkful offers an artistic combination of texture and flavor. The highlight of our meals was the seared duck breast with a port reduction and creamy polenta, topped with pea shoots, crisp julienned snow peas and a roasted plum—a colorful balance of creamy and crispy, sweet and savory, hot and cool.
Crow’s enticing sides—think truffled sweet corn and chanterelles, caramelized pears, braised leeks, broccoli rabe—sometimes steal the show from the meat. (On our trips there was no expressly vegetarian entrée option on the menu—Crow might consider combining any of these vegetables with a grit cake, cheese croquette or polenta cake to appease the herbivores.) Wildwood’s sweet-potato fries topped with garlic, Parmesan and truffle oil are very likely the best in town, virtually evaporating upon impact in a fried, candied puff.
The one disappointment in our meals was the garlic-basil shrimp scampi over bucatini. The sauce of roasted tomatoes did not coat the noodles with enough flavor to enliven the heavy pasta, resulting in a taste that was about as hollow as the noodles. That said, we saw a table with toddlers in high chairs happily slurping from the deep egg-shaped bowls, a testament to Wachtel and Crow’s ambition to create a casual, kid-friendly place. The menu even offers this unusual invitation: “We love and welcome children. Ridiculous requests are possible. Don’t be afraid to ask! Please let your server know if certain foods shouldn’t touch each other.”
It’s one thing to print homey, casual things on the menu, and another thing to generate a genuinely easygoing vibe. With a quiet undertone of blues playing in the background one evening, a server dropped a tray with a resounding clang. When he joked across the room, “There’s nothing to see here!” the dining room responded with a friendly communal laugh seldom heard in restaurants. The tiny, good-natured episode bodes well for Wildwood’s efforts to create a laid-back neighborhood atmosphere.
Part of that relaxed ambience comes, no doubt, from the restaurant design. A low wall between the kitchen and booths makes everything visible and, to an extent, audible. But a word of warning to the kitchen team: we can hear you back there. When someone orders a flank steak cooked well-done—even if it goes against every culinary principle that you hold dear—just bite your tongue and singe that meat till it looks like the bottom of a loafer. Seriously, don’t bitch about it. We can hear you.
On the other hand, if we could say something that could be overheard on the other side of the wall, it would be this: please get some more desserts—and hurry. Rather than risk losing control of a busy start-up kitchen, Crow has honed the dessert menu to a few very simple offerings that are not made in-house, as well as a maple crème brûlée that is. On one visit, the crème brûlée had failed to set and was a runny soup. But oh, what a runny soup. If it’s any indication of what Crow can do with sugar, cream and eggs, we can hardly wait until he fleshes out the dessert menu.
And we’ll look forward to hearing about Wachtel’s plans for Hendersonville, where he expects to launch another Wildwood within a year. He also has a more casual concept in the offing, possibly in Midtown. If all goes well, he just might have another chain on his hands.
Wildwood Oak-Fired Kitchen serves dinner seven days a week and has plans to offer brunch on Sunday.
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