The Crispy Catch
The surging tide of restaurant openings in Nashville hasn't always been as mind-expanding as we might hope. It's great to get new places to eat, but how many upscale burgers, pizzas and steaks can a city countenance before sheer redundancy dulls our enthusiasm?
But with The Hook, we've gotten a genuinely new restaurant, one that focuses on something that many Nashvillians (including myself) hunger for avidly: seafood.
And The Hook has inserted itself into a unique restaurant niche: It lands in a sweet spot somewhere between fast-food fish (coincidentally, an outlet of Nashville-based Capt. D's is visible from The Hook's patio) and the fine-dining territory of The Hook's sister restaurant down the street, Sinema.
Of course, when a concept is relatively unfamiliar, it always draws some static. I've heard some diners complain that the tab is too pricey for fried fillets and fish tacos. (Sandwiches are $9 to $10; entrée are $10 to $15, which seems reasonable to me.) Others gripe that if they're going to eat seafood, they'd rather get a full-service restaurant experience instead of The Hook's system of ordering at a counter and seating yourself to dine in a quick-casual environment.
Personally, I love pretty much everything about The Hook. Sure, it's not as cheap as a drive-thru window or an old-timey catfish shack, but the ingredients are impeccable, prepared by a Culinary Institute of America grad (chef Vasisht Ramasubramanian). And the diversity and creativity of The Hook's menu give thoughtful diners a whole lot to explore.
Oh, yeah, and there are cocktails. Based on what I'm spotting on social media, one thing that whets diners' desire to visit The Hook is the prospect of wetting their whistles with clever frozen cocktails — sort of the grown-up equivalent of slushies. These aren't just resort-town tourist-baiting frozen margs, but interesting drinks, like the Frosty Pimm's Cup, a frozen version of the refreshing gin-based beverage traditional to Britain, with citrus, cucumber and a big hit of sweet ginger.
If you're trying to hunt down The Hook to check out the buzz, it's a boldly painted blue-and-yellow house along the Eighth Avenue/Franklin Road corridor in Melrose, a neighborhood that has changed vastly in the past couple of years. A residential boom has hit the once mostly commercial district, and in 2014, a big and ambitious mixed-use redevelopment of the former Melrose theater complex yielded the aforementioned Sinema restaurant — a delightfully swanky spot from a partnership team that included Gaylord exec Colin Reed, his wife Brenda and sons Sam and Ed, along with Dale Levitski, a highly accomplished chef and veteran of the Top Chef series on TV.
The Hook, which opened four months ago, is the Reed family's second restaurant project together, and Levitski was its initial chef. He developed the concept and the opening menu before ultimately leaving the company and handing the reins at The Hook to Ramasubramanian.
I visited The Hook several times under both chefs; the meals were equally good. Ramasubramanian came to The Hook from Maneet Chauhan's excellent spot in the Gulch, Chauhan Ale & Masala House. Prior to that, he worked as a sous chef under the celebrated Jean-Georges Vongerichten at ABC Cocina in New York.
It's a bit of a luxury to get a fast-casual meal fixed for you by a chef of that caliber, because it means things will be made from scratch with high standards of preparation (as opposed to industrial drums of prefab sauces and feedbags full of frozen nuggets).
One of the key dishes in The Hook's repertoire is The Crispy Catch, an entrée featuring fingers of seasonal fish fillet hand-dipped in beer batter and skillfully fried so the fish has a satisfying crunch and isn't too greasy. It's accompanied by a house-made chow-chow tartar sauce, lemon and slaw. You also get to choose one side, and with the exception of the relatively boring fries, all of The Hook's sides are stars on their own.
When I eat fried food, I tend to crave something green as a balance, and The Hook's Simple Greens perfectly do the trick. It's a simple salad, but with high-quality fresh lettuces and thinly sliced radish. I'm a sucker for ranch dressing, but only if it's made from scratch, and The Hook's version is, so it's a treat. You can also ask for a vinaigrette dressing.
A side dish that really hits the comfort-food switch is the Cream Cheese Mash & Gravy: Potatoes are mashed with cream cheese, making the spuds even more creamy and appealing, and topped with a peppery sawmill gravy. It reminds me of what KFC mashed potatoes might taste like if they were prepared by haute cuisine methods. Which is, I guess, what these mashed potatoes are. (I just learned that mashed potatoes are off the menu for the summer, replaced by a sweet-potato salad with spices inspired by Indian street food.)
The Hook has a board listing current specials, including a side vegetable of the day, and I've noticed that with these, the chef ("Chev V," as he's nicknamed) often taps into his background in Indian cuisine; past options have included stewed okra with spices, and roasted eggplant in red curry.
On the sandwiches list, I have enjoyed the fish tacos, which feature chunks of crispy fried fish served in corn tortillas with roasted corn salsa and chipotle mayo, and the Double-Double Cheeseburger — two sizable beef patties on a bun with tomato, lettuce and something called ToMayo, which appears to be mayo with tomato, and reminds me of the secret sauce in a Big Mac. (In fact, the whole burger seemed to have a fast-food inspiration but, you know, actually good.) Sandwiches come with the house-made potato chips, which are completely addictive, or you can pay an extra $2 and order one of the sides.
A slightly lighter option is the Tuna Poke (it's pronounced po-kay), a take on the popular raw tuna snack from Hawaii. The Hook serves it with sesame-soy sauce, ginger and fried wontons. It's listed on the menu as a starter, but I could definitely eat it as an entrée.
The Hook sensibly offers some vegetarian options. The Mixed Grains salad is a really successful combo of quinoa and farro topped with bright green, protein-rich edamame, along with diced cucumbers and roasted veggies, dressed with a light cava vinaigrette. But I was slightly less thrilled with the Brown Rice Vegetabowl; it's on the current menu as a successor to a previous menu's vegetarian sandwich, which was nicknamed "She's All That."
The latter sticks in my memory as one of the best veggie sandwiches I've ever had: a fresh sub roll stuffed with a feast of seasonal veggies and tangy goat cheese. But while the brown rice bowl rounds up a similar bounty of fresh vegetables (on a recent visit that included broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, edamame, mushrooms, green beans and asparagus, along with fresh avocado salsa), somehow the flavors just don't seem to come together as well as they did on the sandwich — though the bowl is definitely easier to wrangle than that overstuffed sandwich bun.
The ambience has always been enjoyable on my visits to The Hook. It emulates a laid-back beach joint, with picnic-style tables and a small but convivial bar that also has a window to serve customers on the party-friendly patio overlooking Eighth Avenue. The restaurant even has a small front lawn with a cornhole setup that seems to attract families as much as beer-drinking bros.
But if you do like a good drink, The Hook definitely has the hook-up. I previously mentioned the frozen cocktails, which rotate, though the Frosty Pimm's seems permanent — a good thing, because it's very refreshing and I never tire of it. (Another option I tried recently, a frozen whiskey sour, was less pleasing. It came off a bit like rye-spiked Hawaiian Punch, even though I knew that what I was sipping included house-made grenadine, not red stuff out of a juice box.)
Also very appealing are the Smashed Cocktails, made with fruits and herbs muddled to order by the bartender. I'm crazy about the Lemon Basil & Vodka version, with lots of fresh, deep-green basil leaves smashed to release their aroma and flavor, balanced by sprightly lemon juice and a restrained sweetness from simple syrup. Another novel Smashed Cocktail pairs gin with muddled thyme and rhubarb, for a delicate, sweetly perfumed drink.
There's beer of course — seven or so craft beers on draft, and a dozen more in bottles. If your idea of a weekend demands buckets of PBR, Coors or Tecate, they offer that as well. There's also a small selection of decent wines, some offered by the carafe.
As much as I embrace everything about The Hook, its delightful food and drink and its beachy vibe, I confess the themed decor (the hook as a concept harkening to both seafood and songwriting) sometimes strikes me as a little corny. And yet I find my eye tracing the big wall painted with various famous song lyrics, and I see truth in the motto emblazoned over the door: The Hook brings you back.
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