Bad Idea
When I first heard that chef David Breeden was coming to Nashville for some project, I was immediately curious. While he wasn’t the chef at The French Laundry on the one occasion years ago when I was fortunate enough to dine there, I do remember hearing how disappointed Thomas Keller was to see him leave that kitchen after almost two decades working together. At that time, I started doing a little more research and discovered to my surprise that I probably had eaten chef Breeden’s food previously, back when he was working at Wolfy’s — the pioneering Lower Broad bar that I hung out at frequently in the ’90s, catching experimental solo shows by Victor Wooten and the catchy swing of BadaBing BadaBoom.
If I remember correctly, there wasn’t a lot of intricate tweezer work on the dishes of Wolfy’s menu, but it was more than solid pub grub. So the throughline of Nashville to Yountville to Nashville already fascinated me before I heard that Chef Breeden was coming to revamp the menu and lead the kitchen at Alex Burch’s Bad Idea following the departure of opening chef Colby Rasavong. Having just received the only Michelin recognition in the region for sommelier excellence, Burch didn’t want to lose the momentum during the chef change, so he reached out to a big hitter he had met through his former co-worker Josh Habiger of Bastion.
Bad Idea's Hamachi Crudo
Now that Chef Breeden has settled into his new kitchen, I figured it would be a good time to check in and see what has changed and what hasn’t. (By the way, a disclosure: This was not an anonymous review visit. The reservation was in my name. And even though I didn’t see Burch or speak with Breeden that evening, they knew I was coming.)
That shouldn’t matter anyway, because from what I’ve always witnessed at Bad Idea, they are equal-opportunity hospitalitarians, treating all their patrons with the same attentive service and chill vibe. Lo-fi beats still set the tone, at least during the early-bird dinner hour when we were there, and the former church is still one of the coolest dining rooms in town. Being the early diners, we availed ourselves of the happy hour from 5 until 6 p.m., with selected $10 cocktails, $5/$10 wines by the pour and $4 Narragansett beers.
The nationally known chef is helping the wine bar develop menus for a new culinary direction launching Jan. 15
Gone is the Lao-centric cuisine of chef Rasavong, replaced by hearty Southern American fare. For example, a starter of pimento cheese and aji pepper jelly served with baked “firecracker” saltines was phenomenal and wholly unexpected. Breeden drops lowbrow, high-concept touches all over the new menu, with items like “Bacon and Eggs” — which is actually a perfectly cooked 6.5-minute sous vide egg served with super smoky bacon lardons, creamy mascarpone grits and a Parmesan sabayon.
While I certainly miss Colby’s scallop-stuffed crepe with that delicate tuile, I have to say that I think the current hamachi crudo is every bit as good as the former administration’s versions. Precise knife work and intricate plating really allow the yellowtail to shine through, and the addition of a little citrus and some crunchy pepitas added a nice brightness and texture to the dish.
Breeden undersells and overperforms with a dish he calls simply “Nashville Strip Steak.” The perfectly cooked strip steak from Snake River Farms had enough intramuscular fat to eat more like a ribeye — an incredibly tender ribeye. Plated with a toasted potato blini, nutty aged Comté cheese, caramelized onion jam and a compound barbecue butter, it was a highlight steak in a town that is currently overflowing with great steakhouses.
The last dish we tried was another beautiful presentation with a punny name. The “Chicken and Dumplings” was as far from your grandma’s version as you can imagine, and sorry Meemaw, but that’s a good thing. The “chickens” in question were hen of the woods mushrooms — earthy, savory and woody. Potato dumplings connected with the earth again, and the sauce supreme finally brought a real chicken to the party with a creamy velouté.
So yeah, change is hard. A lot of us loved the playful French/Laotian menu that was full of surprises and late-night industry events at Bad Idea. But when the owner-operator of a restaurant is as talented a sommelier as Alex Burch, sometimes you want to challenge him to come up with pairings for even more different types of cuisine. The wine selections we enjoyed that evening were never what we would have expected, but there wasn’t a miss in the bunch.
I’m not sure if Chef Breeden is planning to stay long at Bad Idea, or if he’s just there to help with the transition and reimagining of the menu and kitchen. Similar to how the Nashville Predators just went through the NHL trade deadline and shipped some of their players off to other teams as “rentals” until the end of the season, sometimes a change can make an organization even better than the sum of its parts.
Now that Bad Idea is on the Michelin radar, it might just be time to make a run for the Cup!
