When Max and Benjamin Goldberg first opened The Catbird Seat at 1711 Division St. way back in the fall of 2011, they changed Nashville’s culinary scene dramatically. Opening chefs Josh Habiger and Erik Anderson introduced local diners to the sort of elevated chef’s table dining experience that was rarely seen outside of the large culinary centers like New York City and Chicago. Initially, the meal was seven courses with maybe an extra course or two to amuse your bouche, and the novelty of watching chefs prepare your food and actually present it to you took away the sting of what at the time felt a little jarring — a fixed price of $100 per diner!
Fast-forward to today, and it’s no problem to drop a hundo at J. Alexander’s if you order a salad and a glass of wine with your prime rib. The Goldberg brothers have organized their restaurant group under the Strategic Hospitality banner, Habiger has joined the ownership and management team, Anderson has earned multiple Michelin stars, and The Catbird Seat has remained true to its chef-incubator gestalt while intentionally cycling through six different iterations of kitchen leaders.
Andy Doubrava and Tiffani Ortiz
The Catbird 6.0 operates under the direction of chefs Tiffani Ortiz and Andy Doubrava, who have brought new energy to the kitchen, delighting diners with food sourced by local farmers and foragers while promoting zero-waste kitchen practices. As of Wednesday, May 14, Doubrava and Ortiz will take over the keys to a brand-new kitchen and restaurant space on the fifth floor of the Bill Voorhees Building at Paseo South Gulch at 700 Eighth Ave. S.
Along with The Catbird Seat, TPH will reopen on the fifth floor of the Bill Voorhees Building on May 13
The move offers both aesthetic and practical advantages, completing a well-deserved refresh to such an important Nashville restaurant institution. Sharing a lobby with The Patterson House will be helpful, as Catbird guests can arrive early and take a left to pregame before the dining experience, or they can retire to TPH to bask in the afterglow of a 15-course salvo of inventive food. (Read more on The Patterson House's new digs here.)
Even more exciting, there’s now a dedicated bar space inside The Catbird Seat, a luxurious area they’re calling The Wine Lounge. Secreted away off the main entrance to the dining area, The Wine Lounge offers bar seating for six at a dramatic emerald green counter made of quartzite along with space for eight at a velvet booth in the corner of the lounge. Seating for two patrons is also available at a couple of tables in the lounge, but most importantly, the new space allows talented beverage director Sarah Salim to run the complete wine and cocktail program with enough room to organize her workspace.
Strategic Hospitality worked with Nick Dryden of Dryden Studio on the design refresh of the new space. Dryden is the mastermind behind some of the most dramatic restaurants in town, including other Strategic concepts Locust and Bastion. The new iteration of The Catbird Seat is another jewel in Dryden’s crown, a luxurious space that shines like a jewel box atop the Voorhees Building.
Guests who have experienced the original version of The Catbird Seat will probably find the room familiar and excitingly new at the same time. Logistically, the team has moved the hood and main cooking area to the rear of the room, near the larger kitchen that adjoins the cooking space at The Patterson House. Habiger is excited to have the chance to redesign the kitchen space and processes from scratch with more than a decade of operating experience to figure out what works best.
“I’m just glad we don’t have to go down a fire escape to get to the walk-in anymore,” he shares with a chuckle.
Behind the scenes, the remodel allows for much more storage space, two cooking islands for the chef team and two plating areas. While it was always entertaining to watch the kitchen staff dance around each other in the former space, I’m sure Ortiz and Doubrava will appreciate the extra room.
The 25-seat U-shaped chefs counter will also seem familiar to Catbird fans, but the slabs of Tennessee pink marble add an extra layer of drama to the experience. Speaking of drama, two of the three marble slabs cracked before they were fully installed, so that added another degree of complexity to getting the restaurant open on schedule.
Tennessee pink marble is mined only in a small section of East Tennessee, making it among the rarest of decor materials. It has been used in legendary construction projects like the U.S. Capitol, the Tennessee Supreme Court Building, the National Gallery of Art, the National Air and Space Museum and the floor of the main terminal at Grand Central Station. Oh, and those two famous lions guarding the entrance to the New York Public Library? Those are made of Tennessee pink marble, too!
Even more dramatic are the shelves and storage cabinets that run above the counter over the diners’ heads. Thin veneer slices of bird’s eye maple are backlit to emphasize the tiny swirling grain of the beautiful wood, a pattern found in less than 1 percent of maple lumber. The warm light from above combines with natural light flowing through floor-to-ceiling windows draped with dramatic curtains to allow the restaurant to control the ambiance for diners.
The former space could feel a little industrial at times, since there was no natural light, and the staff needed light to work by. Now they can open the curtains during daily prep and create a more intimate atmosphere during service.
Through 14 years of chef residencies, The Catbird Seat has continually reinvented itself as an important stalwart of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now with this major upgrade to the physical spaces behind the scenes and in the dining room, we can only expect even better things from the entire team!
