Chef Opie Crooks, whose given name is the much less quaint “Patrick,” has been invited by an old friend to visit Nashville and share his culinary talents with Music City. David Speegle is the culinary director at 8th & Roast, and he reached out to Crooks to set up a one-night pop-up at the coffeehouse's West Nashville location at 4104 Charlotte Ave.
The event is this Friday, March 15, 5 to 9 p.m. The acclaimed Crooks is the executive chef at the acclaimed A Rake’s Progress in Washington, D.C.’s The Line Hotel, and he’ll be bringing his brand of small-plate cuisine to the masses, along with a selection of specialty batched cocktails for the evening. Crooks graduated from Atlanta’s outpost of Le Cordon Bleu and followed up his education by working with legendary Hawaiian chef Roy Yamaguchi at the Atlanta location of his eponymous restaurant. He spent nearly a decade working for Yamaguchi, becoming a chef-partner and moving between Atlanta and other locations in Jacksonville, Fla., and Baltimore.
Crooks teamed up with chef Spike Gjerde, first as chef at Shoo-Fly and then as chef de cuisine of Gjerde’s Woodberry Kitchen, where the team’s dedication to elevated comfort food earned Gjerde a James Beard Award for Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic in 2015. Two years later, the duo opened A Rake’s Progress in Adams Morgan, where Crooks runs all aspects of the culinary operations including fine dining, banquets, the coffee shop, and even the hotel’s staff meals.
So guests at The Line won't get to have Crooks cooking for them for one night, but their loss is our gain. He’ll be offering up a selection of small plates and shareable items, all priced at $10 apiece, so bring a stack of Hamiltons. The menu looks pretty interesting:
little catfish sandwiches, smoked onion tartar sauce, Greener roots lettuce, pickled green tomatoKLD Farms Bacon Steak, goldball turnip, fried brussels, country ham xo, peanuts, mint, cilantro
rock shrimp agnolotti, green garlic butter, chili bread crumbs
oyster Mushrooms, hazelnut vinaigrette, roasted roots, plumped raisins, many herbs
KLD Farms smoked brisket, bbq Sea Island red peas, kohlrabi slaw, tiger sauce, seeded pullman loaf
coppa, rocket, smoked cheese, mustard dressing
crudités, green goddess, buckwheat crumble
There will also be two desserts created by Nick Castro and Jen Samborski from the pastry team to finish off your meal of small plates:
carrot cake, warm ginger custard, candied carrot, some honey toffee bitsrhubarb panna cotta, turmeric shortbread crumb
The event will be a pop-in pop-up, so no reservations are necessary, but 8th & Roast would appreciate if you’d let them know you’re coming at their
Facebook pageso they can plan for how many mouths to feed.
