Chef and owner John Stephenson has named chef Chris Gass the executive chef of Hathorne, the West Side restaurant with a focus on fellowship and local, seasonal ingredients. Gass, a Nashville native, has worked in a number of kitchens throughout the southeast including local favorites The Continental and 5th & Taylor.
Chef Chris Gass
“The ability to continue to do farm-to-table cooking was very alluring,” says Gass of his decision to join the Hathorne team. Of course, lots of restaurants have a farm-to-table emphasis but Hathorne’s location, across the street from the Richland Park Farmers’ Market, makes it even easier to get to know farmers and find produce that has been picked from the soil in the last few days, Stephenson says. About 70 percent of the ingredients Gass is using at Hathorne come from small regional and local forms. Even the extra virgin canola oil used in the restaurant’s fryers is from Clinton, Tenn.
Hathorne is housed in the fellowship hall of a former Methodist church, and those roots of community are important to Stephenson. “[Gass] really has pushed that hyper-seasonality that I have wanted at the restaurant,” Stephenson says. “Every time you come back in, even if it has only been a couple of weeks, you’ll find several new items. A lot are vegan and vegetarian based. We have had a couple of really talented chefs in here, setting high standard. So for me to say that [Gass] is pushing that even further is saying a lot.”
For his part, Gass says, he wants a menu that is not intimidating, that is filled with items with which people are familiar and know how to pronounce. But even more so, he wants everyone — not just diners, but the cooks in his kitchen, too — to have an experience for a few hours where they are not thinking about what is going on outside of the restaurant, where they get to immerse themselves in the experience of the food.
Hathorne is located at 4708 Charlotte Pike. It is open 5 to 10 p.m., Tuesday through Sunday; reservations recommended.
