One of the great things about living in Nashville is that it’s not hard to convince out-of-town guests to come visit, and that includes some outstanding chefs who make the trip down to share their talents with the city. March offers a couple of coveted opportunities to experience the cuisine of renowned chefs without shelling out for airfare to New York City or Spain!
First up is a March 13 dinner courtesy of television chef Christian Petroni, who you might remember from appearances on Chopped and Food Network Star. It’s a little bit of a stretch to call Petroni a guest chef, since he’ll be cooking at Ella’s by Christian Petroni, the restaurant in the Hyatt Centric in SoBro where the chef revamped the original Ella’s in 2024. He does drop in fairly frequently, but Nashville is not his home base.
So it will be a special event when he takes over the kitchen for a family-style wine dinner starting at 6:30 p.m. Guests will sit at communal tables of eight to 10 people where they’ll hopefully make new friends over a multicourse meal, from a fresh mozz appetizer to spicy calamari ragu and lamb chop scottadito as main dishes served with a salad and a side of escarole and cannellini beans finishing with a dessert of ricotta zeppoles.
After a welcome cocktail at 6:30, guests will sit down at 7:15 p.m. for the feast, and the dinner is a steal at $115 per person including wine pairings. Grab your seat at the (communal) table at the event’s reservations page.
Chef Juanlu Fernández
The second experience coming up at the end of March is a little more luxe and features chef Juanlu Fernández, a two-star Michelin chef from Jerez, Spain. The Nashville Grange restaurant at the Grand Hyatt downtown will play host to chef Fernández for three nights from March 27 to 29 as they present Dos Estrellas: A Michelin Experience with Juanlu Fernández. Each night at 7:30 p.m., Fernández will feature dishes from his acclaimed Jerez restaurant LU Cocina y Alma alongside regional Spanish wine pairings.
To create an even more authentic representation of dining at LU, chef Fernández is traveling with his service staff and sommelier team. (So I guess this might not be the absolute best time to try to score a reservation for his spot in Jerez. Oh well, their loss is our gain!)
I’ve seen a preview of the menu, and it looks like three evenings of luxury of the sort that is rarely seen around these parts. We’re talking appetizers like oysters with osetra caviar and mussels with jalapeño foam and agrodolce pickle, and main courses of lobster in fermented salpicon with sun-dried cherry tomatoes and Iberian pork royale with black truffle on a bao bun. Even the bread service will be served with LU’s signature cellar-aged butter. You can also expect the wine and sherry pairings to reveal bottles that are rarely, if ever, seen in the U.S., much less in Nashville.
In the official announcement of the dinner, chef Fernández sounds fired-up about his impending visit to Music City. “We are excited to bring a unique experience to Nashville — the LU experience and a piece of our homeland, Jerez! The dinner will feature iconic dishes from our restaurant, harmonized with exclusive wines from our territory in Spain. We are very happy to bring this MICHELIN-Star experience to Music City, and are grateful to the Grand Hyatt Nashville team for hosting us at The Nashville Grange.”
Now this sort of luxurious experience doesn’t come cheap, and the very limited number of tickets at the event website are going for $449 per diner. But when you consider that a flight from BNA to Jerez de la Frontera runs about 20 hours and $1,800, and then dinner and wine pairings at LU can set you back up to 800 Euros, it’s really a splurge worth taking!
