Usually, when I’m looking forward to a new restaurant opening, it’s because I’ve gotten a preview of the food. I’m sure the menu at Church and Union will be good — Top Chef’s Jamie Lynch is one of the partners behind it, and he worked at Le Cirque. But right now, I really want to see the ceiling.
The team at 5th Street Group — which also owns Tempest Charleston and La Belle Helene in Charlotte, among other restaurants — brought in a Charlotte artist to paint the entire written content of Sun Tzu's The Art of War (it ended up being 12,035 words) on the interior ceiling of their new downtown space. Artist Jon Norris has done it before for the team’s other restaurants, including 5Church Charleston and 5Church Charlotte. This time his wife read to him from the book while he was on the scaffolding, which made the process go a little faster. It took Norris 37 days (or I should say nights, since he mostly did it in 12- to 14-hour shifts when no one else was in the building) to hand-paint the text.
The 5th Street Group uses The Art of War as part of its management philosophy. The company’s mantra, “There Is Only We,” is painted in bigger text. The firm has profit-sharing for its employees. Alejandro Torio, co-owner and marketing director of Church and Union, and his partners (including Lynch and Patrick Whalen) feel sections of Sun Tzu’s text, such as, “To expand your territory, divide your spoils,” help underscore the group's corporate ideology.
The original idea was to put a dropped ceiling in the mammoth space (it is more than 5,900 square feet), but when that became too pricey, the team decided to go with the Sistine Chapel-style move and have the ceiling painted, says Torio, who has been living in Nashville since January.
“To walk in and see a scrolling ceiling, set against a white concrete bar, there’s just nothing like that," says Torio. "I’m not just saying that because it is my restaurant."
Church and Union is the first Nashville restaurant for the company. The restaurant should open soon at 201 4th Ave. N., across from the Dream Nashville hotel. It will open with dinner only and expand to lunch and weekend brunch. Church and Union will have 140 indoor dining seats, 28 bar stools and an outdoor patio that seats 14. The menu will be New American, and reps say to look for sushi tots, burrata, steaks and crafted cocktails ... plus that ceiling art.
