The Patterson House. The Catbird Seat. No. 308. Public House at Urban Cowboy. Bastion. Attaboy. The list of bars and restaurants where Aaron Izaguirre, Matthew Izaguirre, Kristopher Esqueda and Brice Hoffman have worked is a who’s-who of Nashville watering holes. Now the four friends are opening an East Nashville bar together.
In an interview with the Nashville Scene, the team unveils their plans for Coral Club, a vacation vibe of a bar on Gallatin Avenue. The bar, currently under construction, will feature hand-crafted cocktails, nonalcoholic drinks and their favorite wines and beers. The bar will be on the second floor of the building at Gallatin and Eastland Avenue, in the POP Nashville space where Little Octopus operated from 2015 to 2017. In addition to using that space, they’ll build an open-air patio on the roof of the one-story section of the building (with access from the second floor).
Aaron Izaguirre
The result will give “a vacation feeling," Aaron Izaguirre says. "As you walk in, you feel like you’re transported to Mykonos or Ibiza or Panama City Beach. Whenever you walk in, we want it to be like you’re sort of transported to somewhere not in Nashville.” The Izaguirre brothers grew up in South Florida, while Esqueda and Hoffman are from California. "The beach is a part of our DNA, and the salt has been in my brain. I just love, love vacation.”
Matthew Izaguirre
Make no mistake, though, Coral Club will not be a tiki bar. The vibe is a little nicer — a little “sunnier,” if you will.
“We thought it was going to be a dive bar,” Aaron Izaguirre says of earlier plans. But then the team saw the space and met Alexandros Darsinos of Studio YUDA, who is handling the design. Darsinos worked in Japan before returning to Nashville and incorporates the Japanese concept of impermanence of nature, or wabi-sabi, into his work.
Brice Hoffman
“At the end of the day, kind of going back to the hospitality part, we’re just trying to create a bar where people have fun, the space looks great, and people feel invited in,” Aaron Izaguirre says. “We didn’t set out to create a Mediterranean modern bar, but we met a designer and found this space, and Coral Club was created.”
Nashville liquor laws require Coral Club to serve food, but there’s no kitchen on site, so the menu will consist mainly of snacks with few entrees. “Girl dinner,” jokes Matthew Izaguirre, noting dishes such as meat-and-cheese boards.
Kristopher Esqueda
After talking to Alex Burch of Bad Idea, the quartet decided to turn to WeFunder to crowdsource small investments in Coral Club, thinking that people might be willing to pitch in $250 to “say you own a bar in East Nashville,” Esqueda says, rather than a more elusive $250,000 investment. The WeFunder money will help bankroll specific projects, but the bar's opening is not contingent upon it.
Coral Club will open at 604 Gallatin Ave. later this spring.
