A power duo is headed to town this spring to helm the restaurants and bars at Conrad Nashville, the luxury hotel scheduled to open near the split of West End Avenue and Broadway this spring.
OpenTable named Elizabeth Blau one of the most influential female restaurateurs earlier this year. Her husband, Chef Kim Canteenwalla, has been nominated for a James Beard Award. She is founder and CEO of restaurant development firm Blau + Associates; he is principal and managing director.
Elizabeth Blau and Kim Canteenwalla
Together they will run Blue Aster, The Lounge at Blue Aster and Thistle & Rye, three restaurants open to the public at Conrad Nashville, plus The Pool Deck, a space only available to guests of the 234-room hotel. The hotel brand tends to attract international guests, and Blau and Canteenwalla intend to create menus that appeal to an international audience.
Blue Aster (named for the Tennessee wildflower) will feature seafood and steaks. (As an aside, the complex also will be home to Charleston import Halls Chophouse; not in the hotel, but across the Broadwest Plaza.) Blue Aster will have a sidewalk-level patio, which Blau believes will bring non-hotel guests in. The restaurant is likely to do well with brunch business thanks to its Midtown location. Look for mac-and-cheese waffles, lobster pot pie and ahi tuna. The Thistle & Rye bar on the third floor has both indoor and outdoor space with views of West End and a street-food menu. Look for shrimp skewers and bao buns. Lounge at Blue Aster, the lobby bar, will have an extensive wine room with both domestic and international wines. Blau is partial to wines from up-and-coming regions. The bar will also offer afternoon tea service. The Pool Deck will offer items from the Thistle & Rye menu, plus boozy ice pops and more.
While Blau and Canteenwalla are best known for their work in Las Vegas — particularly at Honey Salt and Buddy V’s Ristorante at the Venetian — they have connections to the South. They first met when Canteenwalla was executive chef at Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi, Miss. And Blau’s sister and brother-in-law teach at Austin Peay State and Vanderbilt universities, so the couple has spent a lot of time in town. “We’ve really fallen in love with the incredible explosion of the culinary scene here,” Blau says. She started her career as a pastry chef, so she’s partial to bakeries like Dozen.
The hotel sits where “Lake Palmer” used to be (that 85-foot-deep excavation hole that sat vacant and filled with water for years). But there’s likely nothing about the new high-end complex that is reminiscent of that accidental landmark. The Nashville location will be Conrad’s first franchised location.
Joining Blau and Canteenwalla are Ritz-Carlton veteran Dwayne Edwards as executive chef and Jean-Christophe LeVarrat director of food and beverage.
