For about a year now, I’ve been obsessed with Hemingway daiquiris, the classic cocktail made with grapefruit and lime juice, rum and Maraschino liqueur. I make them at home. I order them when I’m out. I even enjoy little shot-sized versions that some bartenders cheekily call “snaquiris.”
So I was really excited to see that a new bar/restaurant had opened in Houston Station with the name of Hemingway’s Bar & Hideaway. I’ll admit a bit of trepidation when I checked out the cocktail menu and didn’t see my favorite listed, but I needn’t have worried. After all, one of the owners is talented mixologist Christopher Weber, along with Paul Cercone, and I knew Chris wouldn’t possibly omit Papa’s cocktail. It turns out they actually serve Hemingway cocktails on draft, made with fresh juices and Papa’s Pilar Rum. And they’re delicious!
I checked out Hemingway's, which has been open only open a couple of weeks, for a First Bite early report. The interior of the restaurant is surprisingly bright considering it is located in a stone-walled room in the ground floor of the huge Houston Station complex. Large windows face the street and let the light flow in across the dining room, although there is an appropriately hidden-away lounge area with a few couches and some video games if you’re looking for a little less visibility.
The decor is rustic, with exposed stone and wooden beams, as well as a well-stocked bar area filled with top-shelf spirits. For someone who has written many bar menus, Weber told me he was surprised that almost all the drinks on the list were selling at about equal rates. Management made the deliberate decision to describe the drinks on the menu without listing the ingredients other than the base spirit, and what started as a social experiment has proved to be popular with patrons. The boozy cocktails are expertly made, and I can personally speak the quality of more than a couple of them.
On my visits, particularly notable were the Stranger to None, a gin-based cocktail made with cantaloupe puree and a mint garnish to add to the aroma, as well as another drink called A Good Read, a strong concoction made with Hamilton Demerara Rum that is best sipped slowly and with caution. A particularly fine time to sample some of these cocktails would be during Hemingway’s Happy Hour, 3 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, when the premium drinks are $2 off (making them $10), well pours are $5, and beers are discounted by a buck.
The food menu is short, but that doesn’t mean the preparations aren’t elaborate. Many of the same dishes appear on both the lunch and dinner menus, and so far I’ve sampled only the midday meal. However, the dishes my dining companion and I tried were both quite good. Our server told us that the owners really wanted to include pizza on the menu, but didn’t have room in the kitchen for a pizza oven. Instead they created a vegetarian dish that includes much of the essence of a good pie. The Roasted King Trumpet Mushroom dish includes plenty of the delicious fungi along with some charred cauliflower and sunchokes, plus a sweet parsnip puree balanced by an acidic roasted tomato vinaigrette to evoke the tomato sauce on a pizza.
I ordered the Korean Fried Chicken sandwich, which was served on a Charpier’s bun with kimchi mayo, spicy slaw, pickled carrots and daikon. While the flavors were spot-on, I got the sense that they might still be experimenting with the multi-step frying process that usually typifies that style of fried chicken. The crust wasn’t quite as crisp as I would have liked, and half of the batter fell off as it steamed against the moist slaw. The result was a sandwich that was half fried and half grilled, which, while novel, probably wasn’t what the kitchen (or I) was looking for. But maybe it was?
Other dishes that have been popular since opening are a poutine made with duck confit, hand-cut fries, cheese curds and roasted duck gravy, and what they are calling a BPT, which I assume is for “Big-Ass Pork Tenderloin.” True to the Midwestern tradition of over-the-top tenderloin sandwiches, this version’s pounded and breaded pork patty overhangs the bun by at least 300 percent, and is topped with mustard, raw onion and house pickles. I didn’t sample it myself, but I ran into Corsair Distillery owner Darek Bell during the meal, and he felt compelled to whip out his phone and show me a photo of the wonderful monstrosity. Bell was also gracious enough to share the pic.
It may be brand-new, but Hemingway’s Bar & Hideaway is already becoming a welcome addition to the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood. When Alexis Soler's impending new cocktail bar opens nearby, it should combine with Hemingway's and Bastion to create a Ground Zero of booziness that Nashville hasn’t seen since the infamous “Vodka Triangle” of Hillsboro Village in the '90s. I may have to enroll in some sort of frequent-Uberer program.
If you get the chance to visit Hemingway’s before we can get through the rest of the menu, please feel free to share your impressions in the comments below.
438 Houston St.
Suite 160
Nashville, TN 37203
615-915-1715
