First Bite: SS Gai and Sweeza Super Quesadilla

Ever since my colleague Margaret Littman announced that two new restaurants would be moving into Bays 3 and 4 at East Nashville mini food hall The Wash, the neighborhood has been excited about trying out the offerings from SS Gai and Sweeza Super Quesadilla. After a Friday night preview, the two restaurants officially opened on Saturday, June 3, and they should prove to be very welcome additions to the roster of restaurants in the former car wash.

Both restaurants are associated with the You Are Here Hospitality restaurant group of Chad Newton and Gracie Nguyen, who also operate East Side Banh Mi nearby and East Side Pho in Bay 5 of The Wash. The couple will operate Sweeza, while another husband-and-wife team — Chris and Emma Biard — own and operate the Thai chicken-focused SS Gai next door.

Like most of the restaurants at The Wash, the menus at these two spots are intentionally limited — or more accurately, focused. At Sweeza, guests are presented with the Sweeza Super Quesadilla, a Mission-style quesadilla suiza with your choice of three protein fillings or two vegan options. For bigger appetites, patrons can opt for “The Don Juan Especial,” a massive meal offered without substitutions — the double-steak-stuffed quesadilla is filled with french fries and chopped fried jalapeños and served with rice and beans.

A crunchy tostada and a large salad complete the main dish offerings, accompanied by a half-dozen side dish options ranging from a side salad to beans, rice, fries, a whole fried jalapeño and lime-marinated habanero and onion. House-made beverage choices include horchata and two agua frescas: a popular strawberry version that quickly sold out during the preview, and another option that surprised me with how much I enjoyed it, pineapple-celery.

I asked owner Chad Newton which filling he preferred between slow-roasted pork, adobo chicken or carne asada, and he pointed me toward the steak. It was an excellent bit of advice, as the tender carne asada was flavorful a well-grilled. The ratio of filling was pretty much perfect, not too overstuffed to make eating it difficult. An order consists of two handful-size griddled and pressed stuffed flour tortillas, enough to make a meal without feeling overstuffed yourself.

Next door at SS Gai, the Biards are laser-focused on two popular styles of Thai chicken — fried Gai Tod and smoked Gai Yang. Both options are served with a side of sticky rice, fried shallots and garlic and an array of seasonal greens and herbs that can be used to create your own chicken-and-lettuce wrap. Drizzle or dip your wrap using two sauces, an aromatic chili vinegar or a tamarind chili fish sauce (which I personally preferred).

Other options include a butternut squash salad and a dish of charred eggplant, plus snacks and sides like grilled peanuts, a mango sticky rice that patrons were raving about, and a chewy and spicy mango dish that was positioned as more of a dessert.

But at a restaurant that is so focused on two chicken dishes, how was the bird? In a word, fantastic! In a town full of great fried chicken, the Gai Tod was perfectly cooked. I noted that the exposed bit of bone where the leg was separated from the thigh was completely dry, and I worried that the meat might be as well. I was completely wrong; the chicken was nice and crispy on the exterior and moist all the way through. The fried shallots and garlic piled on top didn’t adhere to the crust, so you have to nestle them in your lettuce wrap to get the full effect. Cucumber and sliced daikon add an extra-cool crunch to the concoction, which I imagine would be especially necessary if you decided to take the Biards up on their offer to “make it risky” for an extra $2.

As good as the fried chicken was, it was the smoky Gai Yang that was the real revelation. Smoking chicken is hard to do, as the skin tends to get rubbery in the time it takes to impart the smoke into the meat of the bird. Chris Biard gets around this by smoking the chicken on a smoker behind the building until it's almost cooked through. Then he refrigerates it overnight so that he can finish it up à la minute over a wood-burning grill designed to keep the meat just far enough from the fire to give it a last kiss of smoke as the higher heat crisps up the exterior.

Smoked chicken can fool diners, as the meat can look a little pink and underdone even when it is perfectly cooked. At SS Gai, the chicken doesn’t bathe in so much smoke to overpower the flavor or change the color of the meat. Instead, it just looks and tastes like a Platonic ideal of smoked chicken, and I’ll be ordering it again, soon and often.

There are a lot of choices at The Wash, including cocktails and wine from the Bay 6 bar, and all of them are good. Sweeza and SS Gai plan to stay open later than most of the previous tenants to create a late-night vibe, and along with the pitchers of cocktails available from Bay 6, you’ll soon be able to buy a bucket of chicken from SS Gai. So show up early for dinner and live music on the weekends, and either stay late or drop by again after an evening out listening to music for a delicious communal nightcap. That sounds like a perfect Friday night to me!