I’m not sure how many diners in Nashville are aware that Oak Steakhouse and O-Ku Sushi are related as members of the Indigo Road Hospitality Group based in Charleston, S.C. I mean, if you speak Japanese you’d probably recognize that O-ku is (approximately) the word for “oak” in that language, so perhaps you'd suss it out.
Indigo Road is continuing its punny ways with the upcoming opening of Indaco in the Modra Riverview complex at 1408 Adams St. Indaco is the Italian word for indigo, the plant that was a significant part of the Charleston economy in colonial times and gives its name to the restaurant group.
Indigo Road has grown into a significant hospitality group, and the new Indaco will become the sixth outpost of that particular brand when it opens this Friday, March 6. It won’t be the last one though, as a West Palm Beach, Fla., location will open soon.
Nashville’s Indaco will be under the auspices of chef Chris Ayala, formerly of Ellington’s at the Fairlane Hotel downtown. He has trained with Indigo Road culinary director Josh Begley and at a couple other Indaco locations in preparation for taking over the kitchen on the border between Germantown and Salemtown. This training is important, because each Indaco has a different menu that needs to express the personal style of the lead chef.
While some of the dishes are standardized — especially the short list of wood-fired pizzas — each chef can fiddle with ingredients based on seasonality, regionality and personal preference. On a preview visit, I got to sample three dishes courtesy of Chef Ayala that taught me a lot about who he is as a cook.
The first was a simple burrata appetizer plated on a bed of polenta. Rather than serve it with bread, Ayala picked the Italian version of grits to balance the fiery Calabrian chili, herbs and unguent olive oil. Mandarin orange slices added a sweet zing to the dish also.
The second course was a bowl of pillowy artichoke agnolotti in an orange broth. When I told the chef how much I liked it, he let me in on a little secret — the dish is 100 percent vegan. He doesn’t call it out on the menu, but he likes to have something in his back pocket for visiting vegans and vegetarians that avowed carnivores would enjoy too. It’s a labor of love, because the process of creating the broth without butter (using olive oil instead) and soaking cashews to simulate a cheesy component takes extra time. It was well worth it.
In fact, while pricing wasn’t final at the time I visited, it looks like the entire menu will be pretty reasonable with only a few dishes over $40. Chef Ayala says, “I’d rather feed 1,000 people than sell one thing for $1,000.” Another nice option is that every single wine on the all-Italian list will be available by the glass, so guests can try different things instead of committing to a big-money bottle. Beers, cocktails and spritzes were also well in line for neighborhood prices. (I visited in the morning, so I didn’t get to sample the “Dollar Slice,” a gin cocktail made using pizza-infused gin. I’ll report back on that one!)
Indaco's Doppio Ravioli
The last dish I sampled was a plate of doppio ravioli, literally “double ravioli,” with a single dumpling painstakingly stuffed with mushrooms and mascarpone on one half and sofritto and ricotta on the other. The peppers of the sofritto show through the pasta dough, making that side red while the other is pale. It really was a dramatic presentation. The kitchen rains truffles over the dish to add a little decadent luxury and as a tip to the mushrooms inside. The final touch is a delightful cashew gremolata to add a little acid to break up the creaminess of the pasta.
The pizza oven wasn’t up to temp when I visited, but it will soon be pumping out pies at a rapid rate thanks to the 700-plus-degree fire that will cook hand-stretched dough discs in less than two minutes.
The newly built restaurant takes advantage of two stories of the Moderna building to offer a dramatic vaulted space over the open kitchen. That will also give the heat of the pizza oven somewhere to go. Over the dining space, they had installed a dropped ceiling with interesting light fixtures hanging down to create a cozier ambiance. While they don’t take specific reservations for the chef's bar looking directly into the kitchen, that’s where I plan to post up for my next visit.
Reservations are now being accepted on Open Table, so make plans to drop by and see what all the fuss is about.
