Butcher & Bee is celebrating summer with a couple of upcoming fun dinner opportunities. The first will be on Thursday, July 27, when the Bee’s chef Chris deJesus will team up in the kitchen with one of his friends, chef Levi Raines of The Dutch Nashville, to present a festive five-course dinner inspired by their time cooking together in Miami in the past. The “Miami Vice” dinner will begin with a welcome bite followed by four savory courses and a sweet dessert.
The dinner will be held in The Dutch’s private dining room in the W Nashville beginning at 6:30 p.m., and tickets for the dinner are available on OpenTable for $125 per person. Here’s what you’ll get for your money:
Welcome bite
“Miami Vice”
First
Marinated Gulf shrimpleche de tigre — charred avocado, blood orange
Second
Heirloom tomato salad — cucumber, watermelon, peanut furikaki granola
Third
Grilled pompano — sweet plantains, corn, poblano
Fourth
Bistec de Palomilla — Bear Creek Farms beef, bone-marrow-smothered onions; served family-style with classic Cuban sides
Fifth
“Not Key Lime Pie” — sudachi, tres leche ice cream
The next night, July 28, Butcher & Bee will take advantage of its newly opened Rose Room private dining space for a Southern-style “Summer Sauwce” dinner with all the fixin’s for $60 a head. In addition to its regular à la carte menu options, the kitchen will be cooking up buckets of crispy fried chicken along with sides made using local produce and golden cornbread made using a family recipe.
Make a free reservation to hold your space at the table and then pay as you go. The Bee suggests arriving a little early to check out the new bar in the Rose Room, where they will be pouring from their selection of premium whiskeys and offering smoked mocktails.
I hope you took advantage of last week’s popular Burger Week promotion brought to you by your friends here at the Scene, which packed burger fans into more than 60 restaurants across town. One spot that garnered a lot of new fans was Smokin’ Oaks, the butcher shop/local grocery in Melrose. I dropped by last week to check out their new indoor dining space, and they told me they were seeing 40 to 50 new customers every day of the promo, and that’s exactly what we hope for with these theme weeks that the Scene puts on.
Smokin’ Oaks prepares food to dine in or carry out in their commercial kitchen and also in a small food trailer in the parking lot, so there are a lot of options to choose from. Prepared foods are also available from their kitchen and other local purveyors to make dinner prep a snap. The butcher case features pork, beef and chicken from Smokin’ Oaks' own organic farm outside of Springfield, and they have recently begun stocking lamb from Caney Fork Farms in Carthage. I cooked up some lamb meatballs that I bought at Smokin’ Oaks as part of a weekend dinner, and I can vouch that they were delicious!
To further introduce their new dining area to the public, Smokin’ Oaks is throwing an old-fashioned pig-picking Farm-to-Table Dinner at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 29, at their location at 2116 Eighth Ave. S. The dinner is limited to 40 guests, which is the capacity of their cozy dining room. In addition to a buffet of a whole hog smoked on the farm, guests will enjoy seasonal sides and desserts. I suggest getting at the front of the line if you want to try to specify which part of the pig you’d like to eat from. (Pro tip: Ask for cheek or belly.) Harding House Brewing Co. will provide their beers to accompany the pig.
The dinner will feature some of the local vendors that offer their products for sale in Smokin’ Oaks market area, including veggies from Green Door Gourmet and Delvin Farms, cheese from Maid-N-Meadows and grits from Riverview Farms Milling. Those last too will come together to make some cheesy grits that you don’t want to miss! Smokin’ Oaks owner/farmer Justin Head will also be on hand to share details of the farming operation’s dedication to producing clean, quality, nutrient-rich products that are non-GMO and use no seed oils. The farm also focuses on 100 percent transparent traceability in all of their products. There will also be a whole-hog butchery demo on the store side of the business during the dinner if you want to learn more about their operations.
This dinner will sell out, so grab your $90 ticket at the event website ASAP!
Finally, if cocktails are your bag, consider signing up for a craft cocktail class at Hotel Fraye in Midtown on Thursday, July 27, at 6 p.m. John Woo will lead the class, drawing on his bartending experience at favorite local watering holes including The Joseph, Etch, The Noelle, Otaku Ramen and The 1 Hotel. Students will learn the recipes and techniques necessary to create three classic cocktails, and the class is aimed at any level of home bartending experience from novice to expert. You’ll learn the art of creating a balanced cocktail and the importance of proper garnishes, and take a recipe book home with you at the end of the class. Sign up for the $75 class at the event website.
