Almost three years after opening the doors to the cavernous restaurant and performance hall, City Winery continues to evolve as the neighborhood grows up around it. Formerly isolated, before the big new roundabout slingshot conventioneers from the Music City Center toward the restaurant, and the Westin invited hundreds of guests to stay within a couple of blocks of the venue, City Winery has begun to become a fixture among visitors and locals as well.
I recently attended two shows there over the past couple of weeks, and I think that I (and the vast majority of attendees sitting around me at the Los Lobos and Tower of Power concerts) must have reached the age where we really appreciate the details of the City Winery dining and listening experience. Gone are the days when I can regularly tolerate what I used to refer to as “Exit/In Standard Time.” You know, when the concert poster says the show starts at 9 p.m., which means you have to show up by 8 to find a decent spot to stand to watch a crappy opening act start off after 10, while the headliner won’t even get off the bus before 11.
When a show at City Winery says it starts at 8, you can expect that the downbeat will damned well drop within a minute or two of that time, and you’ll be home in time to put your own kids to bed instead of letting the babysitter do it. There’s also flexibility in arrival times, which is greatly appreciated. Show up at 7:55, and your seat will still be waiting for you, although you’ll miss out on the chance to nosh before the show on the tight menu of shareable apps or a darned fine burger.
But if you do choose to get there early, you still have even more options. Make a reservation for the main dining room, and you’ll have access to a full menu, which we’ll discuss in more detail below.
Plus if you’re there between 5 and 7, you can take advantage of their fantastic happy hour, which offers a selection of some really respectable wines on tap for just $7 per glass, along with some appetizers at the same price. Even if you just show up at 7, you can still eat at your table in the concert venue and have plenty of time to enjoy a drink or two and an app or flatbread before the music starts.
Other little details that I’ve just started to appreciate are the fact that a server will visit your table during the show to get you another beer or glass of wine and politely present you with the tab in time to settle up before the encore. If you need to visit the facilities during the show, it’s an easy and surreptitious trip. I’ve sat at tables all over the room, and frankly, there’s not a bad seat in the house, so if you get in the door, you’ll have a superior viewing and listening experience. While the crowd is generally quiet and polite, it’s not “Bluebird SHHHH!!” quiet, and I like that.
I used to grumble when paying to valet-park at the venue, especially because the pickup lines were so long to get your car back after an event. But I’ve learned to embrace the $6 valet compared to the paucity of parking options in the rest of SoBro, and the fact that they have added a large $5 self-park lot in front of City Winery gives more options and shortens the valet pickup and drop-off line. Also, Uber and Lyft have discovered that a bunch of us old-heads don’t like to drink and drive anymore and know to circle close to the venue when shows are over for quick service.
The wine has also gotten consistently better, and now that they have multiples crushes under their belts, I expect it to only improve as they receive their first autumn harvest delivery of the year any week now. On the food side, I have heard complaints that the food isn’t as elevated as some people expected. While it’s no Husk, I don’t think it needs or intends to be.
Executive chef Garrett Pittler is probably best known to Bites readers as the chef/owner of the lost and lamented French eatery, Chelsea Bistro, a concept that came to Whites Creek a little bit before the rest of us were willing to drive that far north for dinner. But the majority of his background has been spent in hospitality cooking in hotel kitchens. That background is pretty much ideal for City Winery.
In a hotel, the kitchen has to be ready to prepare food for multiple dining outlets that might range from casual to fine, plus banquets in multiple ballrooms and room service that might very well extend around the clock. Even in a full hotel, it might be the case that the entire convention decides to take the night off and eat at Old Spaghetti Factory instead, leaving the restaurants empty. Or that same group might all come back in after a night of honky-tonking at the same time and order 400 cheeseburgers to be delivered to 150 rooms. The variables are incredible to consider, so it makes sense that Pittler has the skills for City Winery.
In fact, at City Winery, Pittler and his staff cook for multiple private dining rooms, bars and reception areas in addition to a full restaurant and a 400-seat performance venue. The night I attended the sold-out Los Lobos show, Pittler had a completely booked Friday night in the restaurant, with the bulk of the crowd arriving the same time the show began. Pittler has learned a lot in his 18 months at the helm. “I treat it just like a hotel with no rooms.”
He's obviously enjoying his second time through the seasons as he introduces more creative dishes utilizing local ingredients. Again, he’s probably not going to win any Beard Awards considering the volume and time constraints he works under, but there are fun and clever aspects to his dishes that can be sussed out with a close observation of the dishes.
A Southern Burrata combines his Mediterranean cooking talents with a sense of place by stretching a housemade ball of mozzarella around a stuffing of pimento cheese and serving it with ripe tomatoes, prosciutto and delicious crunchy grilled bread that is also baked by the kitchen. If you didn’t know Chef Pittler’s mother was Greek, you might not understand the BBQ Chicken plate on the menu. But now that you do, the balsalmic sauce, toasted orzo and mizithra cheese make perfect sense, and even if you still don’t get it, it’s delicious. An excellent steelhead dish showcases three different life stages of both the main ingredients, fish and squash. A steelhead is just a rainbow trout that has gone into the ocean as part of its life cycle, so the dish that features roe, smoked trout mousse and grilled steelhead tells the whole story. The zucchini squash also appears three ways: as a stuffed blossom, chopped up and included in a latke, and as roasted baby zucchini.
It’s these sort of inventive goofs that take the menu to a level higher than it probably needs to be to satisfy the crowds who have already committed to a $60 concert ticket to be there anyway. But that’s where I feel like we and City Winery have finally started to get each other. They don’t necessarily want to get in the way of the performances with their food and beverage programs, but if you just want to go to eat and drink, they’re not afraid to be the star of the show either.
