Molly Martin
If you’ve ever eaten at Salt & Vine, the attractive and popular new wine bar/coffee shop/upscale deli chameleon of a restaurant on Charlotte Avenue, then you have experienced the culinary talents of Molly Martin. In her role as culinary director, she crafted the menu focusing on clean, vibrant flavors and seasonal ingredients. Born in coastal Mississippi and educated at Sewanee, Martin moved to Nashville to pursue a career in music, like you do. While she still performs musically, she is probably best known on these web pages as a culinarian, having worked in the kitchens of Nashville notables including Tandy Wilson, Will Uhlhorn, Sam Tucker, Laura Wilson and Jason Brumm, among others, as well as in operations management with Strategic Hospitality.
But she still feels the creative itch that occasionally needs scratching, and made the decision recently to go way out on a limb and move to London for a month to work in the kitchen at Ottolenghi, the home base of renowned chef and cookbook author Yotam Ottolenghi. The Israeli-born chef-restaurateur is known for merging the cuisines of his native culture with other Mediterranean styles of cooking, especially when it comes to featuring vegetables.
These sort of temporary apprenticeship arrangements are quite common in the restaurant industry, where they are called stages, from the French. (Pronounced staaj, usually a little bit pretentiously.) But to make the leap from a safe job in It City to writing a random email to a world-famous chef in London demonstrates the spirit that Martin is known for. I asked if she would send back dispatches from “a broad abroad.” Martin was gracious enough to agree, so over the course of the next few weeks, watch this space for irregular entries written by Martin in her own voice. Here’s chapter one, relating the reasons behind her decision to stage and the details of how she got the gig. I can’t wait to see what’s next!
It’s borderline embarrassing how easily the restaurant business keeps duping me, when I should really know better by now. I like to think I’m moderately intelligent, and occasionally self-aware, but every time a new opportunity comes along, I tell myself the same fairy tales we all do in order to get back in the ring after getting our asses handed to us:
- This time will be different, I’ll have more control of my schedule.
- It’s a day gig, so I’ll have more balance in my life. Maybe I’ll start doing [insert pipe dream] like I’ve been talking about for the last six years!
- This is going to be the year I travel/see family/sleep more!
You know that now-clichéd quote, “Find what you love, and let it kill you?” There’s a reason so many line cooks have that exact phrase tattooed somewhere on their person in Gothic lettering. If you really love it, this industry will give you occasional, fleeting glimpses of that beautiful ballet — the intoxicating energy when everything just clicks — but otherwise it usually beats the ever-loving shit out of you! It’s the kind of jealous, uncompromising, self-sacrificial relationship that you should really only be allowed to have in your 20s. Swooning highs, screaming fights, exhausted crying spells in the walk-in fridge/utility shed/car, etc. all while maintaining the outward appearance of complete calm and control.
My decision to reach out to the team at Ottolenghi about a culinary internship (or stage in industry parlance) in London was a bit like deciding to go to marriage counseling — there’s still so much love there, but the passion you had in the early days has waned a bit, and now you’re just annoyed that you have to keep talking about the same problems over and over again. When I first made contact, I was in the middle of yet another restaurant opening, and even though I was deeply proud, stimulated, and part of an incredible team, I was also bone-level exhausted and trying to figure out how the career I’d chosen would ever feel sustainable. I remember it feeling like having “the talk” with a significant other: “Listen … if we are going to have a future together, I’m going to need to find myself again — to carve out time to ensure my own needs are met, y’know? How can we find a way to have an adult relationship?”
I’ve worked every job in a restaurant, starting at 17 when I was a cashier/blender operator at a Hawaiian-themed smoothie bar in Mississippi, and answered the phone with “Aloha.” I’ve been a food runner/bar back, hostess, server, prep cook, line cook, and even sometimes a dishwasher if someone didn’t show. I’ve been doing all those things in Nashville since 2006. (Side note: there were maybe one or two breaks in between for an attempt at an office job, but they never stuck because I enjoy the F-word far too much.)
I am currently the culinary director for Salt & Vine, a gourmet market and wine bar on Charlotte Avenue, which opened last summer, and catering/events director for The Food Company, a Nashville institution that has been in business for more than 20 years. And now I’m going back to the beginning, running off to Europe to work my ass off for free like a first-year culinary student. I couldn’t be happier about it! I fell hard for chef Yotam Ottolenghi’s food several years ago when I started collecting his award-winning cookbooks, and have found myself taking inspiration quite often from his use of vibrant colors, contrasting/layered textures, and bright dressings. Ottolenghi is not vegetarian, but his gutsy, modern treatment of vegetables as the main attraction earned him a coveted (and controversial) vegetarian cooking column in The Guardian. I sent his team a painfully earnest email in the middle of the night, and they were gracious enough to agree to let me come work alongside them for two weeks.
Though I’m from Mississippi and my heart will always crave Southern food, I think the flavors, presentation and style of cooking represented at Ottolenghi’s namesake restaurants are in line with the way more and more people try to eat regularly — lighter, healthier, simpler, but without sacrificing taste. I’m looking forward to bringing the best of what I learn here at The Mothership back to all of you in Nashville, and hope you enjoy following along.
—MOLLY MARTIN
