Last week, Margaret Littman reported here that Ryan Poli, the current chef at innovative Nashville restaurant The Catbird Seat, and his brother, Catbird beverage manager Matthew Poli, will be leaving at year's end. Now, stressing the restaurant's role as a chef incubator, The Catbird Seat has announced the chef duo that will take over in early 2019. It's the team of globally traveled chef transplants Will Aghajanian, who will serve as head chef, and Liz Johnson, who will serve as pastry chef.
Aghajanian and Johnson "will bring their experiences, influences and inspirations to the intimate chef incubator," Catbird says today in a release, noting that Catbird's founding chef team was also a duo, Erik Anderson and Josh Habiger.
The Catbird Seat is a nationally praised avant-garde restaurant from Nashville restaurant group Strategic Hospitality; it features just 22 seats circling a tiny kitchen where an elite team produces a highly creative chef's menu.
Aghajanian has been cooking in restaurants since he was 13, the release says, spending five years working under chef Eric Ziebold at Cityzen in Washington, D.C. He has also spent time at Mugaritz in Spain and the prominent Per Se in New York City.
Johnson, meanwhile, graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 2010 and later worked under chef Alex Stupak at Empellon Cocina and served as head chef at MIMI in New York's Greenwich Village. This year she helped launch a "modern Jewish deli" called Freedman's in Los Angeles. In her time there she was named a Best New Chef by Food & Wine.
Aghajanian and Johnson met and worked together at the internationally acclaimed NOMA in Copenhagen. Three previous Catbird chefs — Anderson, Trevor Moran and Ryan Poli — did stints at NOMA.
“We will be cooking food that we think is interesting and hopefully tasty,” Aghajanian says in the release. “At the end of the day what’s most important is that the guest walks away with a positive memory of their experience.”
The Catbird Seat will be closed during the month of January while the duo makes preparations. The target for reopening is early February.
