If Nashville is a city of multihyphenates, then Aaron Distler is among its most decorated citizens. Meet the pasta-maker-bagel-baker-drummer-coffee-purveyor-delivery-driver-entrepreneur-father-pandemic-pivoter.
With Mr. Aaron’s Goods — Distler’s business selling handmade pasta, bagels, sauces and other foodstuffs (think coffee, Rancho Gordo beans and sodas) — he has landed on the venture he intends to pursue long-term. Those goods are available for pickup and delivery out of TKO, a Chinese restaurant in Inglewood. The pastas are also served in some of the city’s best restaurants, including The Catbird Seat, International Market, Drusie & Darr and Cafe Roze.
Distler, 42, has a résumé containing lots of Nashville history. After moving to town in 2004 to play drums, he worked as pastry apprentice (somewhat unsuccessfully) at the now-departed, once-beloved Provence Breads & Café. He was an assistant for late comedian Ralphie May and his wife Lahna Turner. (That’s a gig he got in true Nashville fashion: The ex-wife of one of Distler’s former bandmates cut May and Turner’s hair, and she recommended Distler.) He helped May and Turner launch their Fat Baby BBQ sauces.
That job was Distler’s first experience launching a food product, learning about USDA inspections and storage and packaging, all details that — unbeknownst to him — would prove useful later on. After Ralphie May passed away in 2017, his managers — the Dorfman family — hired Distler to work in several comedy clubs they owned, including Zanies and another in Huntsville, Ala. When the Dorfmans later bought Breeden’s Orchard in Mt. Juliet, Distler worked there, launching their store and farming apples and peaches.
“I loved it,” he says. “It was really nice going out there and seeing the sunrise.”
He also hung out with his friends, including TKO owner Ryan Bernhardt, who grew up with Distler in Evansville, Ind., and Aaron Clemins, who cooked at a number of favorite eateries including Kuchina + Keller. They ate and laughed and brainstormed ideas that sometimes seemed like jokes and sometimes became real things, such as Bill’s Sandwich Palace. (While Mr. Aaron’s Goods and Bill’s Sandwich Palace both now share space with TKO and the friends work together in the kitchen again, Distler doesn’t have any involvement in Bill’s Sandwich Palace today. That’s all Aaron and Christen Clemins.)
Inspired in part by his late Aunt Patty, who first taught him to cook, Distler had been making pasta — the Amish-style noodles he sells today are an homage to her recipes. Distler was working at the orchard during the days, and after hours he was making pasta with a used pasta extruder he bought in Tuscaloosa, Ala., thanks in part to a loan from his mom. He had the extruder set up in a building at the orchard. On Bernhardt’s encouragement, Distler expanded into wholesaling to local restaurants. Cafe Roze’s Julia Jaksic was the first to put his pasta on the menu in a regular rotation, and that gave him the confidence to approach others.
“Nashville is a big city with small-town vibes,” says Distler. “I don’t know that I would feel comfortable walking in and talking to a chef somewhere else.” He likes working with chefs because he likes learning to make something new, like when he figured out how to make a koji pasta for Brian Baxter at Catbird.
“It just blows my mind,” he says. “It is the coolest thing to be able to learn from all those chefs.” But Distler, Bernhardt and Clemins also still come up with more lowbrow ideas, such as the now-popular taco-flavored pasta shells.
In 2019, Distler’s orchard job was scaled back to part time. He and his partner Callie Bradley had a then-2-year-old daughter, and Distler needed more work. He thought about making pasta full time, but his pasta extruder was set up in the extra space at the orchard. “Just move it over here,” Bernhardt said, “put it in the kitchen, and we’ll figure it out later.”
“It was probably the kindest thing anyone has done for me and changed my life,” Distler says.
“All I did was give him the space,” says Bernhardt. “Why wouldn’t I do that?”
“We can all be a family again,” is what Distler remembers Bernhardt saying when both Mr. Aaron’s Goods and Bill’s Sandwich Palace started cooking out of the TKO kitchen together. TKO is open for dinner only, so having friends cook there earlier in the day makes the best use of the space.
When the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily stopped Distler’s restaurant orders, he offered pasta pickup and delivery to the public, and the treat was welcomed by folks stuck at home. He started making bagels — though Bradley is now the bagel master.
In addition to the shared rent, being under the same roof means the friends get to brainstorm together again. Their latest idea was born of Distler and Bernhardt’s shared Evansville childhood: Mr. Pizza’s Bakies and Buckets, a bucket of spaghetti inspired by one they loved as kids. (And Bradley had a similar beloved bucket growing up in Illinois.) The two are teaming up to sell buckets of Mr. Aaron’s pasta and sauces (designed to feed two to four people) and garlic “butts” (a garlic knot shaped like a butt) to families for a bargain price. They’re offered on the TKO menu — as a pop-up on Sundays now, with hopes of making them a regular item in the future — and are currently served in buckets that read “mucho nachos.”
After many years as a jack-of-all-trades, Distler is now focused on building a legacy for his family while bringing Nashville the best goods he can find. “I want to be the Gen-X version of Paul Newman,” he says. “When I have my own brand of pet food, I’ll know I’ve made it.”
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