It’s easy for a restaurant to last 10 years. All you have to do is find a location near a shopping center, come up with a menu of carbo-laden crowd-pleasers and colorful drinks, hang up some ferns and watch the profits roll in for a decade. What’s hard to do is create a truly unique restaurant positioned at a price point heretofore unheard of in Nashville, intentionally limit the number of diners per evening, design a menu of dramatically plated items made with exotic ingredients, change up said menu constantly and reinvent the whole operation every two years with an entirely new cooking team.
But that’s exactly what The Catbird Seat has accomplished since opening in 2011.
When brothers Max and Benjamin Goldberg opened their intimate chef’s table restaurant in a former salon space above their cocktail bar The Patterson House, they weren’t certain it would work.
“Selfishly, Ben and I were trying to create places where we’d like to go,” says Max. “We saw the need for a chef’s tasting from restaurants in other cities. At the time, our only other restaurant served cheeseburgers on Lower Broad, but we figured, ‘Let’s open and see how this thing goes!’ I never thought we’d be here 10 years later.”
The Goldbergs were emboldened by the changing culinary atmosphere in Nashville. “There was so much cool stuff happening at the time,” says Max. “City House was, and still is, one of my favorite places in the world. A tidal wave was building, and we found the right board to ride it.”
Josh Habiger — one of Catbird’s two opening chefs, along with Erik Anderson — actually came to Nashville as head bartender at The Patterson House and was impressed by the dining scene he found. “City House came before The Catbird Seat, and Margot before that,” Habiger says. “Rolf and Daughters opened after us. To do that in Nashville, it was pretty crazy.”
A 2014 dish at The Catbird Seat
Habiger didn’t intend to return to the kitchen after stints at several high-pressure restaurants. (“I didn’t even know Josh could cook,” Max recalls. “That’s how humble of a guy he is.”) Habiger appreciated how the clientele at The Patterson House was interested in the craft of mixing up a proper cocktail, and he pitched a new kind of restaurant to the Goldbergs. “I wanted to cook like a bartender bartends,” he says. “The ultimate satisfaction for a cook is making a beautiful plate of food, but once it goes through the kitchen door, you never see the guest. Did they enjoy it? I wanted to experience it with them.”
While to some diners the 36-seat restaurant might have at first felt otherworldly — with its modern design, U-shaped seating around the performance kitchen and pumping soundtrack — Habiger wanted it to feel like home. “These people were coming into our house for a shared experience,” he explains. “We wanted them to feel like we were glad they were there.”
Anderson has family in Nashville and was familiar with the city, but he was a little surprised when his friend Habiger called him about the opportunity to join him at The Catbird Seat. “I didn’t think a restaurant like that would open here,” he says. But when Habiger explained the concept, Anderson was in. “I’ve always been interested in bridging a connection from chefs to diners. Nobody can describe a dish better than the person who created it.”
By removing the server role between kitchen and diner, The Catbird Seat became a fascinating restaurant that was at the same time chef-driven and guest-driven. Certainly, the menu reflected the genius and creativity of the chefs, but the staff also kept track of diners’ reactions and confabbed after service to determine guests’ likes and dislikes, sometimes using that information to make changes to a menu item.
An early polarizing dish was a full pigeon leg served with the claw still attached. Anderson created that particular plate, and not everyone agreed with the presentation. The hay-infused yogurt accompaniment was astounding, but some people couldn’t get past the dramatic plating. “That was one of the first dishes I was really was into,” Anderson recalls. “I liked to leave the foot on to remind you that this was once an animal that you’re eating and as a nod to the old French classics like Robuchon and Ducasse. It was kind of my homage to that kind of dining and a little bit edgy as well.”
Habiger remembers it a little differently. “Yeah, that was a little aggressive, but I just told people that the claw made a great handle to gnaw on that delicious bird!”
For every high-brow presentation, Habiger and Anderson also offered playful dishes to delight guests. Anderson calls them “silly one-liners,” but early guests couldn’t stop talking about the spicy, crisp chicken skin served with a puree of Wonder Bread, a reference to Nashville’s iconic hot chicken. An amuse-bouche that appeared to be a take on Oreo cookies actually turned out to be remarkably savory porcini wafers stuffed with salty Parmesan cream.
Initial response was overwhelmingly positive, attracting national press and ecstatic praise from locals. “The city couldn’t have been more supportive,” says Max. Habiger credits community support for a big part of their success. “Mayor Karl Dean and [Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp CEO] Butch Spyridon realized that part of a city’s identity is its culinary identity,” says Habiger. “They helped to attract visitors who wouldn’t have come to town otherwise and people who wouldn’t normally spend $200 on a culinary experience.”
Mussels from The Catbird Seat in 2020
Some guests were still learning how to handle a three-hour dining marathon of challenging presentations, including one patron who spent a few hours enjoying strong cocktails downstairs before his reservation. “When you do something like that, tragedy awaits,” recalls Habiger with a chuckle. “About two pairings in, the guy got up off his stool and put the chair leg through the drywall. He stood up and said, ‘It’s OK! I’m a foodie!’ ” That phrase later ended up emblazoned on a staff T-shirt.
After two years, Habiger and Anderson exited the kitchen at the peak of their success. “We always intended to be an incubator,” explains Max. “It’s a pretty intense restaurant in terms of the amount of prep and thoughtfulness that goes into the menu. Two years is the perfect amount of time for a chef to do it.”
Habiger concurs. “We didn’t set a term at the beginning, but two years would be a good run for a chef. It keeps things fresh and moving.”
Max relishes the chance to shut down for a month every couple of years to reset. “Each team brings a different style, “ he explains. “They dictate everything, from the plates and glassware to the music, the artwork and the style of service.”
Habiger and Anderson were followed by Trevor Moran, an Irish wunderkind who brought a playfulness and dedication to foraged ingredients honed by his experience working in the world-famous Noma in Copenhagen. Chef Ryan Poli took The Catbird Seat in a more classically European direction. Will Aghajanian and Liz Johnson succeeded Poli at The Catbird, but didn’t succeed as resoundingly in the kitchen, exiting after a little more than a year.
The current top toque at Catbird is worn by Brian Baxter, one of the opening chefs at Husk Nashville. Baxter also worked alongside Habiger at Bastion, where the duo created thoughtful small plates and larger composed meal options.
“You’ve got two years to make it your own,” says Baxter. “You can’t think about what others have done before you. It’s a balance between what you want to do as a chef and whether the guests can relate to it. Are they coming back? You have to balance what’s familiar with things that need explaining to connect the flavors with the experience.”
That focus on hospitality is a big part of the legacy of The Catbird Seat — as is the roster of talented food and beverage professionals who have worked with the head chefs before going on to success at other restaurants locally and nationally. Dedication to the guest experience changed Anderson as a chef. “It really helped me with my demeanor and talking with people,” he says. “It’s easy to hide behind the kitchen door.”
“We’re so hyperfocused on what we do, but we don’t take it for granted that we’re still full, especially in an industry that has been wrecked over the past two years,” says Max. “To see these chefs come through on their culinary journey, we’re humbled by it, and it’s awesome to see the city’s restaurant scene grow.
“Josh and Erik put their signature on the city that still resonates today,” he continues, “and hopefully we can still continue to innovate. Hospitality has always been in my blood, and I always remember the Maya Angelou quote: ‘I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.’ I’ve always enjoyed making people happy. And if you can, you should.”
