Stout Waffles
A few weeks ago, a woman walked into Cafe Roze and asked to sit at a table in the back. She was alone, and the table seats three, but the staff made an exception. Over the course of her meal, she told her server, “This table is kind of special to me.” She paid and left. The staff went about their business. Later that evening, she tagged Cafe Roze in a photo.
“It was taken at that table when she was here with her best friend who’s now passed on,” says Cafe Roze owner and chef Julia Jaksic. “It was the last time they were in Nashville together, just drinking coffee and enjoying each other’s company. It reminded me that we never know what people are going through. Sometimes we’re facilitating much more than we ever imagine.”
It’s a beautiful image, and one we can all imagine popping up in our Instagram feed. Aesthetically, Cafe Roze is social media catnip with its pink-and-white color palette, retro neon sign and minimalist decor — but you won’t find many bachelorettes here. In the two years since Roze opened as an all-day cafe, many places have adopted a similar look — and those places look good. What most of them haven’t done, however, is figure out a way to tell a story with food that we haven’t heard before, or to become part of the fabric of their adopted hometown. Jaksic has mastered both.
Her pain bagnat is a prime example. French for “bathed bread,” pain bagnat starts with a focaccia-like roll made by Sam Tucker, a Nashvillian who’s been baking bread since he was 19 years old. On one side Jaksic smears olive-orange tapenade; on the other, anchovy-caper vinaigrette (that’s the “bathed” part). Then she layers tuna that’s been marinated in red wine vinegar, herbs and olive oil with crunchy sliced fennel, roasted red peppers and bright dill fronds. The result is something foreign yet familiar — part muffaletta, part tuna-salad sandwich, but with more umami, depth and delicacy than either. It’s one of the most intriguing things on the menu, and one of the least ordered.
“I think people get intimidated because they can’t say the name of it!” says Jaksic, laughing.
I would have been one of those people were I not a culinary psychopath who Googles menu words in advance. (It’s something like “pen bahn-yacht,” but pointing at the menu works too.) Keeping something this sophisticated on a menu takes guts. It would be easy to rename it the “Mediterranean Tuna Sandwich,” but that would belie its complexity, and that’s exactly what makes Roze a dining destination rather than just a place with pretty things on toast.
They do that well too, of course. You’ve undoubtedly seen snapshots of their country-ham toast, avocado hummus, french fries and stout waffles before. The last are total brunch porn, topped with poached fruit, mascarpone and luscious syrup. But even those are more complex than they appear, made with browned butter and local Blackstone St. Charles Porter to give them a savory, balanced flavor more nuanced than any Belgian waffle I’ve had, here or in Belgium. That takes some doing.
Unfussy, boundary-pushing mash-ups are the norm at Roze. The last time I ate dinner there — a meal lots of people forget they do, though they do it incredibly well — I clocked French, Japanese, Italian, Mexican and Croatian flavors, all rendered seamlessly in seasonal Southern ingredients. Finessing so many influences into one meal is a skill Jaksic has been honing her whole life. Her father is Croatian (“roze” is Croation for pink), and she’s launched restaurants in New York City and Singapore. She’s become so adept at incorporating international elements you can easily miss them if you aren’t looking. The grilled halloumi snuck up on me that way. The semisoft brined Greek cheese is griddled until it’s melty and satisfyingly squeaky, like an oversized cheese curd. It’s topped with spiced peaches and pecan dukka, an Egyptian mix of herbs, spices and nuts. Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and Southern, all on one plate. It’s modern metropolitan comfort food at its finest.
Savory Oats
The same is true of the savory oats with poached egg, mustard greens, roasted shiitakes and gomasio, a Japanese sesame-salt condiment. If you told me I had to either eat only oats every day for the rest of my life or swallow a live mouse, I’d have PETA on my doorstep so fast your head would spin — so trust me when I say this is more like breakfast risotto than Quaker Instant Oats. It’s clever, strange, subtle and delicious. And then there’s the shaved celery salad. I read the ingredients — ricotta salata, hazelnuts, preserved lemon vinaigrette — and knew it was a candidate for “B.S. or Brilliance,” a game I play in which I order something so weird and specific it has to be either terrible or great. This was unequivocally the latter: crunchy, salty, nutty and piquant while also light and vibrant. It’s the kind of thing that starts a conversation at the table, as did the fizzy pineapple-mint drink I ordered with it. Ripe and herbaceous, the nonalcoholic cooler is made with a pineapple shrub so robust it’s almost a drinking vinegar, a very Southern thing Jaksic mastered and made her own. We need more of that.
At this juncture in Nashville’s food story, there are so many spots to get staples done well. StyleBlueprint recently had an article about 11 different places to find amazing toast and they only did avocado. If you’re an adventurous eater who’s in a long-term relationship with Nashville’s dining scene, you have to look for ways to spice things up. Tie me up and whip me or let me go to sleep, Nashville! Roze is that kind of girl.
But seriously, it’s important we locals support the people who do more for Nashville’s dining scene than just show up, cash in and paint a pretty picture. Cafe Roze has carved out its own corner of Nashville because its people know just what it is: modern, inventive, authentic and warm. Two years in, Roze has accomplished something many restaurants don’t in 10: It’s become a part of people’s lives. East Nashville knows it, and I hope the rest of the city gets to know it too.
